Immigrant Was Shot : Officer in Killing Faces Dismissal

A police Board of Rights Wednesday night found Los Angeles Police Officer Rodney W. Kelley guilty of lying, insubordination and “unnecessarily discharging” his service revolver in the 1984 fatal shooting of a Cuban immigrant and recommended that he be dismissed from the department.

Kelley was accused of having shot Miguel Angel Herrera, 30, in the back after Herrera wrested his baton from him and struck him with it during a scuffle on a street in South-Central Los Angeles.

A number of alternative penalties--including long-term suspension--had been possible in the case, a police spokesman said. Kelley’s attorney, Hugh Jeffries, had pleaded with the board to allow Kelley to remain in police work, saying it had been “the single most important thing in Rod’s life since he was four years old.”

But Capt. Robert J. Blanchard, the ranking officer presiding at the departmental trial, said the facts in the case left “no alternative but to remove you from your position.”

Criminal Charges Possible

A police spokesman said Kelley also could face criminal charges in the matter. The district attorney’s office is investigating the case.

Kelley, pale and obviously shaken, accepted the decision without comment and later moved forward to shake hands with Blanchard and the other two captains who made up the tribunal.

The decision now goes to Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, who has five days to decide whether to allow it to stand or reduce it to a lesser penalty. If Gates confirms the decision to dismiss Kelley, the officer can still demand a grievance hearing at which the penalty might be overturned or mitigated.

Kelley, 26, was accused of violating Police Department policy by “unnecessarily discharging” his service revolver, and making false and misleading statements to investigators. He had pleaded innocent to both charges--as well as to the third, related count of insubordination.

During the hearing, Kelley’s partner, Officer Daniel Perez, testified that on the night of Oct. 24, 1984, he saw Kelley shoot Herrera in the back after Herrera had wrested Kelley’s baton from him, and struck him with it. He said that Herrera was running away when Kelley fired.

When they discussed the action later, he told the departmental tribunal, Kelley angrily denied that he had shot Herrera in the back, and rested his hand on the butt of his revolver in what Perez said he interpreted as a “threatening manner.”

An earlier Board of Rights hearing had recommended that Perez by dismissed for his part in the incident, but Gates reduced the penalty to a six-month suspension without pay.

Detective Otis E. Marlow--who investigated the shooting as a member of the department’s officer-involved shooting team--testified at the hearing that Kelley originally told him he had fired two shots in rapid succession as Herrera charged him with the baton from a distance of about 8 feet.

He said Kelley told him Herrera then turned and ran, and Kelley chased him to the rear of a four-unit apartment complex near the corner of Kenwood Avenue and 30th Street, where Herrera tried to scale a concrete wall, but then turned and charged--again swinging the police baton.

Marlow said Kelley told him it was at that point he fired a third shot, which caused Herrera to retreat once more, jumping over the wall. Herrera’s body was found on the other side of the wall about an hour later.

Faced with the results of an autopsy that showed Herrera had been shot in the back, however, Marlow said Kelley first stuck to his original story of self defense, but finally admitted that he had lied about parts of the episode because he “didn’t want his career mired by out-of-policy shooting.”

Marlow said Kelley told him he was sorry about shooting Herrera in the back and hadn’t meant to do it, but later admitted he was “p.o.’d” by the altercation with Herrera--and called the shooting a “natural reaction.”