Torrance to Call D.A. to Probe Future Police Shootings, Jail Deaths

The Torrance Police Department will call on the district attorney’s office to investigate officer-involved shootings and deaths of prisoners in custody, a department official said this week.

Police Chief Donald Nash is expected to order this month that Torrance investigators call the district attorney’s “roll-out” teams in those situations, Capt. Jim Weyant said.

The decision to ask for independent investigations follows a difficult year for the Torrance Police Department. Last February, two officers were charged with lying about the shooting of an unarmed man, and in September a jury ruled that the department has routinely condoned misconduct by officers.

About half of the county’s 47 police departments call the district attorney’s office to investigate jail deaths and police shootings that result in injuries or deaths, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Herb Lapin.

Torrance police officials have vehemently denied charges that they have not thoroughly investigated fellow officers. However, Weyant noted, participation in the district attorney’s roll-out program will help eliminate even the appearance of impropriety.

“Some changes can be made so that the perception is that we do things right,” Weyant said. “It adds to the overall thoroughness. Anything we do, there is another entity doing it too.”

In the district attorney’s program, a prosecutor and an investigator “roll out” to the scene of police shootings and jail deaths, Lapin said. They interview witnesses, review evidence and reach conclusions independently of police investigations.

The district attorney’s investigations seldom find improprieties in the police department reviews, but they bolster public confidence, Lapin said. “It gives the police the position of being able to say, ‘It is under investigation by the district attorney’s office,’ ” Lapin said.

Participation in the roll-out program is the most recent in a series of procedural changes in the Torrance Police Department after last year’s problems. The department has already imposed a rule that ranking officers must investigate misconduct allegations. It has also begun to reorganize and simplify internal affairs files. And it will adopt a computer program that will allow administrators to track the most common kinds of police misbehavior and to standardize discipline.

In the past, the Torrance department conducted its own investigations when officers shot suspects, as it did in the May, 1988, shooting of Patrick J. Coyle.

Officer Timothy Pappas initially said he shot Coyle when the Torrance construction worker reached for a shiny object in his belt, police reports say. Coyle was partially paralyzed as a result of the shooting.

Two fellow officers backed Pappas’ account, but one of them later said that the story was a lie and that the shooting was unprovoked. Armed with the new information, the Police Department fired Pappas and the two officers who backed his story.

The department presented the case to the district attorney’s office and Pappas and fellow officer Mark Holden were charged last February with conspiracy to obstruct justice and conspiracy to falsely charge another with a crime.

Pappas pleaded no contest to lesser charges and last month was fined $2,250 and placed on one year of probation. Holden is scheduled to go to trial this spring on the original charges. The third officer, Timothy Thornton, was granted immunity in exchange for his testimony against the two.

Last September, the Police Department lost a $5.5-million civil judgment to a San Pedro man whose son was killed in a traffic collision with an off-duty police sergeant.

A jury found that fellow officers covered up Sgt. Rollo Green’s responsibility for the crash as part of a pattern in which Torrance police have condoned misconduct by fellow officers.

The city has appealed the verdict, and Police Department officials say the department did nothing wrong.