LAbyrinth

by Randall Sullivan

  By far the most notable fact about the filing of Russell Poole’s lawsuit against the LAPD was that the Los Angeles Times had declined to publish any serious investigation of the former detective’s claims. Poole’s explanation for this carried truly dangerous implications. During the summer of 2000, Poole recalled, he had a series of conversations with Lait and Glover about his belief that Chief Parks had obstructed justice. “At first I said I didn’t trust them,” Poole said, “but then I agreed to cooperate if they told the story right this time. But the article I was expecting never ran. Finally I called them up to ask why. Scott Glover told me they had been getting pressure ‘from upstairs.’ When I asked what that meant, he said the publisher had made it clear that the Los Angeles Times was not going to help bring down an African-American chief of police.”

  Scott Glover and Matt Lait, along with their editor Jim Newton, all disputed Poole’s claim. However, Deputy District Attorney George Castillo, now assigned to the Belmont Task Force that was investigating L.A.’s latest racially charged scandal, said he believed Russell Poole, and not the newspaper reporters. “I believe the Times refused to report this story because they’re cowards,” Castillo explained. “I’ve said that to the faces of Matt Lait and Scott Glover. And they’ve come up with the sort of whiny excuses that lead me to believe they probably said what Russ says they said. It’s obvious to everyone that this is what’s going on here. It’s certainly the consensus of opinion within the Belmont Task Force.”

  Jan Golab, the freelance journalist whose reporting on Poole’s lawsuit had made him a voice crying in the wilderness, agreed with Castillo completely. “The Times and the rest of the media in Los Angeles have ignored Russell Poole for one reason—liberal racism,” Golab said. “You can’t tell a story in which the good guy is a white detective and the villains are all black. That isn’t allowed, even if it’s true.”

  Golab, who found it difficult to sell his account of Poole’s resignation from the LAPD (although Salon.com eventually did publish it online), was plagued by the unwillingness of those he interviewed to be identified by name. A “knowledgeable source in the Los Angeles legal community” had described Poole’s lawsuit to Golab as “a mine in the water,” while “a Los Angeles County official who asked for immunity” told the reporter that because of Poole’s lawsuit “serious charges could result, including indictments for obstruction of justice.” His sources all had been afraid, Golab said, that “the truth will never come out, because neither the media nor the politicians want it to, and that they’ll be left holding the bag.”

  Some significant local figures were willing to speak in their own names on Poole’s behalf, however. One was retired LAPD Deputy Chief Steve Downing, who described Poole’s allegations to Golab as “appalling,” then added, “Anytime you have leads in a case pointing to a cop, it’s even more important that it be pursued to the absolute end. And you also have to ask the question: Who else is involved? Have any other officers been infected by these activities?” What Bernard Parks had done to Russell Poole’s investigative reports was “an outrage,” Downing later told Rolling Stone magazine. “The police chief’s job is to produce the truth, not bury it.”

  Sergio Robleto, Poole’s former lieutenant in South Bureau Homicide, was a man whom many of his fellow officers had believed would one day become Los Angeles’s first Hispanic Chief of Police, until he resigned from the LAPD to take a job as an executive at “the corporate CIA,” Kroll Associates. If Bernard Parks imagined he could discredit Russell Poole, Robleto warned, the chief had better think again. Poole was among the most honest and industrious police officers he had ever worked with, said Robleto, and possibly the most “thorough” detective he’d ever encountered. “Everything Poole does, he writes down,” explained Robleto, scoffing at the suggestion that Poole might have exaggerated what took place in his meetings with Chief Parks and other high-ranking officers. “You’re never going to catch Russ lying.”

  Proving that Rafael Perez was not a “credible witness,” meanwhile, was becoming easier by the week. On September 26, 2000, the same day Russell Poole filed his lawsuit, the Los Angeles Times reported that a “jailhouse informant” said he had heard the ex-officer boast about being able to destroy anyone who crossed him. While he listened from the next cell, the man had told investigators from the Rampart Task Force, Perez bragged to his bunkmate, “If someone pisses me off, I’ll throw their name into a hat, and they’ll get investigated—innocent or not.” The informant was an ex-LAPD officer named Hank Rodriguez who had been fired from the department in 1974. Rodriguez had been placed in the cell next to Perez’s when he was arrested for a parole violation stemming from a drunk driving conviction. He observed that Perez had adopted “a gang member type of attitude” while in custody, Rodriguez said, regularly breaking into rap songs and crowing about his book and movie deals. Part of what made Rodriguez’s claims newsworthy was that the LAPD had managed to “misplace” them for five months after they were made. This was explained to the Los Angeles County Superior Court by Dan Schatz, the LAPD commander whom Russell Poole blamed more than any other high-ranking officer (other than Bernard Parks) for the suppression of his investigations during 1997 and 1998. What Schatz called an accident, the Times described as “a potentially serious oversight” that could affect any court cases in which Perez was called to the stand as a witness.

  “We’re not done yet,” Poole said. That much, at least, was certain.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  By the autumn of 2000, more than a hundred felony cases had been overturned on the basis of Ray Perez’s statements. None of his claims, however, had been tested in a court of law. Now, one finally would be. Prosecutors made what seemed an odd choice for the first criminal case brought to trial on the basis of Perez’s story: four Rampart officers accused by Perez of framing 18th Street Gang member Allan Lobos on a gun possession charge. What made the prosecution’s case so curious was that Lobos was a convicted killer serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. When the trial of those accused of framing the gang member on the weapons charge finally began, however, the decision made more sense: Three of the four officers were white, while ten of the twelve jurors who would pass judgment on them were minorities.

  The legal drama soon would be overwhelmed by claims made outside the courtroom by a former girlfriend of Perez’s named Sonia Flores, who told the FBI that Rafael and David Mack had shot to death a drug dealer named “Chino” and an older woman who appeared to be his mother. Mack and Perez wrapped the victim’s bodies in garbage bags sealed with duct tape, Flores said, then drove to Tijuana, Mexico, and buried them in a ravine where the corpses of those killed in the border city’s drug wars were dumped on an almost daily basis.

  Flores told a story that was remarkably detailed. She met Rafael Perez in 1991 at the Pan American Nightclub near the Rampart Division station, Flores said. He had come into the club, Perez said, to check on underage drinkers. Flores, fourteen at the time, clearly qualified. Her age hadn’t kept the officer from asking for her telephone number, however, said Flores, and soon after they began meeting for sexual liaisons at an apartment on Marathon Street that Perez shared with two other LAPD officers, David Mack and Sammy Martin. When she became pregnant with Perez’s child, Flores went on, he took her to a clinic near the corner of Vermont Avenue and Fourth Street, where she aborted the fetus.

  Sometime during either late 1994 or early 1995, Flores said, she was picked up at her home in Echo Park by Mack and Perez, who were driving Sammy Martin’s black BMW. They drove her back to the Marathon Street apartment, then took her along when they made a delivery of cocaine to a man named Chino. Before leaving the Marathon Street apartment, Flores said, Perez and Mack put on their SWAT gear—black nylon jackets over full suits of body armor. She didn’t find this unusual, Flores explained, because she had seen them wear their SWAT uniforms on other occasions when making cocaine deliveries. She was a bit concerned that Rafael had armed himself with three ha
ndguns, though, Flores said, and became frightened during the drive to Chino’s apartment building on Bellevue Avenue, because Rafael began to instruct her in what to do if there was shooting.

  All three of them went upstairs to an apartment with a four-digit number on the door, Flores said. Mack, who was carrying the cocaine in a brown bag, knocked. A Hispanic woman in her mid-fifties answered and let the three of them in. While she and the older woman sat in the living room, Flores said, Rafael, David Mack, and Chino adjourned to a back bedroom. She had met Chino a couple of times before at the Guatelinda Nightclub in Hollywood, Flores explained, and believed his name was Juan Cardoza. He was a small-time drug dealer who worked the Guatelinda on a regular basis.

  The three men had been out of sight for only a few minutes, Flores said, when she heard their voices raised in argument. Only a moment later Mack stepped out of the bedroom and called for the older woman. The argument in the back bedroom continued, however, until Rafael pushed Chino into the living room and used one of his pistols to force the man face down on the floor. “Where’s the money?” Rafael demanded, she recalled. When Chino said he didn’t have the money, Ray placed his foot on the back of the man’s neck and fired a single shot into Chino’s shoulder. The older woman immediately came running out of the back bedroom and threw herself on top of Chino, Flores said, but Rafael simply shoved her aside, pulled Chino’s head back, and fired another gunshot into his forehead. She felt the blood splatter her legs, Flores said, then watched in shock as Mack grabbed the back of the older woman’s blouse and shot her in the head.

  She was in hysterics at this point, Flores said, and Rafael had to carry her back to the BMW, which was parked in an alley next to the building. While Rafael drove to the Marathon Street apartment, Mack sat with her in the back seat and tried to get her to drink something from a bottle. When she refused, Flores said, Mack poured some of what was in the bottle onto a rag and covered her face with it until she lost consciousness.

  She awoke in the bathroom of the Marathon Street apartment, fully clothed, but missing her tennis shoes and socks. Rafael was asleep in the bedroom and Mack was asleep on the couch. She remembered what had happened when she saw the blood on her shorts, Flores said, then immediately took them off and threw them into the trash. Rafael woke up a moment later and warned her that if she told anyone about what had happened, she would be prosecuted as an accomplice. Also, because Chino was connected to the Mexican Mafia, if it ever came out that she was involved in his death not only she, but her brother and children as well, would be murdered.

  When she asked what had happened to the bodies, Rafael told her not to be concerned. She was fairly certain that he and Mack had dumped the corpses in Tijuana, Flores said, because Rafael had done that at least once before. They were headed south in his Ford Explorer, she recalled, when Rafael casually mentioned that there was a body in the back of the vehicle. She didn’t believe him until he told her to look at the purse under her seat. She did, and inside she found the ID of a young Hispanic woman. “Just some puta from the El Panel,” Rafael called her. The El Panel was a strip club at Florence and Western where Perez and Mack went on Wednesday nights, she explained, to enjoy the lap dancers. When they got to Tijuana that day, Flores said, they drove to a beauty salon owned by a friend whose brother owned another salon in Huntington Beach. To be sure that there really was a body in the back of the Explorer, Flores said, she unsnapped the cargo cover, pulled back a corner, and saw an obviously dead young woman lying on a plastic sheet.

  She stayed at the beauty salon, Flores said, while Rafael and salon owner Rene drove off in the Explorer. When they returned, the body was gone. When she asked him to show her what he had done with the corpse, Flores said, Rafael without hesitation drove her to a field at the bottom of an embankment behind a row of houses and showed her exactly where he had dumped the woman’s body.

  She and Rafael broke up soon after this, Flores told the FBI, and she did not see him again until February of 1996, when she was at the McDonald’s restaurant on Union Avenue. She was talking to an 18th Streeter named “Stymie,” Flores said, who was on the lookout for a rival gang member he believed had killed one of his relatives in a drive-by shooting. She tried to talk him out of gunning for the man, Flores said, but Stymie refused to listen, so she called Rafael at the Rampart CRASH station. By the time Perez arrived, however, Stymie had shot and fatally wounded the man he was waiting for. Rafael drove her to the Rampart station on Union Avenue, Flores recalled, and showed her photographs of Temple Street Gang members. She picked out the picture of a man who had been sitting near her when the shooting occurred but Rafael said to ignore him and insisted that Flores point out two other men she did not recognize. She complied but at the same time decided she would not identify the two men under oath.

  Rafael drove her to court on the morning of their trial, Flores recalled. On the way he showed her another photograph of the accused men, and said he would be sitting at the counsel table while she testified. After she said on the witness stand that she could not identify the suspects, Flores said, Rafael became furious with her. Yet the two continued their relationship for some months afterward.

  During this period, she learned of several other serious crimes in which Rafael was involved with his “roommates” at the Marathon Street apartment, Flores said. One was the shooting of a man who had threatened to expose Rafael for extorting members of the Temple Street Gang. Rafael and Sammy Martin, while off duty, had tracked the man down and killed him on the street; Martin drove the car while Perez pulled the trigger, Flores said.

  Rafael also had participated with Mack in a bank robbery, Flores said, along with two women whose names she didn’t know, although she had been told that one of them worked at the bank. She had been present in the Marathon Street apartment while it was planned, Flores said.

  Rafael actually had asked her to join them in the robbery, even offering to teach her to shoot a gun. She declined, but Rafael gave her $300 anyway, after the robbery, Flores said. When David Mack was arrested, however, Rafael became very concerned about what she knew, the young woman went on, offering her a sum of money and a house if she would leave the Los Angeles area. Her life was in danger, he told her, warning repeatedly that she would be killed if she talked to the police. She refused his offer of a house and money, Flores said, because she was convinced Rafael was setting her up to take the fall. She did stay in contact with him by phone, the young woman added, even after his arrest, but Rafael stopped calling in December of 1999.

  On the morning of the first Rampart trial in Los Angeles, Mexican authorities were using a backhoe to excavate the ravine where Flores said the bodies of Chino and his mother had been buried. As courtroom observers studied a photograph of the site that ran under a banner headline at the top of the Los Angeles Times Metro section, prosecutors rose to inform the judge that they had refused to give Rafael Perez a grant of immunity in the “ongoing murder investigation,” and probably would not call him as a witness. Attorneys for the four accused officers could barely contain their glee, and accused the district attorney’s office of making “a deal with the devil” that had backfired on them.

  “A bombshell,” Erwin Chemerinsky called the prosecution’s announcement. “It’s hard for me to imagine the prosecution succeeding without Perez’s testimony.” The venerable defense attorney Barry Tarlow agreed. “It blows them out of the water,” he told the Times. “It’s probably the end of the Rampart cases and it’s a sad day for the criminal justice system.”

  The D.A.’s office would not abandon its case, however. The ensuing trial was a bizarre but tedious affair, conducted by a judge who had written a letter of commendation praising Perez for his “professional” testimony during a kidnapping trial in her courtroom and driven by a prosecution team whose “victim” was a convicted murderer. Witnesses with names like Wicked, Rascal, Diablo, and Termite attempted to explain to the jury such subtleties as the difference between being a “tiny winy”
(drinker) and a “tiny loco” (doper), while one police officer after another claimed not even to remember the incident in question. In their final arguments, defense attorneys ridiculed the prosecution’s case as an “embarrassment” to the citizens of Los Angeles. What the lawyers did not recognize, though, was that they were talking to jurors every bit as inclined to believe career criminals as to put their trust in career cops.

  Gil Garcetti, who one week earlier had been voted out of office by a nearly two-to-one margin (losing to a former underling, Steve Cooley, who called the Perez plea bargain the “worst of the century”), received what seemed consoling news on November 15th, when the jury delivered guilty verdicts against three of the four accused officers. The prosecution’s victory celebration would be short-lived, however. Within a few days, a white alternate juror told investigators that she had heard the panel’s Hispanic foreman say on the first day of the trial that the defendants were guilty. At almost the same time, five jurors signed affidavits stating that they had not been able to agree on whether the three officers told the truth when they claimed to have been struck by the gangbangers’ car in the alley where the confrontation took place, but had found them guilty after agreeing that the cops did not suffer “great bodily injury.” Problem was, the cops never made that claim, despite a report saying they had that was provided to the jury by the prosecution. Three days before Christmas, the convictions were voided and a mistrial declared.