Williams Fires Officer Who Shot Truck Driver

Accepting the recommendation of a hearing panel, Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams has fired Officer Douglas J. Iversen for violating department policy in the controversial 1992 shooting death of an unarmed tow truck driver, officials announced Tuesday.

But the matter is not yet concluded. Declaring that Iversen’s termination sets a bad precedent for the department, the head of the Los Angeles Police Protective League said Tuesday afternoon that the union would fund a Los Angeles Superior Court appeal by the officer.

“Previously, officers haven’t been terminated for out-of-policy shootings or (for) drawing of weapons,” said Cliff Ruff, the union’s president. “So we think the penalty is the ultimate. It’s the death penalty for a police officer.”

Williams, who shortly after taking office strongly questioned Iversen’s decision to shoot driver John L. Daniels, had no public comment on his decision.

Last week, after four days of testimony from defense witnesses, the Board of Rights found the veteran motorcycle officer guilty of drawing and discharging a firearm in violation of department policy.

The board, made up of three department captains, then recommended that Iversen, 45, be fired for displaying bad judgment in the 1992 shooting and in previous incidents for which he was suspended without pay three times.

In one of those cases, Iversen was found to possess a hand-held department walkie-talkie he had reported missing six months earlier. Later, he was disciplined for accessing the Police Department’s crime computer for personal reasons while serving the suspension for the walkie-talkie incident.

The police panel determined that the “accumulated pattern of past conduct” could expose the city and the department to “an unacceptable level of civil liability,” according to Capt. Valentino P. Paniccia, the board’s head.

But Ruff, contending that the decisions of the panel and Williams were politically motivated, said termination was too severe.

“If we’re looking at progressive discipline, Doug Iversen doesn’t have a history of out-of-policy use of force,” the union chief said. “This was the first fatal shooting when Chief Williams came into office. It was his first case, it was a political case.”

Iversen, Ruff concluded, is “being made an example of on a new policy of getting tough on out-of-policy use of force.”

The Daniels shooting drew widespread attention because of the facts of the case and because a white officer had killed a black tow truck driver near a flash point of the 1992 riots, which had taken place a few weeks earlier.

Iversen said he shot Daniels after the driver refused to obey a request for information and then put the lives of bystanders in danger when he began driving away from a gas station. But the Board of Rights concluded that Iversen and his partner should have acted more aggressively to control Daniels and should have been prepared to use tear gas or batons rather than a firearm.

Iversen was twice prosecuted on homicide charges stemming from the shooting, becoming the first officer in Los Angeles County in a decade to be charged with committing a murder while on duty. Both cases ended in mistrials when juries were unable to reach verdicts.

Iversen’s civil lawyer, Diane Marchant, said she would file a writ of mandate within a few weeks asking that her client be reinstated. She expects a hearing by midsummer.

“He’s extremely depressed,” Marchant said of Iversen. “He’s of the opinion that if the Board of Rights is concerned about the liability to the city should an incident like this recur, that the remedy is to give him some position where he doesn’t have that kind of public contact.”

Two years ago, the Los Angeles City Council approved a $1.2-million wrongful-death settlement to Daniels’ wife, mother and two teen-age children.

The chief’s action drew strong support from civil rights leader Joe Hicks, who described it as “a break from the past in terms of how some of these officers have tended to be treated.

“Iversen simply did not deserve to be on the force and has obviously demonstrated a recklessness that simply can’t be tolerated,” said Hicks, executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles. “But it’s a bit discomforting to know he’s walking the street a free individual. I still remain quite disappointed full justice was not (meted out) in this case.”