Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He's The Most Corrupt Cop in History - The Rafael Perez Story

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Rafael Pérez was an LAPD officer whose crimes detonated the largest police-corruption scandal in Los Angeles history. A member of the elite Rampart Division CRASH unit, Pérez spent years planting guns, framing suspects, falsifying reports, beating civilians, and even shooting unarmed people- including paralyzing 19-year-old Javier Ovando, then lying to send him to prison.

So this cop is so insanely corrupt that there's actually a character in GTA based on him. Now the cop's name is Raphael, and Raphael is around 29 when this story starts, and he's living and working in Los Angeles, and he's the kind of cop who's a macho guy who loves to assert his power. And one day, around 1992, he gets an opportunity that's going to allow him to do that even more, because he applies to work in the police department's anti-gang use. unit, where he'll get to work undercover and he'll get to take down dangerous gang members and stuff. So over time, he and his unit become super corrupt. Like they would find gang members and

plant drugs on them so that they would have an excuse to arrest them. They would plant guns on gang members so that they would have an excuse to beat them up. They would extort money from the people they're arresting or just straight up steal it from them. And so these guys keep doing this and they keep getting away with it for years. But one time in 1996, they do something really messed up. So Raphael is working a case with his partner, this guy, Nino. And Raphael and Nino, they drive over to the apartment of this teenage gang member, his name's Javier. Now, Raphael and Nino, they've been harassing Javier. And today, I guess they don't have anything better to do. So they are at his place beating on his door

demanding to be let in. Of course, Javier, he doesn't want to let him in, but they insist. And so eventually they just enter, and bam, they handcuff him. And I don't know if he does something to piss them off after he's cuffed, or if they're just being jerks, but at some point, Raphael and Nino draw their guns on him and blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, they shoot him four times. Now, somehow, Javier is still alive, but he's hurt, real bad. And Raphael and Nino, they know, they know, they're in trouble. I mean, they just shot an unarmed teenager while he was handcuffed. So as quickly as they can, they come up with a plan. They're gonna make up a story to make themselves look like the good guys. They'll say that they were using an abandoned apartment as an observation post and that suddenly

Javier busted in with a gun pointed at them and they had to act fast and shoot him in self-defense. And lucky for them, they just happened to be carrying this spare unregistered gun that they confiscated in a previous drug sweep. So, Nino gets the gun and he plants it right next to Javier. Later, backup officers show up to the scene. And poor Javier, he's lying there, shot with the gun planted right next to him. And of course, Raphael and Nino tell their bullshit story. And so, BAM, Javier is arrested. Here's his mugshot. And so from here, Javier, he gets charged with a bunch of stuff, and he's also left paralyzed by the shooting. which is just awful.

But despite that, when Javier goes to trial for these bogus charges, no one believes him. Not the judge, not the jury, no one. While Raphael has no problem getting on the stand in line. Also, Nino has no problem getting on the stand and lying. And they're cops, while Javier's just a teenage gang member who can barely speak English. So the jury convicts Javier and he's sentenced to 23 years in prison. Meanwhile, back at the police station, Rafael is being treated like a hero.

Like they think he saved Nino's life by shooting Javier. One of his supervisors even gives him a plaque to commemorate the shooting. So it seems like Rafael and his anti-gang cop buddies are going to keep getting away with being corrupt like this. But then something crazy happens. One day, in 1997, an off-duty police officer is out driving. And there he has some sort of confrontation with a guy in another car. So both these guys, they start shouting at each other and they're arguing from their car windows. Then they pull up to a red light.

And they're still shouting at each other. Then the light turns green and one guy follows the other guy. Soon they stop at another red light. And the argument continues. And suddenly the off-duty police officer pulls out his pistol and blam, he shoots the other guy, grew his open window, and this kills him. Here's the crazy thing, though. The guy who got shot was also an off-duty police officer.

They apparently didn't know each other. They worked in different divisions, but both of these guys were off-duty cops. So now, because of the different races of both of these guys, people immediately start claiming that this shooting was racially motivated. And I'm not sure if it was or not. Now, ultimately, the off-duty police officer who fired the shot, he was investigated, and he was fully exonerated for any wrongdoing, because of course he was. But this causes internal affairs to look into both officers.

And it turns out that the off-duty officer who was shot was actually kind of a shady dude, a corrupt cop himself. A corrupt cop who just happened to be friends with Raphael and some of the turds on the anti-gang. unit. So internal affairs quietly starts investigating them. But I guess Raphael and Nino aren't too concerned or they just don't notice. I mean, they're still out here being terrible. In fact, by this point, they've actually branched out into straight up drug dealing. Like a lot of times, they'll just confiscate drugs from the people they arrest and then they'll just like resell them. Like during one bust, they seize a stash of cocaine along with the drug dealer's pager. And instead of properly logging this as evidence, they just say, fuck it, let's make

some money. And they sell it to the next person who pages the drug dealer. Anyway, about a year later, in 1998, this drug dealing side quest is so successful that they decide to take it a step further. And at the police station, Raphael starts sneaking into the evidence room, and he'll take cocaine that had been seized and he replaces it with Biskwick. Now, eventually, he gets sloppy and he sneaks eight pounds of cocaine out of the evidence room, which during this time is worth more than a million dollars. But this time, he doesn't even try to replace it. He's just like, screw it.

He ain't worried about getting caught. Well, he does actually get caught. Because remember, Internal Affairs has quietly had their eye on him for a while. So they've been watching him. And so, bam, Raphael is arrested. Here's his mugshot. And you can see that he's still in his police uniform in his mugshot, which is wild. Now, here's where the story gets really crazy.

This guy takes a plea deal for a lighter sentence, and he agrees to cooperate and rat out his other corrupt cop friends. And so he only gets five years in prison. And because of that, he rats everyone out. Not only does he admit to all the shady shit he did, but he also snitches on 70 of his fellow officers by name. 70! Plus, he says that 90% of the anti-drug unit would often frame innocent people, and they'll, like, get on the stand and just lie to get convictions. And so once all this stuff he's talking about, all this information goes public, people file more than 200 lawsuits against the city. Not only that, more than a hundred convictions are overturned because of this.

So they got to let all those people go that were framed. They got to let those people out of prison, including Javier, the guy who Raphael and Nino had paralyzed. And so then Javier, in turn, sues the city of Los Angeles, Rafael and Nino and others, and he gets a settlement of $15 million. Good for Javier. But in the end, Raphael's story is so insane and legendary that it actually inspired a Hollywood movie, and Denzel Washington's character in Training Day is actually based on him. And apparently Officer Tenpenny from GTA San Andreas is based on him as well.