Rampart probe lawsuit is settled

The Los Angeles City Council agreed Wednesday to pay $675,000 to settle a lawsuit by the family of former Police Sgt. Paul Byrnes Jr., who died of a painkiller overdose after being swept up in the massive internal investigation into the Rampart corruption scandal.

The Los Angeles Police Department probe eventually cleared Byrnes of wrongdoing, city officials said, but the lawsuit by his father and children alleges that the LAPD violated his civil rights.

“Paul Byrnes was one of the biggest victims of the whole Rampart mess,” said Hank Hernandez, an attorney for the Police Protective League.

City Council members said they were advised by the city attorney to settle the case, because a jury might sympathize with the family’s allegations that they were unreasonably harmed by the Rampart inquiry.

“He was swept away in that cloud, but the investigation proved he didn’t do anything,” said Councilman Dennis Zine, a former police union official. “He was put through the wringer. I think what this demonstrates is we have compassion for the family and what they were going through.”

Byrnes died April 29, 2004, and the county coroner determined that his overdosing on prescription painkillers was accidental.

In the late 1990s, Byrnes was a sergeant assigned to supervise officers of Rampart’s anti-gang unit, CRASH.

The Rampart scandal broke in 1998, when CRASH Det. Rafael Perez, accused of stealing cocaine from an LAPD evidence locker, told investigators that he and fellow officers routinely planted evidence, shot and beat suspects without provocation and framed people for crimes they did not commit.

Byrnes was relieved of duty during an investigation into the sergeant’s handling of a beating case in which three officers have been convicted.

Perez, who has been accused of fabricating many allegations, told investigators at the time that he and other officers were looking for an alleged gang member wanted on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and that when they found him asleep, they attacked and severely beat him, according to court records.

When Byrnes arrived at the scene, Perez said, he and the other officers told the sergeant two different stories. “At first, we told him how it actually happened, how this guy was beat down,” Perez said at the time. “And then, uh, we told him how we were gonna explain it.”

Perez said Byrnes directed officers to pour beer on a nearby fire escape to help support their tale that the gang member got some of his injuries when he slipped and fell during a chase.

An LAPD disciplinary board later found Byrnes “not guilty.”

Hernandez said that before Perez and Officer Nino Durden were arrested for stealing drugs and other offenses, Byrnes had voiced concerns to supervisors about the officers and had tried to get them transferred out of the anti-gang unit.

“He was ignored, and then they turned around and charged him administratively,” Hernandez said. “It caused a lot of stress, and he started drinking.”

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com