Man Accused of Posing as Officer in Sex Assault

A man was charged with kidnapping and sexual assault after posing as a police officer and driving his victim through the Rampart station’s underground parking lot before attacking her, authorities said Friday.

Terrell B. Lawrence, 38, is allegedly the latest to undertake what Los Angeles Police Department officials say is the all-too-common scheme of criminals pretending to be officers.

Detectives arrested Lawrence on Tuesday after he returned to the Pico-Union apartment of his alleged victim less than 24 hours after the attack, according to Lt. Matt Blake of the LAPD’s Professional Standards Bureau.

“This was a premeditated crime. He pretended to be a Rampart detective to intimidate her and then drove into the Rampart station subterranean parking lot to enforce that idea,” Blake said. “She believed he was a cop.”

LAPD officials said Friday that access to the parking lot has been blocked.

Lawrence was charged with kidnapping and forced oral copulation with the special circumstance of impersonating a police officer. He pleaded not guilty Thursday and is being held in lieu of $1-million bail.

The case represents the second sexual assault in recent months to involve a fake police officer, Blake said.

In the latest case, a woman in her 20s, was walking at 3rd and Bonnie Brae streets on her way to a market Monday when the phony officer allegedly stopped his vehicle.

Blake said the man initially offered her a ride and introduced himself as “Det. Larson.” The lieutenant said that the woman declined, and that the man pulled a .45-caliber handgun from his waist area.

The woman then got into the vehicle and the man began to drive her around, at one point entering the Rampart parking lot to bolster his credentials, Blake said. The lieutenant said the man stopped near Coronado Street, threatened the woman and sexually assaulted her.

The assailant, Blake added, then took her two $65 food stamps and let her go, warning her: “I know people in your building. I can have you killed.” The woman immediately contacted police.

The next day, Lawrence, who is 6 foot 3 and weighs 280 pounds, was arrested after police staked out the woman’s apartment.

Blake said his criminal investigation unit that is assigned to pursuing officers who break the law stumbled onto another fake officer in a separate recent rape case.

Officers in the San Fernando Valley responding to a rape report at a bachelor party were told by the alleged victim that she had met the attacker through an LAPD officer. But Blake said his investigators discovered that the man had assumed the identity of an officer who was a fellow player on an amateur Valley baseball team.