Dennis RomeroA recording (hear it below) of what one news outlet has confirmed is LAPD Det. Frank Lyga speaking to fellow officers contains comments that could be offensive to women and the LGBT community.
Lyga was taken out of the field pending an internal investigation of the remarks made Nov. 15 at the Los Angeles Police Academy and surreptitiously recorded by a lawman in the audience, police say.
Comments believed by some to be racist – Lyga fatally shot a black, off-duty cop and indicated during the lecture that he would have shot more – sparked a round of headlines about the tape. Now more remarks are coming to light:]
NBC Los Angeles today reported that Lyga has confirmed the voice on the 26-minute recording is his.
During the talk to officers at a training session Lyga spends much of the time airing old grudges, including against LAPD 77th Division Capt. Lillian L. Carranza, who was at the department's Internal Affairs Group at a time when it was trying to figure out what happened to the detective's personnel “package” following that 1997 shooting, Lyga says on tape.
On the recording he describes Carranza as a “very cute little Hispanic lady who couldn't find her ass with both of her hands.”
“I heard she been swapped around a bunch of times,” he says. A voice in the audience says, “That's her, Carranza.”
“Sixteen years ago she was really beautiful,” Lyga says. “Find her ass with both her hands – you couldn't help it because there's somebody else's hands on it.”
We reached out to Carranza to allow her to respond but we were told she was on vacation.
During the talk Lyga also had unkind words for others. He calls a city official contemporary to his cop-on-cop shooting case a “rock smokin' fuckin' tweaker.”
And he calls Sgt. Derwin Henderson, once the running partner of Lyga's victim, Officer Kevin Gaines, ” … the little fuckin' fruit there.”
He continues:
“He thinks he's a ghetto boxer. He wore fuckin' ripped shit and hooded stuff … like he was a ghetto kid.”
He alleges that Henderson, once a “probationer” (trainee) of his, freelanced his own investigation of the 1997 shooting and was reprimanded for it.
Lyga had opened fire on an off-duty Gaines, believing that he was about to be shot by someone he said he thought was a gang member.
The city was sued by Gaines' family via Johnnie Cochran, and attorney Carl Douglas was also working on the case for the star attorney.
During the talk Lyga called Douglas Cochran's “little Ewok.”
Credit: Det. Frank Lyga via Jasmyne Cannick/NBC Los Angeles/YouTube
Toward the end of the lecture, Lyga drops names. He says he works out the same gym as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He said he once bragged to Johnson that the star was on the cover of the same Rolling Stone that featured a 9-page article about the shooting.
“The movie Crash that won the Oscar – I was depicted in a bad light in that movie,” Lyga says. “The director Paul Haggis invited me to the … party afterwards.”
He said Leonardo DiCaprio once had the rights to one version of his story – and that Michael Mann was going to direct a movie until things fell apart – and that Will Smith currently owns them.
Finally, he told his fellow officers this:
If I offended to you in anyway I apologize … I drive a white Jeep Cherokee with no front plate usually 100 miles an hour in the car pool lane.
There was the sound of laughter.
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