New Wealth in Rampart’s Red Glare

The day the police planted a gun in his handcuffed hands, Roberto Candido couldn’t afford a Happy Meal. Three years and a prison term later, Candido, 26, found himself in the Wells Fargo Beverly Hills branch, about to deposit his share of an $860,000 settlement check from the city of Los Angeles.

It was Friday evening last December, and the bank had stayed open three hours past closing to accommodate an unusual group of new customers--about 18 onetime convicts and family members who, like Candido, had been framed by anti-gang police officers in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division, wrongly imprisoned, then freed. Referred to the bank for financial advice by their attorney, Gregory Yates, they had just received settlement checks for tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“It was like a party in there,” recalled financial consultant Calhoun Chappell. “They were very excited.” Some wanted cash that night for Christmas presents. Some needed reliable transportation immediately. One man wanted to withdraw $80,000 for pocket money.

Encouraged by Chappell to think about the future, some also envisioned helping family members, moving to a better neighborhood, opening a business. Of course, Chappell said, “there were some issues we had to work through.”

Many had never had a bank account before. Some had neither Social Security cards nor drivers’ licenses for identification. A handful were not legal residents and faced possible deportation. One man, Chappell said, was so angry at the system--every large institution from police to banks seemed suspect--that he could not bear any talk of investment portfolios or tax implications. Candido listened carefully, however, and eventually used his money to buy stocks and a used 1987 Cadillac. He moved to Norwalk with his sister, 15, to live with relatives. Now a student at Cerritos College, he lives off the interest.

His sudden shift in fortune has sparked a religious awakening, he said. “I’m not telling you I’m a saint, but I’m trying to get closer to God,” he said. “I know he does everything for a reason, and I know I’ve got to repay him.”

Collecting amounts ranging from $25,000 to $15 million, the victims of the ongoing Rampart police corruption scandal are riding a rags-to-riches roller coaster operated by the justice system. So far, 44 people--rival gang members, businessmen, immigrants, both legal and illegal, girlfriends and even two children--have settled claims with the city over anti-gang police officers who twisted the law in the name of protecting the community. About 100 convictions based on planted evidence and false testimony have been overturned, 185 civil claims and lawsuits filed and about $34 million approved in settlements. The city expects to spend at least $125 million eventually on settling Rampart cases. Up to a third of the tax-free settlement money, sometimes paid in installments, is generally used for attorneys’ fees.

The recipients of these millions are unique among the nouveau riche. The majority come from an insular immigrant neighborhood where three-quarters of household incomes fall below $15,000, where three-quarters of the residents have not completed high school and only one-third are working full time. Many have had previous convictions from murder and rape on down, some have grown used to life in institutions.

In some ways, they face all the familiar issues of sudden wealth: whether to blow it on instant gratification or invest in long-term security; whether to trust new “best friends” or competing attorneys. But many also fear reprisals from other ex-convicts or police, along with depression over injustice, deportation, and the sad paradox that they must leave home to take advantage of the opportunity that fortune has brought them.

In the three months since banking their net share of the settlements, some Rampart victims have begun new lives in the suburbs. They have invested in stocks, residential property and businesses. Some have opened offshore accounts, or purchased property for themselves or their families in their native countries.

Others, as cynics predicted, have gone back to the gritty neighborhoods decorated with gang graffiti to display their wealth with new cars, DVDs, and fat wallets. At least two, police said, have been shot by rival gang members.

A few, attorneys say, suffer emotional problems so severe that no amount of money will ever resolve them. Some have succumbed to addictions. At least three are back in prison.

“Any time you hand someone a lot of money, it can either be a ticket to a bright future, or it can be tantamount to a loaded gun,” said attorney Yates, who has about 60 Rampart clients. “The individual makes the choice. All we can do is give them some options.”

*

On the surface, life has improved dramatically for Ruben Rojas in the four months since he received his $1 million settlement. In his heart, though, Rojas is sad. “No matter how much they compensate you, it’s not satisfying,” he said.

A 15-year veteran of the correctional system, Rojas, 31, sat on a sofa with his wife, Josie, 27, at their new five-bedroom home in the San Diego suburbs. A fire glowed in the fireplace. Rojas met Josie, a single mother of two, when she was a receptionist in the federal public defender’s office, and he married her in August. Outside, the blue coastal range was visible beyond the barbecue and a tall lemon tree. A garden hose was filling the pool.

Rojas paid $250,000 cash for his home on a quiet cul-de-sac. He also bought four Ford Explorers for family members, furniture, seven televisions and even a security system. Neighbors told him it was the first on the block.

The only thing he wants now is the one thing he probably won’t get--apologies from the authorities who framed him and those who didn’t believe him when he said he was innocent. Like many Rampart victims convinced they could not prevail against the word of police officers, he pleaded no contest to drug charges in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Rojas served three years of a six-year sentence, admittedly framed by ex-LAPD Officer Rafael Perez, a member of the now disbanded anti-gang unit CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums). Perez, the keystone of the scandal, confessed to misconduct and identified other allegedly corrupt officers in exchange for immunity and a lighter sentence for having stolen cocaine from police lockers.

Rojas, who had previous felony convictions, said Perez acted out of jealousy because Rojas had been having sex with one of the officer’s girlfriends; Perez claimed Rojas had threatened to kill him. Rojas denied the charge. “I was only out three or four days before I had the run-in with the officer,” he said. “You know how hard it is to put a contract out on a police officer?”

A wiry, energetic man in a baseball hat and wire-rimmed glasses, Rojas said he felt nothing but shock when he heard on a TV in prison that his conviction had been overturned. “All I knew was there was going to be a lot of problems behind it,” said Rojas, who had grown up in Rampart and started hanging with gang members at age 10. “I’m a convict. That’s what society looks at me as.”

Changing neighborhoods has pluses and minuses for a man with his past, he said. If he takes his shirt off, for instance, he won’t have to worry about gang members interpreting the hieroglyphic tattoos, but at the same time his neighbors might be alarmed. “This is not the kind of thing you want people to know.”

He gets angry when he talks about Rampart, and he starts to worry that, somehow, authorities will take away what he has. On a bookshelf by his fireplace, he has framed two patches with the insignias once worn by the CRASH officers. They remind him, he said, not to trust anyone.

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The Rampart victims hold a wide range of attitudes, from hatred and despair to gratitude and renewed faith in the system.

“Some of them say such nice things about the system,” said Danilo Becerra, a partner with Montebello attorney Gregory Moreno, who represents about 30 Rampart clients. “They say, ‘I knew these officers were lying and one day it would come out.’ ”

Others stoically accept police misconduct as if they expected it. “These are people who come from countries where people disappear,” said Gigi Gordon, a court-appointed lawyer for 2,000 Rampart clients. “Their attitude toward being abused by the police is ‘That’s what police do.’ ”

What they’ll make of their settlement money hangs on their attitude, said Daniel Kegan, a Chicago-based psychologist and expert in the effects of financial windfalls.

“If you think life in this world is fleeting, then one might say, ‘I might as well blow it and make a splash.’ If you have a sense you might hang around in this world a while, you might have a different track.”

In general, Kegan said money is an amplifier. “If you’re well grounded, living a righteous life and living well, getting money will probably be a good thing and increase your happiness.

“If you’re not well grounded, if your life is a mess, getting a lot of money will probably make it worse.”

Most victims of the CRASH officers have been shaped by their years in LAPD’s Rampart Division, an amalgam of neighborhoods that have attracted generations of immigrants, most recently from Mexico and Central America. Gangs there go back 60 years to the zoot-suiters who frequented the once-elegant Miracle Mile and MacArthur Park. Now Rampart is almost a separate world, spreading northwest across the 110 Freeway from Staples Center to Hollywood, its crime of choice--drug trafficking. There are 36,000 officially counted people per square mile in Rampart, thought to be the highest urban density in the West. Families live five or six to a bedroom in subdivided homes or cramped apartments; children attend crowded schools and play by liquor stores on busy commercial streets.

Many immigrants intend a temporary stay, but the majority wind up living there 10 or 15 years before moving out, said community advocate Bert Saavedra. The average in the area is 23.

Those with the first settlements almost have to move out, Saavedra said. “Not everybody is happy with the settlements, how they got them and who they were. There could be resentment or retaliation. The other part is their conscious choice--they wanted to be in another area for personal safety for themselves and their family. “

Yet some remain tied to the neighborhood.

*

On a cold February evening, Sgt. Mike Richardson cruised past the streetwalkers and the park hustlers, pointing out gang graffiti and murals. As the officer in charge of Rampart’s gang detail, he knows the names of most local gangsters and which ones have settlement money.

In his opinion, not all of Perez’s confessions should be believed. Most officers feel disgust over the settlements, he said.

The main difference the settlements have made is that gang members post bail instead of waiting for trial and drive new cars instead of walking, he said.

One known gang member, who was awarded $650,000 for a civil rights violation, was seen watching a movie with his girlfriend on a DVD system in his new Suburban. If stopped for any reason, Richardson said, he calls attorney Yates and hands the officer the cell phone.

“We’ve got a guy down here who says, ‘When are you guys going to arrest me so I can get some money?’ ” he said.

Richardson pulled into a commercial corner at 6th and Bonnie Brae where a new BMW with dealer tags was parked in front of a mural with portraits of local heroes, one with an automatic weapon, and a scratched image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Richardson stopped to talk to two young men standing by the car. The officer asked whether they had received settlements.

One young man bragged that he had a million dollars and was expecting more. The officer and the well-dressed young man in a gold chain debated his case in a rapid-fire banter.

The car’s owner, Edgar Hernandez, 18 and known to Richardson by the gang name “Baby,” had won $475,000 from the city for a compromised drug charge. Hernandez lives with his mother and hasn’t moved away because she’s comfortable there, he said.

Friendly and animated, he waved his credit card and opened his wallet in the direction of downtown’s sparkling skyscrapers. He flipped through several hundred-dollar bills. “See that?” he said. “That’s what the LAPD gave me right there.”

*

Attorneys have been inundated with calls from potential Rampart clients--and not all are after the money. Felony convictions carry heavy penalties in a three-strikes state, and clearing one’s record is a pressing concern. More settlements are expected as additional cases make their way through the courts.

So far, the district attorney has taken responsibility for filing writs in suspect convictions, and the city attorney has settled the cases. However, public defenders said they are combing through 15,000 more Rampart-related cases to ferret out other convictions that should also be overturned.

Some questions hover over the settlements. Critics say the district attorney’s choices over the candidates for release or the city attorney’s criteria for settlement amounts appear random.

Gordon called the Rampart phenomenon surrealistic. “The only cases they looked at were the ones Rafael Perez remembered,” she said. What’s more, those who were deported on the basis of a false conviction have a right to be in the U.S., she said.

Public defenders also contend that some of those deported victims cannot be found and, though equally deserving of a settlement, will never see one.

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney, said time was of the essence in freeing those who were jailed. “We figured we could do it faster than anyone else,” she said. “We went through the ones we were given information on by Perez, and he said they were bad. We believe he’s told us most of what he knows.”

Thomas C. Hokinson, the city attorney’s chief of civil litigation, said he has no forumula for settling the cases, but considers many factors including the extent of damages, prior record, and how long they served in jail.

The district attorney is not planning to file any new writs for Rampart victims.

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The CRASH officers permanently altered lives of those such as Javier Francisco Ovando, subject of what city attorney James Hahn called “the worst case I have ever seen.”

Ovando arrived in Rampart when he was 15, alone, after having traveled by himself from his home in rural Honduras through Guatemala and Mexico. He worked odd jobs to survive, but disillusioned and without a strong family, fell into one of the area’s two-dozen gangs, said Gregory Moreno, his attorney.

In 1996, he was 19, had been deported twice but had no criminal convictions. He was living in a rundown apartment building with his girlfriend, Monique Valenzuela, and a friend

To this day, Ovando doesn’t know why officers Perez and Nino Durden singled him out. Perez confessed that he and Durden shot Ovando, who was unarmed, in one of the apartment’s rooms, planted a gun on him then claimed he had attacked them. According to Moreno, Ovando remembers being handcuffed, shot once in the chest, then picked up by the collar and shot again in the head. Between shots, Moreno said, he begged for his life.

Valenzuela, pregnant with their child, heard the shots from the street; when she saw her boyfriend carried out under a sheet, she thought he was dead.

Paralyzed and brain-damaged, Ovando was awarded $15 million after serving almost three years of a 23-year sentence in prison. Now 23, he is under medication for depression and pain from remaining shrapnel in his chest and pelvis, Moreno said. He suffers from involuntary spasms. The damage to his frontal lobe caused a loss of self-confidence, and he often appears shy, Moreno said.

With the money, which he receives in installments, he has bought a van and a Lincoln Navigator, and a five-bedroom hillside home near the coast, which will be remodeled to accommodate his wheelchair and his assistants who drive him where he wants to go, Moreno said. He also bought a home in Honduras for his mother, who had lived in a poverty-stricken rural area. Ovando was not feeling well enough to be interviewed.

The attorney said Ovando is applying for visas and plans to attend community college, study computer technology and art, and learn to drive a modified van. He is also negotiating with Valenzuela for joint custody of their daughter, Destiny, now 3.

If given the chance, Moreno said Ovando would trade his fortune instantly for his health and the ability to run or dance.

Benefits from the settlements have rippled out to many who were not imprisoned themselves.

A judge awarded Destiny $300,000 for being deprived of her right to associate with her father; Valenzuela settled for $200,000 for emotional distress. With the settlement--more money than she’s ever seen in her life--Valenzuela, her new boyfriend, Jose Rodriguez, and two children have moved from a roach-infested apartment in the Westlake district where all four shared a bed to a two-bedroom rental home in Echo Park, across the street from Valenzuela’s mother.

“My whole life changed for the better,” said Valenzuela, 21, sitting in her living room, filled with angels, candles and a new TV. A high-school dropout, she works as a receptionist in her attorney’s office, has enough money to support her children and maybe get a minivan. “I don’t have to be getting by on a welfare check,” she said.

Their new neighborhood, still in the Rampart Division, is quieter and less dangerous than their old one, said Rodriguez, 22. He lost an eye in a drive-by shooting at 15, just after he joined a gang. Now, he said, he’s stopped hanging out on the streets. He’s got a job. He attends night school.

Still, he has to be careful. The neighborhood is in another gang’s territory, and when he goes out, Rodriguez said, he covers his tattoos for safety. “Since I do have a bald head,” he said, “they still automatically assume I’m in a gang.”

*

Several people have used the settlement money to start new lives for themselves, their friends and families. Hugo Madrid, who was awarded $900,000, has opened a shrimp-import business and completed his first deal. Rafael Zambrano, a father of two who received a settlement of $550,000, has moved to Glendale with his girlfriend of nine years and become a full-time dad.

One woman bought an apartment building across town; one man bought a house in a neighboring county where he plans to open a tattooing business; one man, his attorney says, wants to become a cop.

At least one deported man is content to have returned to his native country with unexpected riches.

Convicted on two drug charges, a 39-year-old who wanted to be identified only as Roberto, had served two of a 10-year sentence before he was released and deported to Mexico. In his absence, his attorneys obtained a $400,000 settlement. With his net proceeds, Roberto made his way to the Latin American country he had left 20 years earlier when he dreamed of making money and buying a house to share with his mother.

The owner of his own carpet cleaning business, Roberto had never joined gangs, but he had once been convicted of a felony. Unlike many other Rampart victims who pleaded guilty to false charges, Roberto insisted on his innocence and was convicted by a jury.

Later, Perez said he and Durden had stolen $1,000 from the man’s apartment and falsified parts of their arrest report.

The corrupt officers destroyed his life, he said in a telephone interview. “I lost everything.” The worst, he said, was that his mother died while he was in prison. “I never saw my mom again.”

He sees the money as a “blessing.” He is buying a modest home in a secure neighborhood and a piece of property if his grown children, who live in Los Angeles, want to visit or live there. He wants to open a store or a restaurant.

Roberto takes care not to spend money like a rich man, he said, because such displays are dangerous.

*

The more change comes to Rampart, the more, some say, it stays the same. Some gang members say they are still harassed by police. Police say the settlements have only emboldened the gangsters.

As a result of the scandal, the specialized CRASH units were reinvented as anti-gang units. According to police, 65 officers were investigated; 24 were relieved of duty pending a board of rights hearing; nine have resigned; four were terminated. Three of four officers tried on criminal charges were convicted; however a judge overturned the convictions, and the district attorney plans to appeal. Federal authorities are pursuing charges against Perez.

As he patrolled the neighborhood in late February, Richardson casually conversed at a stoplight with a young man he recognized as “Sniper.” He was driving a Suburban with a bullet hole in the door. Sniper said his conviction hadn’t been overturned yet. He was thinking of switching attorneys from Yates to Moreno.

Around another corner, Richardson stopped to pick up a soccer ball that had rolled over broken glass into the street and tossed it back to children standing on a sidewalk. The children thanked him and ran off. On street after street, he shined the police car’s floodlight on gang graffiti and on men gathered in pairs and groups on stoops and corners and doorways. The men stared, unsurprised and expressionless, back into the light.