Ex-Cop's Shady Side Leaves Heads Shaking : Crime: Amid questions about the fatal FBI shooting, Fountain Valley police chief says, 'I have no idea why he went bad.'

By MICHAEL GRANBERRY and REBECCA TROUNSON

July 26, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

MISSION VIEJO —

Colleagues sadly describe him as a gifted cop gone bad for reasons they can’t explain. Neighbors remember a loving man who doted endlessly on his family. But law enforcement officials said Tuesday they had finally stopped a serial bank robber.

A once-decorated cop whose life spun wildly out of control had robbed 11 banks in Orange County and one near San Diego before being shot and killed in a parking-lot confrontation with FBI agents here Monday, authorities said.

Kevin Duane Arnold, 34, one of three brothers who dedicated their lives to careers in law enforcement, had spiraled downward since his 1994 conviction for embezzling nearly $40,000 from the Fountain Valley police officers’ union, which he had served as president.

Neighbors, friends and former colleagues were shocked Tuesday to hear of Arnold’s life as a reputed criminal, portrayed in FBI affidavits filed with courts in Santa Ana and San Diego as that of a calm, trans-county bank robber with an increasing appetite for stolen money.

“You meet a lot of these wanna-be cops who go on and lose their desire, but he was dedicated. He was the one that stood out,” said Kerry Kowalski, who served as a Fountain Valley patrol officer during Arnold’s days as a department cadet. “Being a cop was something he wanted since he was a teen-ager.”

Arnold had been a Fountain Valley policeman for 10 years and was a reserve officer before that.

But even during the time he was making restitution and expressing regret over embezzling union funds, authorities contend Arnold was strolling into banks, dressed casually and sporting a baseball cap, telling tellers he was armed, and demanding that they hand over cash.

Some of those same tellers later identified Arnold from police photographs, which put federal agents on his trail.

According to FBI figures released Tuesday, Arnold had stolen almost $32,000 in 12 robberies between June, 1994, and June of this year.

Those who knew him found it hard to reconcile the family man--whom they say was devoted to three daughters and a son--to the man FBI agents cornered near a McDonald’s here Monday. They shot him once in the chest as he allegedly attempted a getaway in a sky-blue car.

“I have no idea why he went bad,” said Fountain Valley Police Chief Elvin G. Miali, who once awarded Arnold the Medal of Valor for his role in apprehending a burglar. “I haven’t a clue. Priests go bad. Doctors go bad. Teachers go bad. I can’t give you an answer.”

A neighbor, Pete Kraintz, said: “This just shows you how wrong something good can go when people don’t get the help they need.”

“This was a good guy who was worth saving,” Kraintz said. “Now he’s gone . . . but he was a beautiful, good person, regardless of what he may have done. He was trying to support four kids.”

Questions about the end of Arnold’s life abounded Tuesday, with one witness saying the FBI shot the ex-officer at “point-blank” range without provocation, and the FBI declining comment about whether the suspect even had a gun at the time.

“We’re not commenting on the specific events that led up to the confrontation,” said Gary Morley, spokesman for the FBI in Santa Ana, who declined to elaborate. “Let me assure you, though, that our agents took the appropriate action in attempting to apprehend the individual.”

Mission Viejo resident Josh Hollar, 16, an employee at a bagel shop near where the shooting occurred, said he witnessed the incident and that the FBI agent “shot [Arnold] point-blank. [Arnold] was trying to back the car out. As soon as it happened, I ran inside and called police.”

Other witnesses described a similar chronology--a fierce scuffle, followed by Arnold jumping into his car and attempting to start it, while at least two agents faced the fleeing driver and pointed weapons at his head. He slumped over the steering wheel after being shot, witnesses said.

Asked if Arnold was armed, Morley declined comment Tuesday, though law enforcement officials who asked not to be quoted by name disputed several published accounts, saying that Arnold provoked agents before being shot. Exactly how, authorities declined to say.

Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Ron Wilkerson, whose agency works with the FBI as part of a bank robbery task force, said that two federal agents were trying to serve an arrest warrant on Arnold when the fatal incident unfolded.

Wilkerson said the agents, working undercover, had been following Arnold to issue a warrant stemming from a bank robbery earlier this year in Solana Beach, in north San Diego County.

Their surveillance came to an abrupt end in the parking lot of the Portola Plaza shopping center, Wilkerson said, when Arnold stopped near the McDonald’s restaurant. As he was getting out of his car, the two agents approached him and tried to arrest him, but he resisted, prompting a fight, Wilkerson said.

Arnold broke free and fled to his car, trying to start it and back away, Wilkerson said. One of the two agents attempted to reach inside the car and turn off the ignition, but as Arnold gained momentum in backing away, the same agent drew his gun and fired a single shot, striking Arnold in the chest, Wilkerson said.

Wilkerson said he didn’t know whether Arnold was armed, and on Tuesday, the Orange County coroner referred all calls to the Sheriff’s Department.

The news reports about Arnold--his conviction for embezzlement, his apparent newfound life as a bank robber and finally his death--seemed too much to bear for friends, neighbors and former associates.

“He was a really bright kid who was way ahead of his age,” said Kowalski, his former colleague in Fountain Valley. “I figured as soon as he was eligible to become a cop, he would make it.”

Kowalski, who left the Fountain Valley Police Department in 1979, said he ran into Arnold at a supermarket in Portola Plaza about four months ago and that they exchanged brief but friendly greetings.

“I couldn’t believe it when I heard about his conviction” for embezzling funds from the officers’ union, Kowalski said.

John D. Barnett, Arnold’s attorney, said several stressful incidents may have contributed to what he called the “slow unraveling” of a good and decent man, including everything from the four on-duty shootings Arnold was involved in during his career to the death last year of his longtime police canine “partner.”

“In the context of this incident, these things may seem unimportant, but each one was just another level of the stress that weighed on him,” Barnett said. “It’s just a horribly sad story.”

Still, Barnett said nothing in his conversations with Arnold, including one within the last two days, indicated the apparent extent of the former officer’s desperation. “I didn’t detect anything like that,” he said.

Arnold’s family was in seclusion Tuesday and declined to make a statement.

An 18-page FBI affidavit paints a picture of a desperate man who was robbing banks even after being arrested for embezzlement. As the Fountain Valley police chief noted Tuesday, some of the robberies occurred after Arnold’s suspension from the force and before he was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to six months of confinement at home, beginning last December.

The FBI affidavit was filed to obtain an arrest warrant for three robberies Arnold allegedly committed in Orange County between June 30, 1994, and April 28 of this year.

Law-enforcement officials contend there were at least nine other robberies, ranging from Solana Beach to Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano, Laguna Hills, Mission Viejo, Lake Forest and Huntington Beach.

In every instance, the pattern was similar: A man described as being in his mid-30s, standing about six feet tall, weighing 170 pounds, usually sporting a baseball cap and sunglasses with an orange and yellow tint, approached a teller and demanded money.

Although he gave the teller a note indicating he was armed, no one could ever say for certain that he was. He usually left the bank with no more than $5,000--often less than $1,000--and always in the same sky-blue car, officers said.

It was such details that astonished friends and neighbors of Arnold’s, who on Tuesday continued to ponder how he had died and why.

Residents of the street in Mission Viejo where the Arnold family lived described the couple, who moved to the area about two years ago, as good neighbors and friendly, outgoing people who appeared devoted to their four children.

But on Tuesday, no one answered the door at Kevin and Kathleen Arnold’s carefully maintained home, where colorful flowers lined the front walkway. Near the front door, a small painted sign offered a welcome to visitors.

Neighbor Kraintz, a former police officer himself, said Arnold’s parents, who live in Temecula, were proud of having three sons in law enforcement. The license plate on the elder Arnolds’ car reads “3COPPOP,” the neighbor said.

After Kevin Arnold lost his job, his parents and two brothers all tried to help, Kraintz said, providing the family with emotional and some financial aid.

“Just from what he told me, he was under a huge amount of stress on the police department,” Kraintz said. “He was involved in shootings and his finances were also pretty tough. I think he must have just started panicking. It just added up to one big snowball going downhill.”

In two years of frequent interaction, however, Kraintz said he had never seen any hint of a man who was out of control: “I never heard him raise his voice in two years here.”

Arnold had worked lately as a salesman for Amway products and for a pet food company, but also used his time at home to help with housework and spend time with his children, especially his 3-year-old daughter, neighbors said.

“They are the best neighbors we’ve had,” said Tracy Brillhart, a teacher who lives next door to the Arnold home and whose young son played regularly with the youngest Arnold daughter.

“It’s just a real tragedy,” she said. “He was the nicest guy in the world. Obviously, there must have been a lot there that we didn’t know, but they’ve been wonderful neighbors.”

Times staff writers Ken Ellingwood, Thao Hua, Davan Maharaj, Tina Nguyen, J. Michael Kennedy and Len Hall contributed to this report.

* HOLES IN THE SCREEN: Extensive testing cannot keep all criminals off the force. A8

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Bank Jobs

Kevin Duane Arnold was officially charged with three Orange County bank robberies. He is suspected of having committed nine others, mostly in Orange County, since June, 1994. The heists and amounts taken:

ROBBERIES CHARGED

June 30, 1994: Tokai Bank, Huntington Beach [$1,030]

July 5, 1994: Union Bank, Laguna Hills [$4,225]

April 28, 1995: Downey Savings & Loan, Mission Viejo [$592]

ROBBERIES SUSPECTED

June 18, 1994: Household Bank, Huntington Beach [$1,907]

June 19, 1994: Fidelity Federal Bank, Lake Forest [$3,070]

July 15, 1994: Household Bank, Huntington Beach [$790]

April 17, 1995: Fidelity Bank, Lake Forest [$2,524]

April 27, 1995: Dana Niguel Bank, Laguna Hills [$733]

May 2, 1995: Union Bank, Dana Point [$4,936]

May 23, 1995: Dana Niguel Bank, Dana Point [$975]