Trial Opens in Tow Truck Driver Death : Courts: Prosecutor calls shooting by LAPD officer outrageous. Defense attorney says it was justified.

A Los Angeles police officer was on an obsessive personal crusade against “bandit” tow-truck drivers when he shot an unarmed one to death two years ago during a dispute over the man’s truck registration, a prosecutor told a jury Tuesday.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Katherine Mader portrayed the July 1, 1992, shooting of John Daniels by motorcycle Officer Douglas Iversen as “outrageous,” “out of line” and unnecessary.

The remarks were made at the start of Iversen’s trial on a second-degree murder charge.

Iversen’s lawyer, John D. Barnett, told the jury that his client had acted properly in the shooting because, Barnett contended, Daniels had challenged Iversen and his partner in a threatening way and attempted to drive away, putting them and nearby pedestrians in jeopardy.

Daniels, Barnett said, “was be hind the wheel of a multi-ton truck that could mow down people” and was “seeking to arm himself by turning the truck on.” Barnett told the jury that Iversen had reason to think Daniels was dangerous because the tow truck driver was among “a plague” of unlicensed tow operators who often recklessly rushed to accident scenes to get business.

Iversen is only the second law enforcement officer in Los Angeles County in more than a decade to be charged with killing someone while on duty. His trial is expected to last two or three weeks and focus heavily on his credibility.

Iversen has insisted that pedestrians were in the path of Daniels’ moving tow truck and that it was only to ensure their safety that he fired at Daniels. Several witnesses, however, have said that the truck was traveling less than 5 m.p.h. and that no one was in its path.

A police official testified at Iversen’s preliminary hearing that it is against LAPD policy for an officer to fire at a moving vehicle. The official also testified that Iversen and his partner violated policy by stopping to check Daniels’ tow truck registration when they should have been answering a call with a higher priority.

Mader has indicated in court papers that she hopes to attack Iversen’s truthfulness by introducing records of a 22-year-old felony conviction against him for receiving stolen property. The crime, which occurred in Minnesota, was pardoned, but Iversen failed to disclose it on his LAPD application as required.

Daniels’ shooting took place a month after the Los Angeles riots, at a gas station at Florence Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard, not far from the riots’ most infamous flash point. Officials feared the shooting might spark more civil unrest because immediately after it occurred, a large anti-police crowd gathered. No serious violence resulted.

The prosecution’s theory of why Iversen shot Daniels starts with an incident two weeks before in which Iversen and his partner chased a truck that was owned by Daniels’ family and that had been reportedly involved in a street robbery. Daniels was not involved in that incident.

The truck had no registration and was impounded, but was later mistakenly released. When Iversen spotted it at the Chevron station, he was determined to re-impound it because he had a “fetish” against tow trucks that were operating illegally, Mader told the jury Tuesday.