Rafael Pérez, The Dirty Cop Who Who Stole $800,000 Worth Of Cocaine And Inspired ‘Training Day’
Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty ImagesPérez’s attitude and actions served as inspiration for Denzel Washington’s character in ‘Training Day’
In 1995, Rafael Pérez quickly earned a reputation for being an aggressive officer who kept his ear to the ground as a member of LAPD’s Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) anti-gang task force.
He was a young officer and felt a rush of adrenaline when he went undercover, buying drugs from street dealers only to put them behind bars later on.
Rafael Pérez was good at his job. He loved it — perhaps a bit too much, a colleague warned him.
Working primarily at night with minimal supervision, Pérez had near absolute power and authority. He was virtually untouchable. It made him arrogant.
Only a year into Pérez’s time in CRASH, he and his partner Nino Durden shot and framed an unarmed 19-year-old gang member named Javier Ovando. The shooting left him paralyzed from the waist down.
During Ovando’s trial, Pérez and Durden lied, saying Ovando had attempted to murder them in an abandoned apartment. But the building wasn’t abandoned — Ovando lived there, on the same floor as an observation post that Pérez and Durden had set up.
And despite his insistence that he was innocent, Ovando’s words fell on deaf ears, and he was sentenced to 23 years in prison based on the perjury of Pérez and Durden.
Rumors also began circulating at the time that LAPD officers were working in tandem with Death Row Records, a successful rap label owned by Marion “Suge” Knight, an alleged Mob Piru Bloods gang member.
More worryingly, internal investigations revealed that Suge had hired off-duty police officers as security guards for Death Row.
Rick Meyer/Los Angeles Times via Getty ImagesRafael Pérez’s trial indicted 70 fellow police officers and proved the innocence of Javier Ovando.
Then, when Pérez stole six pounds of cocaine from an evidence room on March 27, 1998, detectives’ attention turned on him. In May of that year, the LAPD created an internal investigation task force focused on prosecuting Pérez.
Task force investigators arrested Pérez on Aug. 25, 1998, and the first thing Pérez said was, “Is this about the bank robbery?”
The bank robbery in question happened only a year earlier. In November 1997, three men stole $722,000 from the Los Angeles branch of Bank of America. A few days later, they went on a trip to Vegas and spent thousands.
One of the men was arrested shortly after — David Mack, a Los Angeles police officer and a member of CRASH. And Pérez had gone to Vegas with him.
Rafael Pérez was tried in December 1998 with charges of cocaine possession and intent to sell, grand theft, and forgery. After a jury deadlock, investigators prepped for a retrial and found 11 more instances of suspicious cocaine transfers.
Expecting a lengthy conviction, Pérez cut a deal on September 8, 1999, pleading guilty to cocaine theft and providing information about CRASH officers’ illegal activities.
In the end, he implicated 70 fellow CRASH officers in misconduct ranging from on-the-job drinking to murder. The city of Los Angeles was forced to vacate over 100 tainted convictions and paid out $125 million in settlements. By 2000, the LAPD had disbanded all CRASH units department-wide.
