Pubdate: Tue, 07 May 2002 Source: Chicago Tribune (IL) Copyright: 2002 Chicago Tribune Company Contact: http://www.chicagotribune.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82 EX-LAPD COP GETS 2 YEARS IN CASE TIED TO RAMPART SCANDAL LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA -- The disgraced former officer at the center of the police department's corruption scandal was sentenced Monday to 2 years in federal prison for violating the civil rights of an unarmed man he and another officer shot in 1996. Rafael Perez, 34, declined to speak when U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder accepted his plea agreement on one count of conspiracy and one count of possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Perez, a former member of the Los Angeles Police Department's anti-gang unit, agreed to the plea deal in December. He admitted fabricating a story about a shooting that left Javier Francisco Ovando paralyzed and confessed that he testified falsely at the man's trial. The firearm with the obliterated serial number was used to frame Ovando. The shooting was one of the most serious crimes that surfaced in a probe of the now-defunct Rampart anti-gang unit. Perez cooperated with investigators in exchange for a lighter sentence for stealing cocaine from a police evidence locker. He was freed from state prison last summer after serving 3 years. Perez's allegations of widespread wrongdoing in the unit led the district attorney's office to throw out about 100 felony cases. Some state inmates, including Ovando, were freed as a result. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth