D.A. Won’t Charge Officers in 1990 Deaths of Robbery Suspects : Investigation: Elite unit’s members are cleared in Sunland shooting. Jury had found them liable in civil rights case.

The Los Angeles district attorney’s office has declined to file charges against eight members of an elite Los Angeles Police Department detective squad, closing its investigation into the 1990 police shootings of four robbery suspects outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Sunland.

The decision not to prosecute, announced Wednesday, comes more than five years after members of the department’s Special Investigations Section, known as the SIS, rained 34 shotgun blasts and pistol shots on the suspects, killing three of them and wounding the fourth.

It follows a similar decision by federal prosecutors. In February, after conducting a long investigation, the U.S. attorney’s office announced it would not seek indictments against nine SIS detectives.

In both instances, prosecutors cited insufficient evidence that the officers acted in a criminal manner when they fired on Feb. 12, 1990, at the four men, who carried replica guns--duplicates that resemble real firearms but don’t fire.

“These guns are very realistic in their appearance,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Allen D. Field wrote in a 23-page report sent to the Los Angeles Police Commission on Wednesday.

“In our opinion, a trained police officer confronted by these weapons in the dark would be foolish to assume they were anything but real.”

The case achieved notoriety because the detectives employed controversial tactics. They surrounded the restaurant, watched what appeared to be an armed robbery unfold without intervening, then rammed the suspects’ car and opened fire.

Prosecutor Field noted that his review included ample sources--LAPD reports, coroner’s records, the D.A.’s case file in its prosecution of the surviving suspect, numerous newspaper articles and testimony in a federal civil rights trial in which a jury found the officers civilly liable for the deaths.

But, he said, a federal civil case and a state criminal prosecution have very different standards of proof.

Field concluded: ‘We believe that a jury hearing all the evidence in the case would likely conclude that the use of lethal force by the officers was not improper. . . .”

Police officials welcomed the news.

“We’re gratified that the report is finally back,” said Cmdr. Tim McBride, a police spokesman. “Maybe this is the beginning stage of putting this incident to rest.”

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Attorney Stephen Yagman, who represented families of the dead suspects in the civil case, said the district attorney’s findings were predictable.

“ Whitewash is too weak a word,” Yagman said. “This is a totalitarian shoving-under-the-rug of oppressive police tactics.”

Yagman added: “When cops get reinforcement like this, they go out and do it again.”

The district attorney’s report noted that eight detectives fired their weapons after police rammed the suspects’ car, and that three others did not discharge their weapons.

The report identifies the detectives who fired as: John Helms, who fired six shotgun blasts and five pistol shots; Richard Zierenberg, who fired five shotgun blasts and three pistol shots; Richard Spelman and Gary L. Strickland, who fired four and five shotgun blasts, respectively; David Harrison fired two pistol shots at the car; Joe Callian fired two pistol shots at one of the suspects, Jerry Brooks fired a shotgun blast at the vehicle and Warren Eggar fired a single shotgun blast at one of the suspects.

Killed in the barrage were Jesus Atango, 25, Herbert Burgos, 27, and Juan Bahena, 21.

Alfredo Olivas was shot in the abdomen, but survived.

Olivas, who is currently serving a 17-year state prison sentence for his role in the crime, has given contradictory statements in the past and his testimony would not be considered reliable, prosecutor Field concluded.

Olivas testified in the civil case that he and the others were armed only with air guns and that none of the weapons were pointed at police.

In that case, the jury found the deaths wrongful and took the rare action of requesting that the officers pay the damages--more than $44,000--out of their own pockets.