LAPD Officer Charged With Murder in Shooting : Police: He has told investigators that unarmed truck driver refused orders to stop and was endangering lives.

A Los Angeles police officer was charged with murder Monday in the shooting death of a tow truck driver nearly a year ago, marking the first time in more than a decade that an officer in Los Angeles County will be tried for murder for a shooting while on duty.

The complaint accuses motorcycle officer Douglas Iversen, 43, a 15-year veteran, of “willfully, unlawfully and with malice aforethought” murdering John L. Daniels Jr., 36, at a service station on Florence Avenue near Crenshaw Boulevard.

A generic charge of murder was filed Monday, but Iversen will be tried for second-degree murder, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Katherine Mader. The second-degree charge is more appropriate than a first-degree charge because the shooting did not appear to be premeditated, Mader said. A conviction for second-degree murder carries a sentence of 15 years to life in prison.

The slaying followed close on the heels of last year’s riots, and some witnesses perceived racial overtones in the shooting of Daniels, a black man, by the white police officer. But Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, in announcing his department’s decision to bring charges against Iversen, said the shooting was not racially motivated.

Iversen was fingerprinted and photographed Monday morning in Los Angeles Municipal Court, but his arraignment was postponed until July 21, when he is expected to enter his plea and post his $250,000 bail. Commissioner John Ladner released Iversen on his own recognizance and admonished the officer, who was suspended by the LAPD earlier this year, not to carry his handgun.

After a brief court appearance, Iversen, dressed in civilian clothes, left the building, refusing to talk to reporters.

But his attorney, John Drummond Barnett, said the case had been “overcharged.”

“There is no murder here,” said the attorney, who represented Officer Theodore J. Briseno during the state trial of four police officers accused in the 1991 beating of Rodney G. King. “The shot was fired in the line of duty,” Barnett said. “There is no question that it was provoked. The person who was shot endangered the lives of several people.”

At the time of the shooting, Iversen told authorities that he shot Daniels, who was unarmed, after the tow truck driver refused an order to stop his truck and began to pull away from a gas station. The officer said he fired his weapon because he feared that Daniels was about to run over pedestrians, police said.

Witnesses said Daniels did not pose a threat to anyone. Police sources and one witness reported soon after the incident that Iversen’s partner, Patrick Bradshaw, turned to him and asked, “What did you do that for?”

Mader, who will prosecute the case, questioned Iversen’s version of events. “We don’t kill unarmed motorists to prevent traffic accidents,” she said.

Court records indicated that Daniels had been arrested a number of times and a police detective described him as a “career criminal.” Daniels, however, had repeatedly contended that officers had been harassing him since his father, John L. Daniels Sr., was shot to death in 1985 during what investigators said was a gun battle.

On June 14, 1992, Iversen seized Daniels’ tow truck after it allegedly was used in a crime. The truck was impounded for lack of registration and city permits but mistakenly was released.

Iversen told investigators he and his partner spotted the truck at the gas station on July 1 and confronted Daniels about the registration and permits problem. Iversen said he asked for Daniels’ identification, but the tow truck driver swore at the officers and attempted to drive off. At that point, Iversen shot and killed him.

Garcetti told reporters that the decision to prosecute does not represent a vendetta against Iversen or other police officers.

“It’s never politically correct to indict a police officer,” Garcetti said. “You are always shot down regardless of what you do. . . . There’s no win or lose in these types of cases.”

But, he added, “in our opinion, Officer Iversen committed the crime of murder, and he has to stand charges for that.”

Garcetti said the decision to prosecute was not made lightly and followed an exhaustive investigation. “We understand the full ramifications,” he said.

In 1982, the district attorney brought charges against a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who shot a woman in the abdomen when he went to her Duarte home in response to a false disturbance call. The deputy made the disturbance report to justify a raid on the home, which he believed to be the site of drug trafficking. When he and other deputies tried to kick down the door at 2 a.m., the woman confronted them with an unloaded rifle and was shot. She was 8 months pregnant, and the fetus died. The deputy was freed after serving eight months of a one-year sentence.

Earlier this month, Garcetti said, the Special Investigations Division of the district attorney’s office decided not to seek charges against officers in two separate shootings.

Criminal charges were not filed against two West Covina SWAT officers who, as part of the “mall murders” investigation in 1991, raided an apartment complex and killed an unarmed man by shooting him 28 times in the back.

Investigators also found insufficient evidence for prosecution in the police shooting of a Long Beach man who was killed in front of his parents in the foyer of their oceanfront home in 1992.

But of all the police shootings in recent years, Daniels’ death was the most controversial.

The shooting, which took place less than two miles from a flash point of the 1992 riots, attracted an angry crowd of about 200 people who shouted obscenities at the police. It was the first test of Police Chief Willie L. Williams, who had taken over the department days before the shooting.

At Williams’ urging, the police commission ruled that the shooting was excessive and violated department policy. Iversen was suspended without pay while the department continued its internal review.

In March, the Los Angeles City Council approved a $1.2-million wrongful-death settlement, which will be paid to Daniels’ family. His wife, Michele; his two children, Kendall, 18, and Janorey, 14, and his mother, Theresa, had filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court claiming the shooting was inspired by “malice and racial animus.”

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