Trial to Begin on LAPD Unit’s Role in Stakeout : Courts: Lawsuit says officers put restaurant manager’s life at risk by failing to prevent men from robbing a McDonald’s.

A controversial Los Angeles police squad is set to defend itself in court again today, this time against allegations that it allowed robbers to hold up a McDonald’s and jeopardize a restaurant manager’s life so it could build a case against the men.

Robbin L. Cox, a former manager at a McDonald’s in Sunland, has sued the LAPD and the city of Los Angeles for unspecified damages, saying that officers in the Special Investigations Section had been staking out the robbers for hours, including the moments before they committed the late-night robbery Feb. 11, 1990.

Cox alleges that the officers recklessly allowed the robbers to terrorize her at gunpoint while they monitored the scene from undercover cars parked nearby.

“They had an overwhelming amount of manpower there. They could have easily stopped the whole thing,” her lawyer, Christopher Hiddleson, said. “But they chose to allow the robbery to go forward and be completed. . . . She is fortunate she wasn’t shot or raped or anything.”

Cox, 26, and her lawyer say that the investigative unit’s officers were negligent because they told patrol officers not to respond to a 911 call she made as the robbers broke in at closing time. Cox said she has suffered emotional trauma that led to longtime unemployment, and that the robbery has ruined her chances of continuing a promising career at the fast-food chain.

Cox, who was unavailable for comment, said when she filed the suit in 1990 that she wants at least $1 million in damages.

Jury selection is set to start today, and testimony could start the same day, including questioning of former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates.

Los Angeles police had no comment Tuesday on the trial, one of many cases against the special unit, which is designed to monitor and catch dangerous career criminals. The squad has become controversial in recent years because of its high number of shootings and incidents in which officers allowed crimes to take place.

The unit has already lost one suit in the widely publicized McDonald’s case, when a federal jury found that the officers used excessive force in killing three of the robbers and wounding a fourth as they fled the restaurant. The jury awarded $44,000 in damages to the families of the dead men and the lone survivor, Alfredo Olivas, who later pleaded guilty to 10 counts of robbery and is serving a 17-year prison sentence.

The jury also found that Gates, a key witness in the federal case, fostered and condoned the use of excessive force in the department.

In the current case, in Glendale Superior Court, the city has argued that the officers acted in the best interests of everyone concerned, including Cox.

“They made a tactical decision, based on sound police work,” said Deputy City Atty. Don Vincent, supervising attorney for the city’s police litigation unit. “I don’t think it’s negligence.”

Vincent said that police had orders to apprehend the four men before they entered the McDonald’s if they were together, but that the robbers fanned out around the building and entered from a side that the officers could not see.

The trial, legal experts said, will raise issues of how police must balance protecting the public with the need to gather evidence against dangerous criminals.

Julian Eule, an associate dean at the UCLA Law School and an expert in constitutional law, said jurors may have to delve into the complicated issue of whether the U.S. Constitution mandates that police have an ironclad obligation to protect citizens from harm. Most successful lawsuits against police focus on the opposite--cases in which they actively did something they should not have, such as invade someone’s privacy or violate their civil rights, Eule said.

Cox has received $95,000 in workers’ compensation benefits from the state for emotional distress, the same problem alleged in her suit.