Officer’s Effort to Escape Violence Comes Too Late : Crime: Policeman wounded trying to break up a robbery near his Canoga Park home was just hours away from moving with his family to a safer area.

Greg Denels, a Baldwin Park police officer for almost four years, wanted to know that his family was safe while he was working the evening shift, often in rough neighborhoods.

So when Denels, 28, felt the violence he saw at work creeping into his home neighborhood in Canoga Park, he decided to move his wife and two small boys--settling on a small town in San Bernardino County.

But they didn’t move quickly enough. Last Friday evening, nine hours before the family was set to leave the San Fernando Valley, Denels was picking up extra boxes at a liquor store when he spotted three men robbing two others in the parking lot.

He remembers the rest as a flash: rushing into the store and telling the clerk to call 911, drawing his badge and gun and demanding that the assailants 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. Then he felt his left leg buckle beneath him as a bullet shattered it.

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

Police later told him that his gunfire did not strike anyone and that his weapon was taken by his assailants.

“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. Indeed, 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 as well, 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’s 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 bed in an area hospital.

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

The two robbery victims escaped, thanks to Denels’ intervention.

Arrested and charged in the assault on Denels was Etienne Michael Moore, 19, who pleaded not guilty Tuesday to assaulting an officer, battery and robbery. A second suspect, a 15-year-old male believed to have shot Denels, is being held in Sylmar Juvenile Hall.

Denels said the episode has not dampened his commitment to police work. After his move to San Bernardino County, he plans to commute to his job in Baldwin Park.

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

“When you see something going on,” he added, “you have to take action.”