The misconduct by Officers Christopher Coppock and David Cochrane occurred in late 1997 and early 1998 and involved falsifying arrests and planting drugs on homeless people in and around the city’s downtown.

On the morning of November 6, 1997, the officers arrested Abner Thomas and charged him with possession of cocaine. According to L.A. Weekly, Thomas said he was clean at the time, but the officers scoffed at that notion. They placed him in the back of their cruiser and continued to patrol the area, looking for other homeless men.

Eventually, three other men—Charlie Robinson, Elmore Williams, and William Perry—were also arrested and brought to the police station for booking. In Thomas’s arrest report, the officers wrote that they caught Thomas and Robinson using cocaine together, and that they had recovered more than a gram of cocaine.

Coppock testified at Thomas’s preliminary hearing and at his trial, which ended in a hung jury. Thomas then pled guilty. “I wasn’t guilty, but I eventually took a no-contest plea for time served, because I was sick and tired of sitting in jail,” Thomas told the newspaper. “I also didn’t know if I would ever convince a judge and jury that these cops were lying.”

Separately, Thomas tried to tell other officials about the officers’ misconduct. He wrote to a judge, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, and the Los Angeles Police Department, which began an investigation in 1998.

The department interviewed Thomas and the other defendants, and investigators corroborated their stories with records of the officers’ radio communications during the time of Thomas’s arrest. After finishing its review, the police department suspended Cochrane and Coppock on February 11, 1999. Coppock later resigned, and Cochrane was fired for giving false testimony at an unrelated hearing involving another officer.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office began dismissing active cases after the officers were suspended.

The first exoneration occurred on October 15, 1999, when Jimmie Lee Render had his conviction vacated for drug possession. Coppock and Cochrane arrested him nearly two years earlier, on November 2, 1997.

Render would later claim in a federal lawsuit that after he denied possessing any illegal substances, Coppock and Cochrane told him that by the time he got to the police station, “he was going to have some drugs.”

Render’s exoneration occurred a month after the much-larger Rampart scandal broke wide open in Los Angeles. It involved several officers in the Rampart Division, which covered neighborhoods west of downtown, whose misconduct led to more than 170 wrongful convictions, primarily of young Hispanic men.

Also in 1999, the police department opened an investigation into the alleged beating of a man named Delton Bowen on October 23, 1997. According to the Los Angeles Times, Bowen claimed he was drunk and rowdy when two officers picked him up and offered to give him a ride to a mission. During the ride, Bowen and the officers got into an argument, and they took him to a deserted section of the Los Angeles River and beat him.

Bowen initially identified two other officers as the perpetrators, but at a hearing, a third officer cleared those men and said that Cochrane and Coppock beat Bowen. She said she knew because she was with them at the time.

On October 19, 2000, a Los Angeles County grand jury indicted Coppock and Cochrane on charges of kidnapping, assault, false imprisonment, and assault by a public officer. Nearly two years later, on August 2, 2002, the former officers each pled guilty in Los Angeles County Superior Court to a single assault charge. They later received sentences of up to a year in jail, although the judge in their case said he was recommending work furlough, allowing the men to return home at night.

Gary Wigodsky, a deputy alternate public defender who represented some of the persons wrongfully convicted based on the misconduct of Coppock and Cochrane, told the Times: “They should be in prison for a long time. This is more proof the court and the district attorney’s office allow police corruption to flourish. Even when [officers] get caught, they get off with sentences that shock the conscience.”

By the time of their sentencing, 17 defendants had their convictions vacated. Based on available records, all of the men had pled guilty to drug crimes, with sentences between one and four years in prison.

Anthony Carnighan was arrested by the two officers on January 20, 1998. The officers said in their report that they saw Carnighan spit out cocaine as they moved in for an arrest. Carnighan said the officers planted drugs on him. He pled guilty and received a sentence of four years in prison. His conviction was vacated in October 2000.

After his release, Carnighan filed a lawsuit against the officers and the city, seeking compensation for his wrongful arrest and conviction. Carnighan received $360,000 in a settlement.

At least five other defendants settled lawsuits against Coppock, Cochrane, and the police department, receiving settlements between $40,000 and $480,000.

– Ken Otterbourg

Known members of this group

Here are the known members of this group: Carl Mitchell, Glen Hayes, Anthony Carnighan, Jimmy Lee Render, Abner Thomas, William Perry, Charlie Robinson, Elmore Williams, and Alejo Rivero.