Probe of Copter Accident Begins : Crash: Officers who apparently swerved to avoid school are remembered by colleagues, honored by neighborhood residents.

Police officers wrapped their badges in black bands of mourning and family members grieved beside a blackened lot in Southwest Los Angeles Friday as investigators searched for clues to why a helicopter crashed the day before, killing two officers aboard and a third man on the ground.

The helicopter’s charred remains lay in a hangar at the LAPD’s Air Support Division’s headquarters as a team of half a dozen investigators examined it, pored over maintenance records and interviewed witnesses to the crash, which happened shortly after the helicopter took off Thursday morning.

The department’s fleet of helicopters, ever present in the skies over Los Angeles, began to resume flight operations Friday evening with fuel obtained from outside sources, said air support Officer Larry Capra. Meanwhile, investigators are waiting for the results of tests conducted on the normal police fuel supply as a precautionary measure to make sure there were no contaminants, such as water.

“It’s going to be awhile, especially when you don’t have too much left to examine,” said Sgt. Jim Heintzman about the accident investigation. “There’s nobody to interview and the aircraft was significantly damaged.”

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, after testifying before the Christopher Commission Friday, talked briefly about the helicopter crash, saying the safety record of the LAPD helicopters is “unsurpassed.”

Killed in the crash were pilot Gary Howe, a 20-year-police veteran, and Officer Charles R. (Randy) Champe, a 17-year veteran and the aircraft’s observer. The man killed on the ground remained unidentified Friday afternoon, said a coroner’s spokesman.

There were signs of mourning throughout the city Friday. In downtown Los Angeles, officers in the LAPD’s Air Support Division donned black mourning bands. At City Hall, flags flew at half staff in remembrance.

There was talk of the two men’s professionalism, and how they seemed to maintain it to the very end, calmly radioing in that they were experiencing engine failure, carefully avoiding an elementary school and day-care center in their path.

“Those guys exercised officer safety all the way to the ground,” said Heintzman, a member of the Air Support Division for eight years. “They probably sacrificed their lives for somebody on the street.”

“We’re proud,” he said. “We’re sad at the loss but we’re proud.”

Across town, the intersection of Raymond and Vernon avenues, where the helicopter crashed, became a makeshift memorial.

A man in military uniform stood at attention for hours, silent under the cloudy morning skies as he guarded the blackened lot. The cars charred by the blaze had been taken away.

The mound of blackened ash that remained was dotted with color: a white foam heart planted there by someone from the LAPD’s 77th Street Division, bouquets of red and white flowers, a green dollar bill. And at that corner relatives of the dead grieved with strangers.

Vernice White said she had come first, at 6 a.m., with three bunches of bright flowers. “One for each of them,” she said.

Then there was Alberta Pimpelton, who lived a few blocks away. She placed a bouquet on the site for men she had not met. “It’s just the right thing to do. The police are out here to protect and serve,” she said as she began to cry softly.

One woman just stood there, staring, thankful that the men on board the helicopter had avoided the school where her daughter attended.

Howe’s daughter Stefanie held a picture of her father in her hand, crying as she looked at the flowers on the ground.

But Howe’s mother, Ann, was calm, looking at where it had happened, but still not believing it. “It still doesn’t seem real,” she said.

Funeral services for the officers are tentatively scheduled for Thursday, said Heintzman.