"The erosion of background standards comes back to haunt the city," Councilman Bernard Parks says. Two city councilmen said Monday they will ask the Los Angeles Police Department to freeze hiring policy changes allowing new recruits on the force who have used drugs in the past. Councilman Bernard Parks, a former LAPD chief, said he and Councilman Dennis Zine, a former police officer, will ask their colleagues later this week that the changes be reviewed by the City Council and the Police Commission before they are implemented. [continues 435 words]
LOS ANGELES -- Giving the lengthy investigation into Los Angeles Police Department corruption a possible new start, the former partner of the investigation's central figure pleaded guilty yesterday to charges including covering up the shooting of an unarmed gang member. The guilty pleas and agreement to cooperate by Nino Durden are important because he is the third person from the LAPD ranks in recent days to lend credence to the tales of unjustified shootings and frame-ups by disgraced officer-turned-informant Rafael Perez. Two other officers pleaded no contest to assault charges stemming from the investigation last week and pledged to cooperate. [continues 553 words]
LOS ANGELES -- A man reputed to be the Mexican Mafia's highest-ranking Los Angeles leader was convicted yesterday of orchestrating three murders and ordering the killings of eight people. Mariano "Chuy" Martinez, 42, could be the first person in 51 years to face the death penalty after a federal court conviction in Los Angeles. The same jury on Feb. 21 will begin hearing evidence on whether he should be executed or sentenced to life in prison. That hearing could take a month, and the judge is bound by the jury's decision. [continues 379 words]
LOS ANGELES -- A judge's reversal of three officers' convictions has once again thrown this city's massive police corruption probe into turmoil, but officials said yesterday that the Rampart investigation would continue. Prosecutors were "deeply disappointed" by the decision handed down late Friday night by Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Connor granting a new trial to three Los Angeles police officers charged with framing two gang members, a spokeswoman said. Connor voided the conspiracy, perjury and false report convictions of police Sgts. Edward Ortiz, 44, Brian Liddy, 39, and Officer Michael Buchanan, 30. The judge determined that jurors engaged in misconduct by considering an issue in their deliberations that was never raised during the trial. [continues 975 words]
LOS ANGELES -- My whole adult life I've watched Robert Downey Jr. Maybe that's something I shouldn't state with pride. He's a spoiled brat actor and somebody who already receives disproportionately too much attention. Nonetheless, call me a fan or call me fascinated. To me, his life has been a thing of beauty while being a sorry spectacle at the same time -- a new Jaguar in a demolition derby. The dark side of his life made headlines again last weekend. As almost everyone who cares knows, Downey was arrested in a Palm Springs hotel room apparently in the midst of a cocaine and methamphetamine binge. [continues 508 words]
Reportedly Denies Killings Occurred LOS ANGELES -- A former lover of the ex-police officer at the center of a massive police corruption investigation has recanted her allegations that he and another former officer killed three people and buried their bodies in Tijuana, law enforcement sources said yesterday. The recantation comes as some news agencies reported that jurors in the first trial stemming from the scandal centered in the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart division reached a partial verdict in the trial of four officers. [continues 781 words]
Informant Called Target Of Probe Of 3 Killings LOS ANGELES -- As the first criminal trial stemming from this city's massive police corruption scandal began yesterday, investigators turned their attention to a Tijuana hillside trash heap where allegations of murder and dumped bodies have been linked to the government's star witness. Federal agents are investigating contentions that Rafael Perez, an ex-officer who became an informant, and his former partner, David Mack, killed three people six years ago and buried the bodies on a garbage-filled hillside south of the border, sources familiar with the case said. [continues 591 words]
LOS ANGELES -- Former Los Angeles police Officer Rafael Perez has likened himself to a monster, admitted he was seduced by the power of the badge and owned up to committing atrocities while on the job. The lawyers representing police officers whom Perez has accused of corruption say Perez is indeed a monster, possibly a killer and a pathological liar playing God with the lives of cops. Now even prosecutors are uncertain about the man they struck a deal with and relied on in building criminal cases in arguably the city's worst police corruption scandal. [continues 1068 words]
Decision Seen As No Panacea For Rampart Scandal LOS ANGELES -- Just days after the Los Angeles Police Department brass' back-patting celebration for their handling of the Democratic National Convention, a federal judge slapped them back to their scandal-plagued reality. U.S. District Judge William Rea ruled last week that the LAPD can be sued under the same federal law designed to take out Mafioso and drug networks: the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO. Legal observers aren't certain the LAPD is the first law enforcement organization to face such a claim, but it's clearly the highest-profile public RICO target. [continues 740 words]
LOS ANGELES -- It comes from Europe on the bodies and in the luggage of passengers flying into Los Angeles International Airport. Once here, it ends up in the mouths of people in dance clubs and rave parties throughout Southern California. On Saturday, 1,096 pounds of the hallucinogenic drug known as Ecstasy came in 15 boxes on an Air France flight from Paris. Investigators tracking the work of a smuggling ring expected it. Drug sniffing dogs located the packages at LAX. [continues 570 words]
LOS ANGELES -- A 15-year Immigration and Naturalization Service veteran was indicted Thursday on charges that he released 11 detained illegal aliens and turned some of them over to a convicted drug dealer, who held the immigrants until their families paid up to $1,800 in ransom. Jesse Jerry Gardona, 40, a special agent in the INS's anti-smuggling unit in Los Angeles, reportedly swapped the immigrants, mostly Salvadoran, in 1998 to settle a $20,000 to $30,000 debt he had with Jose Jesus Quintanilla Guzman, a Mexican national, convicted of drug trafficking in 1990, according to court documents released Thursday. [continues 700 words]
Operative For Tijuana Gang Guilty On 2 Counts LOS ANGELES - A man authorities say was the business operations chief in Los Angeles for the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel pleaded guilty yesterday to cocaine-distribution and money-laundering charges. While prosecutors and Jorge Castro, 34, did strike a deal on his guilty plea, there was no agreement that Castro would work with the government in the future and help law enforcement in its long investigation of the Arellano brothers, whom investigators consider some of the most wanted men in Mexico. [continues 473 words]
Judge Acts In Wake Of LAPD Scandal LOS ANGELES - Nearly doubling the number of dismissed criminal cases stemming from a police corruption scandal that has rattled this city, a judge yesterday reversed 10 drug and weapon convictions soiled by police misconduct. Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti said prosecutors no longer could stand behind the convictions that were obtained with the help of former Los Angeles Police officer-turned-informant Rafael Perez and his onetime partner Nino Durden. One the 10 people, Paul Anise Thompson, 34, who was convicted on a 1997 firearms charge and sentenced to six years in prison, is expected to be released from prison soon. His lawyer, Carlos Spiga, said Thompson plans to sue the city, but remains fearful of police. [continues 536 words]
