Questions Raised in Police Slaying of Aspiring Officer : Law enforcement: Some dispute the official account of how the man, a witness in a brutality case, was shot.

All he wanted was to be a cop.

He earned a degree in criminal justice at Utah’s Weber State University. Last spring, he graduated from the police academy at Rio Hondo College.

And Darrell Harts was at the top of the list of candidates to join the Compton Police Department.

But on the evening of April 5, police said, Harts was armed and dangerous. He had just shot his neighbor’s dog in South-Central Los Angeles, they said, and then began firing at officers, who returned fire.

The official police version says Harts was wounded in the gun battle and died two days later at Martin Luther King Jr.-Drew Medical Center. Police Chief Willie L. Williams declined comment Monday, but his chief spokesman, Cmdr. David Gascon, said, “we don’t have any information contrary” to the official police version.

One person claiming to have witnessed the incident, however, has contradicted some aspects of the police account.

The shooting has outraged Harts’ friends, relatives and neighbors, who challenge the police account on several key points, including assertions that he was armed and that officers identified themselves before they began firing. They angrily insist that Harts, 30, has never been in trouble with police and often went out of his way to assist officers. They find it inconceivable that he would have fired at police.

“He had this burning desire to be a policeman,” said Don Del Rio, Harts’ best friend. “He was better than a good guy. He was one of them.”

Harts, who was working as a security guard at the time of his death, was potentially the key witness in a police brutality suit scheduled for trial later this year.

His family has retained attorney Johnnie L. Cochran, whose office said he will file a $5-million claim against the city today. Harts’ friends also plan to raise questions about the shooting at today’s meeting of the Los Angeles Police Commission, and the district attorney’s office has launched an independent investigation.

The shooting has galvanized Harts’ South-Central Los Angeles neighborhood. On 108th Street outside the department’s Southeast Division station where the officers involved in the shooting are assigned, Harts’ friends have been conducting weekly candlelight vigils.

Lt. William Hall, who heads the department’s officer-involved shooting team, called the Harts shooting “an unfortunate situation. I don’t know that this fellow would have shot at the officers knowingly. I think it’s a good chance he did not know they were officers, and that’s why the shooting occurred.”

THE SHOOTING

Wearing his navy blue security guard uniform and a bulletproof vest beneath his shirt, Harts arrived at his home in the 100 block of East 93rd Street the evening of April 5 and parked his car in his front yard.

He walked east toward the house next door. From this point on, the eyewitness and police dispute what happened.

Police said uniformed officers Bruce A. Nelson, 32, and Bret Richards, 35, were driving west in an unmarked car toward the intersection with Main Street when they heard several gunshots and saw a man, later identified as Harts, standing in front of 114 East 93rd St.

“The officers stopped their vehicle, exited, identified themselves as police officers and ordered Harts to drop the weapon,” police said in a statement released the next day. “Harts failed to comply and fired several shots in the officers’ direction. The officers returned fire. A short gun battle ensued during which Harts fired several additional rounds.”

Nelson fired 17 rounds and Richards fired once, police said.

Harts suffered multiple gunshot wounds and fell to the ground, where he was taken into custody and his weapon was taken, the police report said. Harts died from a gunshot wound to his head.

Investigators said they later learned that just before the officers arrived on the scene, Harts had shot and wounded his neighbor’s dog, a 70-pound pit bull. Harts had previously threatened to kill the dog if it got out of the neighbor’s yard, police said.

An autopsy report released Monday by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office said tests performed on Harts showed no evidence that he abused drugs or prescription medication.

The self-described eyewitness who spoke on condition of anonymity gave The Times an account substantially different from the police description of the incident. This person, who expressed fear of reprisals, has not spoken to police or the district attorney’s office. However, the individual gave this account to The Times:

The shooting began at dusk. “I did not hear anyone yell ‘Halt!’ or ‘Stop!’ or ‘Police!’ There was just a barrage of shots all at once. I didn’t hear any shots before the multiple shots.”

A gray unmarked car moved west on 93rd.

“The car kept moving while they were shooting out of the car.”.

Harts fell to the ground in front of his next door neighbor’s house and was scrambling “on all fours” to get away, moving west toward Main.

“I did not see any object in his hands. I didn’t see him fire at the officers. This person was basically trying to get away. It looked like he was ducking shots.”

Harts’ bulletproof vest had taken several shots, but he apparently was not wounded as he ran. Harts scrambled west toward Main before running diagonally across 93rd--away from his home--where he fell fatally wounded.

In a separate interview, this person gave essentially the same account of the incident to an investigator working on behalf of Harts’ family. The district attorney’s office has interviewed six others about the incident, but it is not known whether any of them saw the shooting.

Hall said police investigators found Harts’ 9-millimeter pistol beneath his body. “That’s one of the items we’re having tested,” Hall said. “That’s the weapon. We know how many bullets are missing out of it, but there are a lot of other issues.”

He said it is not unusual for uniformed officers to use unmarked cars.

HOW IT BEGAN

Some of the central questions raised by family members involve how the incident began.

They deny that Harts shot the neighbor’s dog, arguing that he was not even armed, that his gun was locked in his car.

Although police said they were drawn to the scene by the sound of gunfire, the self-described witness said there were no gunshots before police arrived. He also said the neighbor’s dog was not in sight as Harts scrambled to get away. Police said they learned after Harts was fatally wounded that he had threatened to kill his neighbor’s pit bull.

Neighbors, however, said the woman who owned the pit bull initially told them Harts did not shoot her dog. When she was interviewed by The Times, however, she said her husband had “reminded her” that he had seen Harts shoot the brown and white dog with a pistol. The woman said her husband did not want to be interviewed.

Department of Animal Regulation records show that the call to pick up the wounded animal came from a police dispatcher, and the Animal Regulation log includes a notation that the dog was “shot by LAPD.”

Veterinarians said the dog, which would have survived its wounds, was killed by injection at an animal shelter. It remains unclear who shot the animal because no bullet was recovered. Animal control officers said the dog was euthanized at the direction of the owner.

ROLE MODEL

Tony Bracy, who played football with Harts at Serra High in Gardena in the late 1970s, described his friend as “a role model for his community.”

“He was like the only person with a college degree in a three-square-block radius of his home,” Bracy said.

Every Thursday evening Bracy has attended vigils with up to 100 demonstrators outside the Southeast Division police station to protest Harts’ death. “We want to clear Darrell’s name,” he said.

Neighbors called Harts “a fine young man” who counseled neighborhood youngsters against using drugs.

Those who knew Harts best said his dream of becoming a police officer was so strong that they gave him the nickname “Cop.”

Harts’ uncle, Tommy Burrell, has gone through the neighborhood interviewing residents, trying to recreate the sequence of events leading to his nephew’s shooting.

“He wanted to become a law enforcement officer,” Burrell said. “Why would he shoot at the police?”

Harts’ friend Del Rio said that when he and Harts were driving late at night, Harts would ask him to slow down when he saw that an officer had pulled someone over for a stop. “He would have me circle once or twice to make sure the officer was OK,” Del Rio said.

Del Rio said that had the officers asked Harts to throw a down his gun, “he would have complied.”

Harts’ friends said he was a crack shot. Had he fired his weapon, he would have hit the officers or their car, Del Rio and several others said.

Harts’ employer, Ashraf Farah, owner of All Time Private Security in Culver City, said if every officer he hired was like Harts, “I would have no problems in this business--period. He was overqualified. Always on time. Always followed orders. If he ever saw a cop in trouble, he would back them up.”

THE LAWSUIT

Harts was potentially a key witness in a federal suit alleging brutality by Los Angeles police against a former professional football player.

Austin Shanks, who once played for the Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco 49ers, said in his suit that he was beaten and severely injured in November, 1991, after a police car bumped him off his motorcycle in a Van Nuys alley.

As he was attempting to right the motorcycle, a police officer cursed at him and struck him in the face with what he believes was a flashlight, according to the suit, which is scheduled to go to trial later this year.

Shanks suffered a broken jaw, said his attorney, Robert M. Neubauer. “He also lost all or part of 10 teeth,” the lawyer said.

The suit contends that the police officers’ acts were “malicious, sadistic” and “racially motivated.” Shanks, who is black, was riding with a white female passenger when the police car hit his motorcycle, the suit said.

Harts witnessed the incident, Neubauer said, and was prepared to substantiate Shanks’ account. He said Harts would have been a “significant witness” because of his law enforcement background.

“Here is a gentleman who’s been to the police academy, is about to become a police officer himself, and yet is willing and courageous enough to come forward and speak the truth,” Neubauer said.

Several times after the incident, police investigators went to Harts’ home in an effort to interview him, relatives said. They also said investigators left their business cards in the door enough times for Harts to consider the visits harassment.

It is unclear why Harts chose not to talk to investigators.

Assistant City Atty. Philip Sugar denied that police were involved in any wrongdoing in the incident with Shanks.

Told that some of Harts’ friends suggested there might be a connection between the Shanks case and Harts’ death, Sugar said: “It’s outrageous that anyone could suggest his death could be connected to this suit.”