Parents Question Shooting of Mentally Ill Son : Police: Mother wonders if officer aggravated situation by rushing to break down door to bedroom where psychotic man was moaning.

The parents of a mentally ill man who was shot by police questioned Tuesday whether overzealous officers prematurely rushed him before a mental health crisis team could arrive.

Simi Valley police officers said they shot Mark Pedersen twice and accidentally wounded one of their own officers Monday afternoon when the psychotic man charged them with a knife.

Chief Randy Adams said Tuesday that Officer John Hughes appeared to be justified in shooting Pedersen, 32, because the man was trying to stab Officer Dave Raduziner. One of the bullets passed through Pedersen’s chest and shattered Raduziner’s right thigh bone, Adams said.

Both men remain hospitalized.

But Pedersen’s mother, Bea, said that the officers she invited into the house ignored her pleas to wait: She was on the phone with psychiatrists when they kicked down her son’s bedroom door because--they said later--they heard him moaning and thought he was hurting himself.

“This one officer seemed so antsy,” she said. “I just felt they should have waited a few more minutes. I think it would have been a different story.”

Monday’s shooting was the second time in four months that a Simi Valley police officer was shot while trying to calm a mentally ill man.

On Aug. 4, Officer Michael Clark, a former beat cop in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Devonshire division, was killed in a gun battle with a disturbed Chatsworth teacher he had been sent to check on.

Critics have attacked police actions in both cases: The Pedersen shooting “looks essentially like a fingerprint” of the Clark shooting, because police pushed both mentally ill suspects to violence, said Deputy Public Defender Richard Holly.

“There’s something terribly wrong with the police response,” said Holly, who is representing Daniel Allan Tuffree, the man accused of killing Clark. “It’s being handled as if it’s a criminal investigation. . . . When you have that kind of approach, all you do is escalate the crisis to new levels.”

Pedersen’s father, Bob Pedersen, criticized the Ventura County mental health crisis team for not arriving sooner to bring his son out peacefully. And although he understands why police shot his son, he criticized them for pushing too hard.

“If I’d have been there, I’d have shot and killed him myself,” Bob Pedersen said. “If someone came out of a room with a little pocket knife, I wouldn’t want him carving on me, either.

“But the policeman that did the shooting, he was overzealous. And the fact that he shot the other policeman shows he was overzealous,” the elder Pedersen said.

“The last time the police were here,” Pedersen said, “they managed to get the door open and get him out [safely].”

In fact, police said they had answered 21 such complaints about Pedersen in the past seven years. Neighbors said they often got sick of him screaming religious slogans and blasting his boom-box.

Chief Randy Adams defended his officers, saying Hughes had to shoot Pedersen to protect Raduziner.

“From my cursory review of things in this situation, the officers acted as they had to,” Adams said. “Those events unfold in a matter of seconds. It was a very life-threatening situation.”

Besides, Adams said, mental health workers often prefer to let police subdue a psychotic person before trying to calm him down.

True, said Randall Feltman, director of the Ventura County Department of Mental Health. “If there is any question of a weapon or threat to public safety, the police officers really have to--and are trained to--secure that situation,” Feltman said. “In almost all cases, every day of the week, the police officers are able to kind of participate in settling people down, and they’re frequently [on scene] before the crisis team.”

As for the charge that police aggravate the suspect’s psychosis, Feltman said, “It isn’t an accurate statement.”

At the time of the shooting, the Thousand Oaks-based crisis team was delivering another disturbed person to the inpatient clinic in Ventura, he said. By the time another team of mental health workers arrived from the Simi Valley office, it was too late; police had cordoned off the crime scene and denied them entry.

Mark Pedersen was still hospitalized Tuesday with bullet wounds to his chest and lung, and facing a charge of attempted murder.

Officer Raduziner, a five-year veteran at age 31, was being treated at the same facility for a wound that could keep him hospitalized past Christmas, said Chief Adams. He was listed in good condition.

And Hughes, a 31-year-old former LAPD officer who joined the Simi force 14 months ago, has been placed on paid administrative leave after shooting Pedersen--standard practice in an officer-involved shooting.

Bob Pedersen said he spent time Monday night mopping up blood from his living room rug.

On Tuesday, he worried about his son’s ballooning hospital bill--he and his wife are on Social Security--and ruminated on the horrible things that schizophrenia had done to his son.

Pedersen began hearing voices nine years ago, and squandered a good job his father had helped him get at Hughes Aircraft, from which he eventually was fired, his father said.

He once stood on the train tracks all day waiting to be hit, until he realized no trains were coming because a rail accident in Chatsworth had closed the line, and walked home discouraged.

“He jumped off a bridge nine years ago on the freeway, and he fractured his jaw and his skull and arm and collarbone and shattered his left knee,” the elder Pedersen said. “He won’t take his medicine. I can understand why, because the side effects of the medicine are almost as bad as the problems.”

When he fails to take his medicine, he becomes belligerent, loud--even threatening, said his father.

“You can either fight him or subdue him or ignore him, and we found out the only thing you can do is ignore him,” Bob Pedersen said.

As for the charge of attempted murder, he said, “They can’t make the charge stick. My son is definitely mentally impaired.”

Lt. Tony Harper, a police spokesman, said Simi Valley officers receive 8 1/2 hours of academy training on handling the mentally ill, and 14 hours on the use of deadly force.

“There’s no specific policy on check-the-welfare-calls,” he said. “There’s no specific document spelling out step by step how to handle that kind of situation. It’s not possible. We must make contact in the safest, most practical way in order to evaluate a situation.”

Feltman said that he would like to offer police some training on how unstable people are likely to behave in a crisis and how they can de-escalate that crisis.

“People in a crisis feel out of control,” Feltman said. “Their judgment is impaired--it shuts off like a light switch. Overreacting and being overly aggressive can provoke a violent response. Patience and timing are key.”

Correspondent Andrew D. Blechman contributed to this story.