Ex-Officers Face Jail in Assault

Two former Los Angeles Police Department officers pleaded no contest Thursday in Superior Court to assaulting a homeless man while on duty in 1997.

David Cochrane, 36, and Christopher Coppock, 30, each face up to one year in County Jail and two additional years’ probation when they return to court for sentencing Nov. 13 before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler.

The two former Central Division officers were charged with terrorizing Delton Bowen by throwing him into their squad car and taking him to the Los Angeles River, where he was allegedly threatened with a handgun and thrown on the ground on Oct. 23, 1997.

The pair were indicted in October 2000 on charges of kidnapping, false imprisonment and assault by a public officer under color of authority. The indictment also accused Cochrane of using a gun while committing the offenses.

Each man pleaded no contest to the assault charge. Under a plea arrangement, the other two counts are to be dismissed.

If the officers had been convicted of all charges, Cochrane could have received up to 18 years in prison and Coppock faced a maximum of nine years, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Kraig St. Pierre.

In addition to possible jail time, the two still face a civil rights suit filed by a person who claims he was framed by the officers and then wrongly convicted.

At least 17 defendants have had convictions overturned because they were based on testimony or evidence provided by Cochrane and Coppock, according to attorneys in the offices of the Los Angeles County public defender and the alternate public defender.

“I think this [plea arrangement] is unconscionable,” said Gary Wigodsky, a deputy alternate public defender who has represented some of the freed defendants. “They should be in prison for a long time. This is more proof the court and the district attorney’s office allow police corruption to flourish. Even when [officers] get caught, they get off with sentences that shock the conscience.”

Jim Cosper, head of the district attorney’s Justice System Integrity Division, said St. Pierre will argue strongly that the men should serve jail time.

Cosper and St. Pierre said the plea offer matched their reading of the type of sentence Judge Fidler would be willing to accept.

St. Pierre said, “The judge has already indicated this is not a state prison case.” Defendants sentenced to more than a year’s confinement are sent to state prison rather than County Jail.

“He basically circumscribed our role,” St. Pierre said. He said Fidler suggested what he thought was an appropriate sentence “after he heard testimony [in a court hearing] from our two key witnesses in the case.”

One of them was former LAPD Officer Sandra Salazar, who was working with Cochrane and Coppock when the incident occurred.

The other key witness was the victim, Bowen.

Cochrane and Coppock allegedly assaulted Bowen after he called one of them a derogatory name, after which, prosecutors charged, he was driven to the Los Angeles River and manhandled.

In court papers, Bowen has said he was handcuffed during the beating and that one of the officers placed a cocked gun to his head and kicked him down an embankment, where they left him.

Coppock’s attorney, Robert Rico, said his client accepted the deal with prosecutors instead of going to trial partly because a jury might be prejudiced against officers in the aftermath of the Inglewood police beating case.

In that case, Inglewood police officer Jeremy J. Morse was caught on videotape slamming 16-year-old Donovan Jackson onto a police car and then punching him.

“In light of the recent intense coverage of the Inglewood case and the public comments about it by public officials, the offer was something that my client felt was in his best interest,” Rico said.

After the incident with Bowen, Cochrane was fired from his LAPD job and Coppock resigned.