Honoring the Courageous : Valor Awards Reflect <i> Real </i> LAPD, Officers Say

The frustration, said Kimberly Watson, 28, who was being honored for arresting robbery suspects while being fired upon, was that “this will probably get two minutes” of TV attention, “while Mark Fuhrman gets a half-hour” on the nightly news.

It was a sentiment that many law enforcement officers expressed Wednesday at the Los Angeles Police Department’s annual Medal of Valor awards ceremony, which honored 17 officers for doing everything from rescuing residents from the quake-damaged Northridge Meadows apartments to saving people from burning vehicles to searching for survivors in the aftermath of a gas explosion.

This, they kept saying, was the real LAPD. This theme is voiced every year when the awards are given, but Wednesday, with the racist pall of Fuhrmania hanging over the department, it was more heartfelt than ever.

“I always wanted to be an officer,” Watson said. “I always thought that this was the most important thing a person could do for their community. I have never worked with anybody or anything that resembles what is going on in the news.”

“For every one Fuhrman, there are 8,000 police officers who are hard-working, who do heroic things every day,” said Officer Raymond Mendoza, 37, a medal winner who almost lost his life in the line of duty two years ago. “It is just so sad that one person could cast a shadow over the whole department.”

On a day when allegations of racism against former LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman again dominated testimony at the O.J. Simpson trial, the Medal of Valor ceremony was a chance for the department to forget, for a moment, about its latest controversy and celebrate the achievements of some of its bravest officers. More than 600 people attended the event, including City Council members, Mayor Richard Riordan and Judge Lance A. Ito, who sat beside his wife, Capt. Margaret York, during an hourlong lunch break from the trial.

Under the glare of more than a dozen television cameras, Police Chief Willie L. Williams and Riordan hailed the 17 officers as heroes, and labeled Fuhrman an aberration.

“The LAPD stands for honor and integrity,” Riordan said. “We will not stand idly by as outsiders paint the LAPD with a broad brush of one bigoted man. The vast majority of our officers deserve our highest praise.”

Watson, for example, risked her life to arrest two vicious robbers on the evening of Jan. 27, 1993. The officer and her partner, Jeffrey Alley, 33, had been assigned to a robbery stakeout in the Jordan Downs housing projects in Watts, where a local gang had been beating, pistol-whipping and shooting helpless lone victims. (Gang members had become so brazen that on two previous occasions, they stopped, boarded and robbed passengers on city buses passing through the area.)

Watson and Alley spotted two masked gunmen beating a victim over the head, but as they moved in to stop the attack, the suspects opened fire, pelting the officers’ squad car with eight rounds of ammunition. The officers escaped injury, and the suspects were eventually taken into custody. There were no more robberies in the area for several months.

And then there was the story of Officer Mendoza and his partner, Gerald Ballesteros, 30. On the evening of Sept. 29, 1993, the officers had just arrested a gang member when they were ambushed while traveling back to the station in the Newton Division. While Ballesteros escaped with minor injuries, Mendoza was shot four times. He received a standing ovation as he went up to receive his medal.

“At the time it happened, I was thinking about my wife, who was eight months pregnant. I was hoping I would somehow pull through for her,” he said after the ceremony, which was sponsored by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. “Now I’m just happy to be alive. I have some aches and pains, but things are fine.”

Since 1925, the medals have been awarded to about 400 officers who have distinguished themselves by “conspicuous bravery.”

Others receiving medals Wednesday were:

* Officers Angelito Angeles, 31, and Henry Izzo, 46, who rescued trapped survivors inside the Northridge Meadows complex after the 1994 earthquake.

* Officers Darnell Davenport, 30, and Jean Salvodon, 30, who survived a gun battle with assault suspects they were pursuing in the Wilshire district.

* Officers Edward Broussard, 33, and Adam Milecki, 44, who disregarded their own safety to rescue people trapped inside a burning apartment complex.

* Officers Hong Kim, 27, and Donald Lint, 34, who initiated rescue measures and saved numerous people from the fires and destruction spawned by the Northridge earthquake.

* Detective Thomas Carr, 49, who while on his honeymoon in Steamboat Springs, Colo., rescued people trapped inside a building that was engulfed in flames after a gas explosion.

* Officer Darcie Kolar, 27, and Reserve Officer Michael Petrusis, 27, who were injured when their squad car was rammed by a drunken motorist but still rescued the driver from his burning car.

* Officers Francisco Caingcoy, 39, and John Sandling, 51, who rescued motorists from their burning vehicles after a traffic collision.

Times staff writer Erin Texeira contributed to this story.