Chief to Direct Probe of Police Shooting Policy : Law Enforcement: Announcement of Burgreen’s personal involvement comes following ninth slaying by San Diego officers this year.

Amid spiraling public concern over police shootings, San Diego Police Chief Bob Burgreen announced Friday that he will personally lead a task force that is analyzing the department’s shooting policies and suggested that he may arm officers with rubber bullets.

“I am wide open to better training and better equipment,” he said. “And, although alternate weapons may be too expensive, it’s coming to a point where that may not be an issue any more in this city.”

San Diego police officers have shot and killed nine people this year and wounded 13 others. In many cases, victims have not had guns but objects like a garden stake, baseball bat or cement trowel when they were slain.

Burgreen set up the task force last month and named Deputy Chief Mike Rice to run it. But, on Tuesday, Rice’s son, Charles, fatally shot a man who police said was threatening them with a stick. Expecting the task force’s impartiality to be questioned, Rice resigned from the panel Friday.

Saying Rice’s departure “cries out for me to step in,” Burgreen said he would clear much of his calendar, sit in on training classes, review training manuals and compare the policies of other departments across the country to San Diego’s, as Rice would have done.

In an interview with The Times, Burgreen said he had no other choice but to fill the void.

“Upon reflection, I was struck by the fact that concern has grown to such a magnitude that I should not only review the task force’s findings but get personally involved,” he said. “My friends and my neighbors ask me: ‘What’s going on?’ ”

Although police have been reluctant to begin widespread use of rubber bullets, Tasers and other weapons because of cost and the cumbersome nature of carrying extra equipment, Burgreen said he is open to all suggestions.

“I want to know what weapons are out there and what do they cost?” he said. “I want appropriate solutions that the public and the officers can live with.”

Rice said that, in a month of study on the task force, he learned that other large cities had a significant jump in police shootings in recent years and that many of the victims attack police while they’re on drugs.

“I think if you look at the entire criminal justice system, the drug situation, the gang activity, the overcrowded jails and the fact that criminals are out of the streets because there’s nowhere to put them, you begin to get the idea of what’s happening,” Rice said.

Police critics who say that many of the shootings this year could have been avoided are mistaken, Burgreen said.

“In all but one case, our police officers were under physical attack by someone with some sort of weapon,” he said. “Folks are attacking our officers and, in many cases, our officers backed up and backed up until they couldn’t any longer.”

No matter what new approach the department decides to take, the police chief said he will not sacrifice the safety of his officers.

“We had 11 deaths in 11 years, and I don’t want to see that repeated,” Burgreen said. “We are not going to let officers get hit with baseball bats.”

Burgreen’s announcement came at the end of a week in which two fatal shootings occurred.

Police added fresh details Friday to the latest deadly shooting, that of 21-year old Anthony Tumminia in Ocean Beach. They said officers began searching him because they spotted ammunition in his pickup truck and feared he had a gun.

Officer John Cain shot and killed Tumminia Thursday morning near his Ocean Beach apartment as Tumminia scuffled with Cain and Detective Ron Featherly, both of whom had shot and killed suspects before.

Lt. Dan Berglund gave this account Friday:

Police went to Tumminia’s apartment on West Point Loma Drive at about 9 a.m. Thursday to confront him about an allegation by an Ocean Beach man that Tumminia had hit him in the head with a steering wheel locking device.

The man had complained that Tumminia attacked him soon after he demanded that Michelle Kelly, Tumminia’s girlfriend, repay a debt.

Police knocked on Tumminia’s door, and, when he appeared, he was uncooperative and argumentative, calling the officers names. Cain and Featherly then walked to Tumminia’s red Toyota pickup truck and began taking pictures for evidence in the assault case.

Tumminia followed and began arguing with the officers. Cain and Featherly then noticed a box of ammunition and thought Tumminia might have a gun.

While searching him, Tumminia began scuffling with police. During the fight, Cain and Featherly decided that there was probable cause to arrest him for the assault charge because the steering wheel device was inside Tumminia’s truck.

The officers got on top of Tumminia, but Tumminia got to his feet and pulled a pair of polycarbonate nunchakus from Cain, who was lying on the ground. Tumminia began hitting Cain with the nunchakus. From the ground, Cain fired the fatal shot into Tumminia’s chest.

Two witnesses to the shooting told The Times they did not see Tumminia handling the nunchakus. One said an empty-handed Tumminia stood up, pushed or hit police, and was shot in the chest as he began to run.

The victim’s friends, gathered at an apartment in Ocean Beach Friday, said Tumminia had discussed the rash of police shootings just a few days before.

“Tony had an attitude,” said Steven Delander, 28, who had known Tumminia for 12 years. “He said, ‘If they shoot, the worst they can do is kill me.’ But Tony never expected to get shot.”

Delander said he is struggling with police accounts that Tumminia, on his back, pushed two officers off him, stole the nunchakus and began hitting the Cain and Featherly.

“We called him Tony the turtle,” he said. “You get him on his back, and he can’t do anything. He’s big, but he’s slow.”

Tumminia, who lifted weights, was about 5-foot-8 and 170 pounds and could bench-press about 250 pounds, Delander said.

A week ago, he said, Tumminia attacked an Ocean Beach man with the steering wheel locking device but did so because the man beat up his girlfriend, Michelle Kelly. Kelly said the man hit her repeatedly when she couldn’t come up with the $60 she had borrowed.

Shawna Hawkins, Delander’s girlfriend, said that the ammunition police found was hers and that she left it in Tumminia’s truck. She uses the ammunition, she said, for her 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun.

Tumminia owned one gun, an antique Egyptian rifle that a neighbor said police took from his apartment late Thursday afternoon. Delander said he never kept it loaded.

Friends said Tumminia was not the violent type, although he was fired from his job as a Domino’s pizza delivery man two weeks ago for throwing a pizza at a customer. Hawkins said Tumminia told her the customer harassed him and was drunk.

“He could be volatile, but only if someone set him off,” Delander said. “Hey, you come at me and start hitting me, and I’m going to hit back.”

Kelly said police tried to coerce her into criticizing her boyfriend of three months.

“They tried to get me to say that he was no-good violent trash,” she said. “Just another (bad guy) getting violent. I told them it didn’t matter how long they talked to me, I’d never say that because it’s not true.”