member of the 18th Street Gang, into the Rampart police station for questioning. According to CRASH officer Rafael Pérez's recorded testimony, Hewitt "got off" on beating suspects. In the course of questioning, he beat the handcuffed Jimenez in the chest and stomach until he vomited blood. After his release, Jimenez went to the emergency room and told doctors he had been beaten by Hewitt and his partner Daniel Lujan while in custody. Following an investigation, Hewitt was fired from the LAPD. Jimenez was awarded $231,000 in a civil settlement with the city of Los Angeles. Hewitt served time in federal prison for the distribution of drugs and conspiracy to commit murder and has since been released. May 1998 – Investigative task force created On March 27, 1998, LAPD officials discovered that eight pounds of cocaine were missing from an evidence room. Within a week, detectives focused their investigation on Pérez. Concerned with a CRASH unit that had officers working off-duty for Death Row Records, robbing banks, and stealing cocaine, Parks established an internal investigative task force in May 1998. The task force, later named the Rampart Corruption Task Force, focused on the prosecution of Pérez. Completing an audit of the LAPD property room revealed another pound of missing cocaine which had been booked following a prior arrest by Lyga, the officer who had shot Gaines the year before. Investigators speculated that Pérez may have stolen the cocaine booked by Lyga in retaliation for Gaines' shooting. August 25, 1998 – Pérez arrested Pérez, at that time a nine-year veteran of the LAPD, was arrested on August 25, 1998, for the unauthorized withdrawal and theft of six pounds of cocaine from the evidence room. The cocaine was estimated to be worth $800,000 on the street, or $120,000 wholesale. Although Perez signed a phony name on the forms when he checked out the drugs, his signature was a "dead bang" match. As he was arrested, Pérez reportedly asked, "Is this about the bank robbery?" He would later deny that he had any knowledge of Mack's bank robbery and never testified against Mack. Investigators would later discover eleven additional instances of suspicious cocaine transfers. Pérez eventually admitted to ordering cocaine evidence out of property and replacing it with Bisquick. On September 8, 1999, following a mistrial, Pérez agreed to cut a deal with investigators. He pleaded guilty to the cocaine theft in exchange for