California IN BRIEF : SAN FRANCISCO : Police Corruption Alleged in Lawsuit

A police officer claims he was treated unfairly and his career was damaged in a case that raises accusations of corruption in the San Francisco Police Department. Accusations stemming from the $5-million lawsuit filed by Officer Alfred De La Cerda include claims that some narcotics officers tipped drug dealers to raids, accepted payoffs for protection and, in some cases, dealt drugs themselves. De La Cerda, 36, says in the suit that he has been “the victim of a conspiratorial campaign carried out by members of the San Francisco Police Department by intimidation, threats of discipline, termination and even death in order to silence” him. Authorities deny any wrongdoing. The city attorney’s office says the claims “were exhaustively investigated” by the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Police Department, “all of which agreed that they were the result of De La Cerda’s overactive imagination, naivete and stress.”