Officer Censured in Fatal Shooting : Law enforcement: An LAPD panel finds killing of an unarmed tow truck driver violated two counts of department policy. The officer, who could be terminated, was unsuccessfully tried twice for murder.

A Los Angeles police Board of Rights panel Tuesday found Officer Douglas J. Iversen guilty of two counts of violating department policy in the fatal 1992 shooting of an unarmed tow truck driver at a Southwest Los Angeles gas station.

The panel of three police captains immediately began a closed hearing on what discipline to recommend. Punishment for Iversen--a 15-year veteran who was twice unsuccessfully prosecuted on murder charges stemming from the incident--could include termination.

The board stated that Iversen should have acted “more aggressively” to control tow truck driver John L. Daniels after he refused to obey the officer’s requests for information and began driving off. To help do so, the panel said, Iversen and his partner should have been prepared to use tear-gas or batons. Instead, Iversen drew and fired his weapon.

After the board recommends punishment for Iversen, 45, Chief Willie L. Williams can impose less severe punishment than the board suggests, but he cannot order more severe strictures.

The shooting of a black tow truck driver by a white officer in the wake of the 1992 riots and less than two miles from a primary flash point of the unrest renewed longstanding complaints from the black community about police brutality.

It also drew a swift, forceful reaction from newly installed Chief Williams, who, after an internal review, questioned Iversen’s decision to draw his gun and fire.

Iversen spotted Daniels’ unregistered tow truck and stopped to impound it, ignoring an emergency call to respond to an auto theft in progress elsewhere.

Iversen and his supporters have said that he proceeded to fire a single shot to prevent Daniels from running over bystanders when the tow truck driver refused to allow the officer to check his license and tried to drive away.

Answering questions from two Board of Rights panelists, Iversen added that he believed Daniels was “assaulting people” by attempting to flee.

But Lt. James Cansler, a department prosecutor, countered that the pedestrians were never in danger and sought to raise questions about Iversen’s actions by quoting eyewitnesses who heard Iversen’s partner, Patrick Bradshaw, turn to him after the shooting and ask: “What did you do that for?”

The board panel, composed of Capts. Valentino P. Paniccia, John R. Trundle and John P. Mutz, acknowledged “a number of inconsistencies” on the part of eyewitnesses. But the panel added that the preponderance of evidence indicated that Daniels was not threatening bystanders.

In addition, board members said they gave “great weight” to testimony from Iversen that he drew his weapon before the tow truck’s engine was running. Department policy, the panelists said, prohibits drawing a weapon unless there is a reasonable belief it will have to be used.

The quasi-judicial board hearing began in 1993 after the Los Angeles Police Commission, acting on Williams’ recommendation, ruled that Iversen violated department policy. It was suspended indefinitely because of the filing of murder charges by the district attorney’s office in June, 1993.

Iversen--the first officer in Los Angeles County in a decade to be charged with committing a murder while on duty--was tried twice. However, in both cases mistrials were declared after jurors announced that they were hopelessly deadlocked. In the first trial, nine jurors found Iversen guilty of involuntary manslaughter while three others held out for a second-degree murder conviction. In the second trial, the split was eight to four in favor of acquittal on the question of voluntary manslaughter. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charles E. Horan subsequently rejected a request from prosecutors to try Iversen a third time.

Within weeks, the Board of Rights hearing reconvened, with Trundle replacing a panelist who in the meantime had left the LAPD. Rather than reopening the hearing, Cansler provided a transcript of the previous session.

The four days of hearings that began last week focused solely on defense witnesses, including former Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner.

Reiner, answering a question posed by a board member, made clear that he had declined to file criminal charges against Iversen before he lost the election to Gil Garcetti in 1992. “The decision at the time was that this was not a fileable case,” Reiner said Tuesday. Deputy Dist. Atty. Katherine Mader, who headed the criminal prosecution of Iversen, said the case was filed under Garcetti because additional evidence emerged after the new district attorney authorized an intensive investigation.

In determining the severity of Iversen’s punishment, the Board of Rights can consider past policy violations. Authorities have said Iversen has been suspended without pay three other times, once for 60 days after he was found in possession of a hand-held department walkie-talkie that he had reported missing or stolen six months earlier.

Sgt. Thomas A. Dawson, Iversen’s defense advocate, said Iversen remains popular with rank-and-file officers, 12 of whom will testify on his behalf. “We have guys standing in line to be character witnesses up to and including the rank of lieutenant,” Dawson said.