L.A.'s Bandits in Blue

By CATHY BOOTH/LOS ANGELES

Javier Francisco Ovando is famous today, but back in 1996 no one much cared when cops stormed his apartment near downtown Los Angeles and shot him in the chest and head. Ovando belonged to the 18th Street Gang, a group of powerful Mexican drug lords. At trial, the judge lectured the skinny 19-year-old--who lay paralyzed on a gurney--for threatening the lives of two brave cops, and sent him away for 23 years.

It was a classic cops-and-robbers tale, but with a film-noir twist. Ovando was railroaded by the police, who had planted a gun to get the conviction. But no one believed Ovando until a dishonest cop, Rafael Perez, talked. Faced with 14 years in prison for stealing cocaine from a police lockup, Perez opted to bargain for a lighter sentence by delivering up his fellow officers. That was five months ago, and Perez has hardly stopped talking since. He has filled 2,000 transcript pages with accounts of cops faking evidence, testifying against innocent people and generally acting like criminals themselves.

There's always been a strong suspicion in popular culture--think Chinatown or L.A. Confidential--that Los Angeles cops were quietly up to no good, and there have been some dark real-life incidents, like the police beating of Rodney King. But L.A. is embroiled in its biggest police scandal ever, one that makes Joseph Wambaugh read like tepid tea. Authorities have identified 40 people who were wrongly convicted, and public defenders are reviewing 4,000 more cases. The cops "are just a gang with the law on their side," says Gerardo ("Clever") Lopez, a former gang member. "People are finally seeing the truth."

At the heart of the scandal is the Rampart division's Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, or CRASH. Perez is reportedly claiming that 70 to 80 members of this antigang unit were "in the loop," that is, acting a lot like gang members. Among their rituals: decorating their bodies with tattoos of grinning skulls and awarding themselves gruesome plaques for shooting perps.

Perez's allegations, headlined in the Los Angeles Times and Daily News for days, are a stunning indictment: cops who shot suspects and then delayed calling an ambulance, so they could fix the scene to make the shooting look justified; cops who stole drugs and sold them on the street; cops partying with--and sometimes raping--informants; and cops who shot at suspects for sport. One of the Rampart's least distinguished alumni: former officer David Mack, convicted of robbing a bank.

But perhaps nothing Perez has owned up to is as disturbing as the degree to which fabricating incriminating evidence seems to have been part of Rampart's routine. The L.A.P.D. has sent 50 investigators to every prison in the state--and as far as South America--to track down those framed. But so far L.A.P.D. Chief Bernard Parks has asked for charges to be filed against only three officers, insisting Perez's claim of 70 officers involved is too high. (Eleven officers are on leave.) A police board of inquiry is expected to urge reforms, including improved background checks and polygraphs for police applicants, and sting operations to make sure they stay clean.

The L.A.P.D. will have a lot of help getting its house in order. L.A. district attorney Gil Garcetti has so far focused on freeing innocent prisoners; his staff is sifting through the 200 to 300 cases he suspects may have been tainted. The L.A. public defender's office is answering a flood of me-toos coming from the prisons. And the FBI has launched a civil-rights investigation.

Along with the human toll, the scandal is likely to come with a hefty price tag. Faced with concerns that his city could be bankrupted, Mayor Richard Riordan last week called for diverting millions in tobacco-settlement money to pay off lawsuits that could exceed $400 million. "To do real justice," he says, "we have to move quickly." The money is little consolation for the Angelenos wrongly imprisoned--or worse. Doctors say Ovando will probably never walk again. "They may have liberated him from prison," says his lawyer Gregory Moreno. "But they can't liberate him from his wheelchair."

Faith in the justice system is also ailing. "I'm out ringing doorbells campaigning, and the question the public asks me again and again is, 'How could the department not have caught this?'" says city councilwoman Jackie Goldberg. "The presumption of innocence has disappeared in our system." Which leaves Los Angeles desperately looking for something film-noir police movies usually lack: a happy ending.