Gates Backs Police Action in Restaurant Robbery : Courts: The ex-chief testifies in suit over surveillance team’s response in Sunland in 1990.

Former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates on Tuesday resolutely defended a special police surveillance unit for waiting outside a Sunland McDonald’s for more than 30 minutes while its manager was held inside at gunpoint during a 1990 robbery--saying citizens are misled by the ease with which police defeat criminals on TV.

Any other action could have increased the danger to the restaurant manager, Gates testified in a Glendale Superior Court trial in which the manager is suing the city, alleging that the officers failed in their responsibility to protect her.

Gates said he felt great sympathy for the manager, Robbin L. Cox, but suggested her lawsuit was applying a television standard of what police are capable of doing.

“People watch television too much and don’t know how difficult this is,” Gates said, referring to the work of the Special Investigations Section, which follows suspected dangerous felons in the hope of catching them in the commission of a crime.

Gates said that surveillance is an extremely complicated and “iffy” business, and that for the officers to burst into the restaurant after the four men broke in could have precipitated a shootout in which Cox would have been killed or injured.

Cox’s attorney, Christopher Hiddleson, has said his client will ask for $1 million in damages from the city and the Police Department for failing to try to rescue Cox, who was blindfolded and threatened with death by the robbers if she didn’t open the restaurant safe.

The SIS moved in when the robbers left the restaurant on Foothill Boulevard, a gunfight broke out and three of the four robbers were killed. The fourth man, who was wounded, is serving a 17-year prison sentence.

Hiddleson called Gates to testify on police procedure and about Gates’ own actions in reviewing the official investigation of the incident.

Hiddleson asked Gates to read two policies from the LAPD Manual. One defined “reverence for human life” as the primary consideration in tactics, and the other declared the arrest of the perpetrator of a crime “subordinate to the protection of life.”

However, Gates insisted that consideration for Cox’s safety guided the unit leader, Detective Brian Davis, in his decision to hold the SIS team outside the restaurant, and to order that uniformed officers responding to Cox’s call to 911 for help be ordered away from the scene.

Members of the undercover surveillance team dress in “scruffy” civilian clothes and could “look like the suspects” to a uniformed officer, possibly leading to an unpredictable confrontation between the two police groups, he said.

Also, the officers conducting the surveillance had no reason to believe that the robbers would enter the restaurant, Gates said. In similar previous robberies by the same men, he said, the four men had always waited outside, followed the manager home, then forced the manager back to the restaurant to open the safe.

This time, the four men broke into the restaurant by a side door that was out of view of the 22-man SIS team, he said.

“At that point, you have a very delicate situation,” Gates said. “You have a hostage situation. Then you don’t go inside. You might endanger the hostage.”

Hiddleson asked whether surveillance officers were not supposed to keep the suspects in sight at all times.

“It’s not that simple,” Gates said. “It’s not as you see in TV where they follow people closely. It’s very complex. Your cover can be blown very easily. You often have to stay in a place where you can’t see everything that is going on.

“You do your best without trying to totally blow the operation. Once you blow the operation, the suspects are gone. You can’t arrest them. Your opportunity to take them off the street has been lost.”

The SIS has already lost one suit in the widely publicized McDonald’s case. A federal court jury found that the officers acted without cause when they fired on the robbers, awarding $44,000 in damages to the families of the dead men and the survivor. Almost half of that award was levied against Gates personally, who the jury said condoned the use of excessive force in the department.

Later Wednesday, a retired FBI agent called as Hiddleson’s final witness contradicted Gates. James P. Graham, who said he was involved in numerous surveillances in his 22 years with the agency, testified that the police should have telephoned Cox inside to warn her, and later should have declared a hostage situation to bring the full force of the department to bear.

Graham also said the surveillance leader could easily have posted an officer behind a wall on the west side of the restaurant where the robbers entered.

They could have broken off a tree branch to hide behind while they looked over the wall, Graham said.

Attorneys said they expect the trial to go to the jury today.