[stop-polabuse] another corrupt rampart cop
John Jack
Friday, March 24, 2000
Parks files charges against officer
By Greg Gittrich and Beth Barrett, Staff Writers
Unwilling to sit idle as prosecutors sort out which LAPD cops to indict, LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks has filed administrative charges against another officer implicated by rogue-cop-turned-informant Rafael Perez, the Daily News learned Thursday.
Parks pulled Officer Humberto Tovar off the streets Wednesday, relieving him of duty pending the outcome of a disciplinary LAPD Board of Rights hearing, official documents reveal.
During the next two weeks, similar administrative charges are expected to be filed against several officers who worked in the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart Division between 1995 and 1998, sources said.
Perez, who agreed to become an informant last September after cutting a deal with prosecutors, has told investigators that he and other cops routinely framed suspected gang members and beat suspects. On at least one occasion, he said, the cops shot an unarmed suspect.
At least 20 officers either have been suspended, fired or quit as a result of the police scandal.
The District Attorney's Office has yet to file any criminal charges against the cops.
Tovar's lawyer, Richard M. Macias, said his client did nothing wrong. Macias added that the officer also never observed Perez, the central figure in the worst police corruption in city history, commit a crime.
According to the seven administrative counts against Tovar, the officer should have known that Perez planted marijuana on Toby Semick on March 23, 1996, and then wrote a false arrest report. The department contends Tovar also participated in the false arrest, and then did not report the misconduct.
"My client didn't know Perez did anything improper until this week," Macias said, referring to the Semick case.
Semick could not be reached for comment. His arrest did not result in a conviction, having been dismissed by prosecutors because of insufficient evidence, confidential documents reveal.
According to a confidential transcript of his statements to investigators, Perez admitted drugs were planted on Semick. Perez said he and Tovar knew Semick was on parole and had observed him toss a gun into a storm drain where it could not be recovered.
"So, we decided, you know, you're gonna go for something," Perez said in the transcript.
Perez said he wrote the report and recovered the evidence, but that Tovar knew the facts were fabricated.
"I made it, uh, very obvious to him that, you know, we're gonna do him for something. We just couldn't figure out what," Perez told investigators.
After bringing Semick back to the patrol car, Perez said he told the suspect "what we were gonna do him for. That we were gonna plant marijuana on him."
"Officer Tovar knew that we were, uh, planting this marijuana on him."
In a related matter, a judge on Thursday threw out six more convictions because of misconduct by Rampart officers, bringing to 46 the number of cases dismissed.
The latest round of convictions involves drug and weapons charges against three adults and three people who were juveniles at the time they were arrested by Rampart anti-gang officers in 1996 and 1997.
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