Police Accountability Report: Episode 124 – LRN.fm

This week, a story that should cause anyone critically thinking to see that those wearing badges aren’t always operating with the best intentions.

Story
Father Sues LAPD for Allegedly Framing Him for Murder
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/LAPD-Los-Angeles-Police-Lawsuit-Accuses-Officer-Framing-Father-in-Gang-Related-Murder-242458661.html
A 24-year-old father is suing Los Angeles police officers for allegedly framing him for murder and paying a homeless pair $10,000 to falsely testify against him at trial.

Roy Galvan, who was acquitted by a jury, spent 13 months in county jail awaiting trial in the 2011 murder of a reputed gang member in South Los Angeles.

The suit accuses LAPD Officers Miguel Terrazas, David Nunn and Richard Arciniega of destroying evidence in the case, falsifying reports and bribing witnesses for statements, false arrest and malicious prosecution, among other claims of misconduct and civil rights violations.

Officers accused in the lawsuit were tasked with investigating the unsolved killing of Joey Gutierrez, a member of the Hang Out Boys gang.

Witness Ernesto Jurado, who lived nearby and saw the shooting from his second-story window, told the officers he saw the assailant run alongside the building, fire shots and run away.

Jurado also said he saw two bicycles in the courtyard immediately before the shooting that had not been there before. The bikes were taken and booked into evidence the next day but later destroyed before DNA and fingerprints could be taken from them.

The lawsuit describes botched evidence gathering in which multiple and different caliber bullet casings were collected from the scene but not marked as to where they were found, and allegedly handled without gloves.

None of the casings matched the bullet found in the victim, which the complaint alleges officers did not run any ballistics examinations on to determine who owned the gun used to kill Gutierrez.

Though he had never been tied to any gang activity, Galvan was arrested in connection with the slaying on March 1, 2011.

He told police he had been at home taking care of his toddler daughter at the time of the shooting. And, “more importantly,” was recovering after rupturing his Achilles tendon a month before Gutierrez’s killing.

Witness Jurado had told police the assailant ran from the scene with “no physical defect in his stride,” something Galvan’s lawyer said was impossible for his client to have done.

When he was taken into custody, Galvan had not yet started physical therapy and was still on crutches, unable to “even stand on the foot, let alone walk or run,” he claims.

To support Galvan’s arrest, the complaint alleges, Terrazas falsified his police report to include that Jurado called him back on February 14, 2011, to tell him “that he had completely forgotten to mention that the shooter had run off ‘with a limp.’”

Jurado’s phone records show that call was never made.

Galvan claims the officers who took him to trial strong-armed, bribed and refused to investigate “several” potential witnesses, including two homeless people – Mark Loving and Syrella Carpenter, who had paranoid schizophrenia – living in a tent near the shooting scene.

Terrazas and Nunn would repeatedly harass these two, physically abusing and sometimes handcuffing them. Defendants began threatening them, dragging them out of their tent, throwing them up against a wall asking them what they knew about the shooting.

A father of a 5-year-old daughter and an infant son, Galvan is seeking unspecific damages.