Officer Broke LAPD Policy, Official Says

A Los Angeles police motorcycle officer charged with murder in the shooting of an unarmed tow truck driver last year violated department policy when he and his partner stopped the man, a police official testified Monday.

Deputy Chief Lawrence Fetters, testifying at a hearing to determine if Officer Douglas Iversen will stand trial, said Iversen and his partner had received an emergency call and should have been answering it. Instead, Fetters said, they pulled into a Southwest Los Angeles gas station to check the registration of the truck driven by John Daniels.

Fetters said the officers also hoped to impound the truck, which had been impounded two weeks earlier in another incident involving the same two officers and was mistakenly released.

The emergency call was for a felony auto theft in which the suspects were still at the scene and a witness was waiting at a pay phone for help, Fetters testified. It should have taken precedence over what would have been, at most, a minor traffic violation on Daniels’ part, Fetters said.

Iversen, 43, is the first law enforcement officer in Los Angeles County in more than a decade to be charged with murder for an on-duty shooting. His partner was ordered to go through retraining but was not charged with a crime.

Iversen has maintained that he shot Daniels on July 1, 1992, only after the 36-year-old tow truck driver refused orders to get out of the vehicle and tried to drive away. The 15-year veteran contends that he feared that Daniels would run down passersby with the truck.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Katherine Mader said the prosecution would show that Iversen shot Daniels with a “conscious disregard for human life.” She said it would also show today, when the hearing continues, that Daniels’ truck was traveling about 5 m.p.h. when he was shot and that no one was in danger.

Fetters, the only witness to testify Monday, described himself as the LAPD’s authority on the use of force and training.

Despite lengthy, sometimes deriding questioning from Iversen’s lawyer, John D. Barnett, Fetters could not be shaken from his position that Iversen violated several department policies, including firing at a moving vehicle.

Barnett tried to erode Fetters’ credibility by eliciting testimony that the 30-year veteran had only once been directly involved in the deadly use of force.

Fetters also testified that he had been a field officer less than five years, spending most of his career as a field supervisor and administrator.

More than a dozen uniformed police officers attended the hearing to show their support for Iversen, who was suspended without pay and is free on $235,000 bail.

Also among the spectators were three county prosecutors who specialize in police shootings and four investigators from their office.

“Rarely do you get to see use of force issues resolved in court,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Chris Darden of the district attorney’s special investigations division. “You want to gain whatever experience you can.”