Officer Enters Guilty Plea in Federal Case

A Los Angeles police officer pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to violating an innocent man’s civil rights by falsely saying that the man threw away a gun during a street chase.

Edward Patrick Ruiz, 36, who worked as a training officer in the Los Angeles Police Department’s 77th Street Division, faces as much as 10 years in prison. Ruiz, who resigned a day before entering his plea, remains free on bond, pending sentencing in January.

His former partner, Jon Paul Taylor, is scheduled to go on trial Sept. 12 in the same case.

The case against the officers is significant because it suggested that police misconduct extended beyond the boundaries of the Rampart Division, where officers have been accused of wrongly shooting suspects, planting evidence and perjuring themselves in court.

Ruiz and Taylor were on patrol in the 77th Street Division on April 21, 1995, and said they saw Victor Tyson and another man standing beside a broken window at the Ten Gents club at 73rd Street and South Broadway.

As Ruiz and Taylor got out their car to investigate, the two men began to run and a foot chase ensued, according to a statement read into the court record Friday by Assistant U.S. Atty. Steven Arkow.

But in fact, neither police officer saw a broken window, the prosecutor said.

Ruiz “fabricated the probable cause for arresting Tyson in order to justify the arrest,” Arkow said.

When Taylor caught up with Tyson, he ordered Tyson to the ground. Ruiz arrived soon afterward. Arkow said Taylor pointed to a revolver lying in the dirt near Tyson.

Although he did not see how the gun got there, Ruiz wrote in his arrest report that he had seen Tyson toss the weapon during the chase.

Tyson, who had no criminal record, was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed weapon.

The case began to unravel as it was about to go to trial in July 1995. A deputy city attorney prosecuting Tyson became suspicious about the officers’ testimony. He investigated the crime scene on his own and eventually confronted Ruiz, who admitted lying about Tyson’s tossing away a gun.

The prosecutor, Evan Freed, dropped the charges.

Taylor, a probationary officer, resigned from the department when the LAPD’s internal affairs division began looking at the arrest. Ruiz wound up with a 22-day suspension.

The episode would have ended with that, if not for a casual exchange months later between the judge at Tyson’s aborted trial and a civil rights lawyer. After learning about the case, the lawyer contacted the U.S. attorney’s office, which directed the FBI to investigate.

Ruiz and Taylor were subsequently indicted by a Los Angeles federal grand jury.

As part of a plea bargain, federal prosecutors agreed to dismiss another civil rights charge against Ruiz in which he is accused of planting a gun on another man.