Gates Wants to Be ‘Judge, Jury, Executioner,’ Lawyer Says : Courts: Attorneys make their closing arguments in the trial stemming from a February, 1990, shooting in Sunland in which officers killed three robbers.

The Los Angeles Police Department is a “Frankenstein monster” created by Chief Daryl F. Gates, who has allowed a squad of officers to operate as “assassins,” a federal jury was told Tuesday in a trial over a police shooting that left three robbers dead.

But the allegations made by an attorney representing the robbers and their families was rebutted by the city’s attorney, who defended Gates and said members of the police squad--the Special Investigation Section--use tactics designed to avoid shootings.

The statements came during closing arguments in a three-month trial stemming from the Feb. 12, 1990, shooting outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Sunland.

“The police have gone too far in Los Angeles by using excessive force,” plaintiff’s attorney Stephen Yagman said.

“The LAPD and Daryl Gates have ruled this community for 14 years by fear,” Yagman said. “He does and has done as he pleases. The LAPD is his Frankenstein monster. It is something that has gone beyond all bounds . . . . He wants to be judge, jury and executioner.”

Gates and nine SIS officers are defendants in the lawsuit filed by the families of three bandits who were killed by police and a fourth who was shot but survived. The lawsuit contends that the officers used excessive force and fired on the robbers without cause. The 10-member jury is expected to begin deliberations today.

Deputy City Atty. Don Vincent countered Yagman’s claims by telling jurors that evidence presented in the case clearly shows the nine officers opened fire when they sensed they were in imminent danger. He defended the firepower--35 shots from shotguns and handguns--as being an appropriate response when the officers saw the robbers brandishing weapons. The weapons were later discovered to be pellet guns resembling real handguns.

Vincent cautioned jurors not to confuse the superior firepower of police with excessive force, noting that each officer feared for his life and had reason to fire. “This is not the Old West where you get out on the street and have a shootout at noon,” Vincent said. “They are not the sitting ducks of the public.”

According to trial testimony, the officers opened fire on the bandits after they watched them break into the closed McDonald’s, rob the lone employee inside and then return to their getaway car. The shooting started almost immediately when officers converged on the car.

The plaintiffs contend that the bandits had put their unloaded pellet guns in the trunk of the car and therefore were unarmed when the shooting started.

Noting that U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts ruled earlier that the police had probable cause to arrest the four suspects before the robbery, Yagman argued that the officers allowed the crime to take place and orchestrated the stakeout in such a way that the shooting was “inevitable, inescapable.” He said the special police unit has a long record of using tactics that often end in shootings.

Yagman said police took the pellet guns from the trunk after the shooting and “planted” one inside the car and one on the body of a robber who had run from the car before being shot by police. He said police photos show the gun inside the car in different positions, indicating police tampered with the evidence.

He said that while the claim that guns were planted might be “hard to digest,” the alternative--the police story--defies common sense.

“What person, when faced with nine officers with shotguns, would point an unloaded, inoperable pellet gun at them?” he asked. “What does common sense tell you?”

In his closing argument, Vincent denied that Gates condones excessive force. He also said an extensive department investigation cleared the officers of any wrongdoing.

He recounted police testimony that the gun was indeed moved. Vincent said the gun was photographed as it was found by officers and then removed from the car but later replaced so additional photos could be taken. But the original photographs are clearly marked, he said.

Vincent noted that the weapon allegedly planted on the body of Herbert Burgos was the same weapon the survivor, Alfredo Olivas, testified that Burgos used during the robbery. Vincent asked jurors how the officers could have known on which robber to plant which weapon.

“Nothing was planted in that car,” he said. “It would mean that it was happenstance that they placed the right gun with the right body.”

Vincent said the explanation for why the robbers pointed unloaded pellet guns at the police will never be known. “They might have thought it was someone else and raised the guns to scare them,” he said.