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