L.A. Detective in Secret Unit Defends Killing Bank Robber

Defending his role in a 1982 shooting that left one bank robber dead and another wounded, an undercover Los Angeles police detective testified in federal court Tuesday that he fired his shotgun at the robbers because he believed that they were armed and ready to kill him.

Officer Michael Sirk, a member of the department’s Special Investigations Section, told the jury that bank robbers Jane Berry and John Crumpton refused to surrender despite orders to do so from him and three other officers, all of whom were armed with shotguns.

He said he heard Crumpton--whom he mistakenly thought had a gun--yell to Berry, “Don’t give up!” Then, he said, he saw Berry reach for her weapon: “She grabbed the gun with her right hand and withdrew it from her waistband, almost all the way out. She looked in my direction.”

Assistant City Atty. Victoria Chaney asked Sirk if he was concerned for his safety.

“Oh, very much so,” he replied. “I thought she was going to shoot me. . . . I redirected my line of fire from Mr. Crumpton to Ms. Berry and I fired my shotgun twice.”

Sirk’s testimony came during the second week of an unusual trial in which he and five other retired and current SIS officers face allegations that they violated Berry’s civil rights when they wounded her and killed Crumpton after watching the pair rob a Burbank branch of Security Pacific Bank on Sept. 15, 1982.

The SIS is a surveillance squad that gathers evidence against dangerous criminals, often by watching them commit crimes and attempting to arrest them afterward. The $10-million civil case is the first time members of the unit, which was so secret that few knew of its existence until a 1988 Times investigation, have been brought to trial as a group.

Berry’s lawyers maintain that the SIS officers--who shadowed the couple for 17 days before the robbery--used excessive force during the shooting and could have prevented the incident had they arrested the couple before the robbery on lesser charges, including outstanding warrants.

But retired Lt. Dale Ostrom, former head of the SIS who was responsible for ordering the surveillance, testified Tuesday that even if he had known Berry could have been arrested for a parole violation, he would not have done anything differently.

“It occurred to me,” Ostrom said, “that the only way to identify these people was to get some good eyewitness testimony as to the perpetrators of these robberies.”

During cross-examination by Berry’s lawyer, Stephen Yagman, Ostrom disclosed that SIS officers watched Berry and Crumpton purchase drugs on at least one occasion before the bank robbery. But rather than arrest them, Ostrom said, the unit turned the information over to the LAPD’s narcotics division.

“It was the aim of this investigation to assist Detective (William) Stewart in a bank robbery investigation,” the lieutenant testified, “and that’s what we did.”

Stewart, the robbery-homicide detective who initiated the investigation, testified Monday that he asked for the help of the SIS because he suspected Berry and Crumpton of robbing a bank on Glendale Boulevard in Silverlake but could not prove it because they were disguised in masks and wigs.

He told the jury that he believed Berry and Crumpton had committed three additional bank robberies on days when the SIS was not watching them.

But under questioning by Chaney, Stewart maintained that he was not certain that Berry and Crumpton were the robbers he was looking for. “I did not know for sure,” he said. “I had suspicions . . . but I did not know explicitly that they were the ones.”

The trial before U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson is expected to conclude this week.