SIS Squad Describes Shootings : Courts: Robbers were shot after they brandished guns, detectives testify. The the surviving victim has said that he and his accomplices were unarmed.

Members of a controversial Los Angeles police squad, testifying in a federal civil rights trial, on Tuesday described shooting at four robbers in a car in Sunland, killing three of them.

“He was pointing a gun at me,” Detective Richard Zierenberg said in describing the moment nearly two years ago when he opened fire with a shotgun as one of the robbers ran away from a getaway car.

Zierenberg said he fired five shotgun rounds and three bullets from his .45 pistol at the robbers because they brandished guns when officers surprised them as they tried to drive away after holding up a McDonald’s restaurant. After the shooting, the guns recovered by police were found to be pellet guns.

“You are telling us that a man running from that kind of firepower turned and pointed a pellet pistol at you?” asked Stephen Yagman, an attorney representing the families of the dead robbers and the surviving robber who filed a lawsuit over the shooting.

“Absolutely,” Zierenberg said.

Zierenberg’s testimony came in the second week of trial in U. S. District Court.

The lawsuit contends that the Police Department’s Special Investigations Section, a surveillance unit that follows people suspected of serious crimes, is a “death squad” that violated the robbers’ rights by opening fire on them without warning or provocation.

In addition to members of the SIS unit, defendants in the lawsuit include Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, Mayor Tom Bradley and members of the Police Commission. Yagman said he intends to call Gates as a witness today and Bradley on Friday.

Yagman contends in the lawsuit that the three dead robbers--Juan Bahena, Jesus Arango and Herbert Burgos--were executed. The survivor--Alfredo Olivas, now 21 and serving a 17-year prison term for robbery--testified that the robbers stowed their pellet guns in the getaway car’s trunk and got into the car before the SIS squad opened fire.

Police have said the robbers still had the weapons in the car and pointed them at officers--the key conflict in the trial so far. Police said at the time that two pellet guns were found beside the bodies of two robbers.

Seventeen SIS officers, including the nine who fired on the robbers, testified Tuesday. They were questioned chiefly by Yagman about the shooting, which occurred shortly before 2 a.m. on Feb. 12, 1990.

The SIS officers had followed the four men--suspects in a string of robberies of fast-food restaurants--from Venice to the McDonald’s on Foothill Boulevard. The officers watched as the men “cased” the closed restaurant for more than an hour and then broke in. The restaurant’s night manager called police when she saw the men outside but the SIS officers testified that they canceled the uniformed response because they were at the scene and did not want to endanger the manager or themselves.

While the robbers were inside, the SIS officers said they formulated a plan to arrest them after they returned to the getaway car. When the robbers returned to the car, several officers moved in. Olivas was wounded.

SIS Detective Reginald Weaver testified that he did not shoot but that he saw a gun through the rear window of the robbers’ car.

“I couldn’t be sure which one was holding the gun . . . it was in the middle of the window,” he said.

Detective John Helms, who fired 11 shots at the robbers, also testified that he saw a gun.