Man’s Family Questions Police Shooting : Law enforcement: Officials say mentally ill suspect charged at them with a pocketknife. Relatives contend officers were overzealous and touched off the incident.

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 pocketknife.

Chief Randy Adams said Tuesday that Officer John Hughes appeared to be justified in shooting Pedersen 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.

Pedersen was hospitalized Tuesday with bullet wounds to his chest and lung, and faces a charge of attempted murder. The Simi Valley Hospital listed him in fair condition.

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

Hughes, 31, a former LAPD officer who joined the Simi Valley force 14 months ago, has been placed on paid administrative leave after shooting Pedersen--standard practice for officer-involved shootings.

Pedersen’s mother, Bea Pedersen, said officers she had invited into the house ignored her pleas to wait before entering her son’s bedroom. She said she was on the phone with psychiatrists when police 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,” Bea Pedersen 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, formerly of the Los Angeles Police Department, was killed in a shootout with a disturbed Chatsworth teacher whom 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 Ventura County 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, blamed the Ventura County mental health crisis team for not arriving sooner to bring his son out peacefully. Although he said 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 pocketknife, 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 have answered 21 such complaints about Pedersen in the past seven years. Neighbors said they often heard him screaming religious slogans and blasting his boombox.

Adams, the Simi Valley police chief, 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 unfolded 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.

Randall Feltman, director of the Ventura County Department of Mental Health, agreed with that assessment. “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.

As for the charge that police may aggravate suspects who are already disturbed, 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.

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

On Tuesday, he ruminated on the horrible things that schizophrenia has done to his son.

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

“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, his father said.

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