...And Los Angeles
A legal battle that has dragged on since August of 1998 has ended, but the questions raised will certainly haunt the Los Angeles Police Department for years to come. Police officer-turned-whistleblower Rafael Perez was sentenced to five years in prison on Friday for stealing cocaine as a result of a plea bargain in which he exposed a police scandal of enormous proportions. Seeking leniency, Perez described incident after incident of misconduct by LAPD officers, including stealing from, beating, shooting, and framing innocent people.
"[Perez and other officers] went to a man's apartment, theoretically to forestall retaliation from a gang shooting, and instead, they shot an unarmed man. According to Perez, once they realized what they had done, several officers, under the supervision of a sergeant, held an ambulance at bay while they stood over the bleeding man and concocted a phony story about how the shooting occurred, thereby allowing the man to bleed to death," said Tim Rutton, City/County Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times. While little could be done to rectify that, there are some victims of police corruption who are still in a position to be helped by Perez's confessions, however belated. Shortly after he began cooperating with investigators, a man named Javier Ovando was released from prison. Perez told investigators that he and his former partner had handcuffed the man, shot him (which left him paralyzed), and then planted a gun on him. Perez claimed that he and the other officer lied about the incident in court, and as a result, Ovando was sentenced to 23 years in prison.
Naturally, this raises questions about many convictions, possibly numbering in the hundreds. While all of the information given by Perez relates to his own special anti-gang unit, known by the acronym CRASH, many are wondering whether other units have been tainted by corruption as well. An investigation into the matter has turned up some "telltale signs" that seem to indicate that the CRASH unit was not unique in its practices, but it is too soon to know for sure.
In the meantime, however, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office is preparing for a long series of trials of two distinct types: getting juries to overturn convictions that may have come as a result of police corruption, and prosecuting any officers implicated in the ongoing investigation. The D.A. is adding seven prosecutors to his team of ten lawyers in anticipation of years of trials relating to the scandal first exposed by Perez, who tearfully apologized and begged forgiveness for his former crimes before being led off to jail. "I was wrong, I was wrong. I pray that one day, I can demonstrate my worthiness of being forgiven.... I thank you for blessing me with a second chance at life.... I intend to live it wisely."