Chief’s 3-Strikes Theory Generates Mixed Reaction

Lawyers, legal scholars and lawmakers were divided Wednesday over LAPD Chief Willie L. Williams’ assertion that the state’s tough “three-strikes” sentencing law may be partly to blame for a cluster of four police shootings in the San Fernando Valley.

Some experts, including the county’s chief public defender, agreed that the 2-year-old law had created a sense of desperation among some convicted felons that could lead to more violent resistance.

Others, however, citing the Los Angeles Police Department’s controversial history and the typical behavior of repeat offenders, disputed the chief’s theory.

“I suppose it’s possible to argue that the grapevine will produce a reaction on the part of criminals . . . that they will go down shooting,” said state Sen. Charles Calderon (D-Los Angeles), one of those who greeted Williams’ comments with skepticism.

“But I find it hard to believe there will be many of those instances.”

Williams advanced his theory on the law’s impact Tuesday after police shot four suspects in a period of less than 48 hours in the Valley, killing three and wounding one. In two cases, the suspects were two-time felons who, under the three-strikes law, would have received prison sentences of 25 years to life if they had been arrested and convicted of a third offense.

According to police, both those men--William Thomas Betzner, who was on parole for a 1978 double murder, and Myron Bowers, who was on parole for armed robbery--were shot because they endangered police officers.

Betzner, 43, was killed Saturday night in Tarzana after he was approached by police and sped off in his car with one of the officers hanging on. Bowers, 35, was wounded Monday in North Hollywood after he opened fire with a .38-caliber revolver on officers responding to a domestic violence call.

Though it is possible that those suspects were worrying about spending their remaining days in jail when they fled, Santa Monica attorney James Bianco said such foresight “is not consistent with the clients I’ve worked with” on a half-dozen three-strikes cases, most of which involved narcotics charges.

“These don’t seem to be people who think through what they are doing or that they are three-strikes candidates, which is how they get into trouble in the first place,” Bianco said. He said that one client attempted to flee after being caught in the middle of a residential burglary, but that the others “went very willingly.”

Stephen Yagman, an attorney who specializes in suing the LAPD over police brutality complaints, scoffed at Williams’ “fantasy that harsh sentencing laws cause LAPD cops to be brutal.”

Yagman, saying that many more police suspects were shot in Los Angeles than in New York City in 1994, contended that the department’s training is to blame.

“A person who is confronted by an LAPD officer has a reasonable probability of getting killed, so it is irrational for Williams to guess that people who are afraid of going to jail would rather die,” Yagman argued.

In fact, LAPD statistics show a steady decrease in the shooting of suspects over the past four years, a trend that offers no support for Williams’ theory, which would suggest an increase in shootings after the law was on their books.

In 1993, 112 suspects were shot, 21 of them fatally, and 54 injured. In 1994--the year the three-strikes law took effect--there were 74 police shootings, resulting in 13 deaths. Last year, there were 70 shootings and 17 deaths.

Williams, appearing Wednesday night at a town meeting sponsored by Neighborhood Watch groups in the West Valley, said in response to a reporter’s question that he expects violence by two-strike suspects to affect the public at large, as well as police officers.

“Some suspects are committing heinous crimes to get away from the police,” he said. “They are going to resist more,” he said, but he predicted that “you won’t see more police shootings” just because of the increased resistance.

Los Angeles County Public Defender Mike Judge said that though he could not comment on the recent Valley cases, he agrees with Williams’ belief that the law has created “extraordinary” anxiety among people charged with crimes, including even those to whom it does not apply.

Judge predicted that suicide rates among jail inmates will go up as a result.

“I am aware of a case where a client who was not facing three-strikes prosecution, but had a prior record for drugs and forgery, upon being apprehended by a store clerk for petty theft led police on a one-hour chase all over the county, falsely thinking he was subject to a 25-year-to-life sentence,” Judge said.

He has clients with no serious record of violent conduct who became “assaultive” when faced with the prospect of a life sentence for three offenses, he said. They feel desperate not only because of the length of the sentence, but also because they think the basic concept of the law is unfair, Judge said.

Calderon, who chairs the state Senate Judiciary Committee, said he doubted Williams’ comments would spark a movement to modify the three-strikes law to apply only to violent crimes, as the chief suggested.

“This is the first time I’ve heard any suggestion that three-strikes places officers’ lives on the line because of criminals being desperate,” Calderon said. “I think it’s highly speculative.”

Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Woodland Hills), who chairs the Assembly Public Safety Committee, said that in recent hearings on the law, none of the sheriffs or police chiefs who testified raised any such concern.

“From what they are telling us, the law is doing what it is supposed to do, which is reducing crime,” Boland said.