Officer Wounded Hours Before Leaving Valley

Greg Denels was thinking about his wife and two small boys when he decided to move from Canoga Park to a small town in San Bernardino County.

A Baldwin Park police officer for almost four years, working the often rough neighborhoods of that city, Denels, 28, wanted to know that his family was safe while he was on the evening shift. But Denels felt the violence he saw at work creeping into his home neighborhood.

At 10:30 p.m. Friday, nine hours before he was to move his family out of the Valley, Denels was picking up extra boxes at a liquor store on Vanowen Street when he spotted three men robbing two others in the parking lot.

He remembers the rest as a flash: rushing into the liquor store and telling the clerk to call 911, drawing his badge and gun and demanding the suspects back off, spotting the two carloads of young men just behind the three robbers, running back to the store and then hearing a gun go off twice, feeling his left leg buckle beneath him.

The last thing he remembers was firing his gun three times before it jammed, and then being kicked in the head until he blacked out.

Police later told him that his fire did not strike anyone, and that he fell unconscious while curled up, trying to protect the weapon that was eventually taken from him.

“I was going to leave here and I was going to a quiet, small town,” Denels said. “I’d never had a problem up until now and then--boom. I wanted to live as far away as I could from this stuff.”

Denels has not changed his mind about what he did that night or about being a police officer; he comes from a family of safety officers. When he was growing up, his father flew with the Civil Air Patrol. His sister became a firefighter.

About the time Denels entered the Police Academy, his father decided to become a police officer in Cathedral City.

“I became a police officer that late because I felt that people today have got to step forward and draw the line against the violence in our society,” said Tom Denels, Greg Denels’ father. “That’s what my son did and I’m very proud of my son.”

The younger Denels spent his first year working in corrections facilities and then decided to become a patrol officer. “I wanted to be on the streets,” he said, swatting at a toy monkey his wife had tied to the traction bar above his hospital bed.

Doctors removed a bullet from Denels’ ankle over the weekend and expect to surgically implant a 15-inch-long steel rod in his left thigh today to lend support to his shattered femur. They say it could be two to three months before Denels is fully recovered.

The two victims escaped, thanks to Denels’ intervention. Police Tuesday said Etienne Michael Moore, 19, arrested in the assault on Denels, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to assaulting an officer, battery and robbery. Moore was being held in lieu of $95,000 bail. A second suspect, a 15-year-old male believed to have shot Denels, was being held in Sylmar Juvenile Hall.

For Denels, his first on-the-job injury has not dampened his love of police work. After his move to San Bernardino County, he still plans to commute to his job in Baldwin Park.

“I’m a lifer,” Denels said, smiling beneath a navy Baldwin Park police baseball cap that casts a shadow on his blackened left eye. “My dream is one day get on a SWAT team because they’re the best of the best and I want to be one of them.

“I think it’s inbred in cops. When you see something going on . . . you have to take action.”