Testimony About Photo Changed

A photograph a Los Angeles police detective testified showed gang graffiti threatening police officers’ lives before they raided two duplexes at 39th Street and Dalton Avenue was actually taken a year after the incident, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Testifying Tuesday in the trial of three officers accused of wrecking the duplexes during a raid, Detective Robert Clark said he had proof that officers from the Southwest Division had been threatened by a street gang before the raid on Aug. 1, 1988, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher Darden.

The Polaroid photo, Darden said, showed graffiti reading: “Southwest Killa Police.” Clark testified that he had taken the photo in early to mid-July, 1988, and had found it while going through some personal belongings two months before the trial started, the prosecutor said.

Investigators from the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division and the district attorney’s office later checked with Polaroid in Boston to learn that the film had not been manufactured until 1989, Darden said.

On Wednesday, Clark--who was present at the raid and faces departmental charges stemming from the incident--changed his testimony to say he had found the photo Tuesday morning “and hadn’t had a chance to give it to anyone else,” Darden said. “Nonetheless, he was sitting within five feet of three internal affairs investigators.

“He said he had taken a series of photos while assigned to Southwest Division that related to gang investigations and that he had been mistaken when he testified the day before about when the photo was taken,” the prosecutor said.

Clark’s attorney, Arthur D. Rutledge said the detective’s testimony was that the photo he produced in court on Tuesday was not “specifically related to 39th and Dalton, but to other investigations he had conducted.”

Darden emphasized that the defendants “had no part in presenting the photograph or the manner in which it was presented. There is absolutely no collusion between this witness and the defendants.”

Capt. Thomas Elfmont, Sgt. Charles Spicer and Officer Todd Parrick are charged with vandalism and conspiracy to commit vandalism in the raid. Prosecutors consider Clark an unindicted co-conspirator, Darden said.