After the Fire

It was his third crime scene in less than 48 hours. With helicopters buzzing overhead and squalling squad cars racing past, Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Robert Gale drew a breath and thought: “Not again.”

But when he pulled up in front of the yellow police tape, his fears were realized. There lay another of his own, injured and bloody, while a civilian lay dead, felled by the officer’s bullet.

Gale, of the LAPD’s West Valley Division, spent the next several hours telling his officers what lay ahead. It was the first stage of what the department calls “officer-involved shooting” investigations, which attempt to sort out whether police protocol was adequately followed or excessive force used.

From turning in their weapons to undergoing weeks of internal interviews, the 11 officers involved in four shootings last week in the San Fernando Valley face a process that elicits both praise and criticism.

It is a highly formal, months-long process that begins immediately after a police shooting. A team from the LAPD’s robbery-homicide division heads to the crime scene to interview both officers and witnesses. Investigators compile an administrative report within 60 days, and the case is reviewed by a panel of high-ranking LAPD officials as well as a peer officer.

Recommendations on whether the shooting was justified and within department policy or not are made to the chief of police. Ultimately, the chief brings each case before the five-member civilian Police Commission for a final review.

Although police officials defend the process as beyond reproach--”meticulous and extensive,” said Deputy Chief Martin Pomeroy, who oversees the Valley Bureau--a host of critics over the years have said the internal review elicits more sympathy than scrutiny.

Their concerns are bolstered by the number of shootings that result in criminal charges against the officers, or even disciplinary action. Although LAPD spokesmen were unable to provide exact figures, they acknowledged that only a fraction of last year’s 70 police shootings resulted in disciplinary action. The same was true for 1994, when there were 74 police shootings.

Adding to critics’ concerns is the lack of outside scrutiny--especially since the district attorney’s office last fall lost to budget cuts its own team that reviewed police shootings. Now, primary responsibility for referring police shootings for prosecution rests with the county’s police agencies. Since September, the LAPD has not referred a single case for prosecution, according to Allen Field, the deputy district attorney who oversees special investigations.

“You can’t police your own and make people believe you are doing it correctly,” said Field. “It’s like the teacher who walks out of the room during a test. There’s always someone who’s written the answers on their sleeve and now there’s no one looking.

“Now, at the LAPD,” said Field, “there’s no one [else] looking.”

The investigations of the Valley shootings are just beginning, but the following are initial police versions of what happened in each incident.

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In the first of the Valley cases March 9, Jaime Jaurequi of Reseda matched the description of a suspect involved in a minutes-old assault with a deadly weapon. The 23-year-old man caught patrol officers’ attention because he was driving in the area without taillights. But when they tried to pull Jaurequi over, he sped away, leading to a 45-minute pursuit through the West Valley.

Jaurequi, tracked by helicopter, ended up in a cul-de-sac in the 8600 block of Wystone Avenue at the Park Parthenia housing complex in Northridge.

According to police, the trapped man rammed a heavy, wrought iron fence and then began reversing--heading toward police who had been summoned to the scene.

Five officers opened fire, killing Jaurequi in his car.

The officers--none of whom had ever been involved in a shooting--were taken back to the West Valley police station and told to remain in Gale’s office.

Officers involved in shootings are typically kept away from others at the station. That is necessary, authorities say, to preserve their recollections as well as to help them recover emotionally from the incident.

“They sit down and relax,” Gale said. “A sergeant sits with them the entire time.”

Then their guns are taken away. This, too, is part of the internal review so investigators can check and test the weapons. Typically, officers hand over their 9-millimeter pistols back at the station--out of public view.

“We don’t want to give the impression the guy’s a loose cannon,” said Lt. Tony Alba, a department spokesman.

Back at the station, Gale encouraged the officers to call home, to tell their families about the incident. Four of the five had five years or more of LAPD experience.

Still, two of them cried.

“Usually, the hardest part is the call home,” Gale said. “They have to tell their loved ones what they were just involved in.”

At that point, Gale began to explain the steps involved in the internal investigation. The officers would each go back to the crime scene separately and recall details of what happened and when. They would then--with a police union representative--be interviewed on tape by the investigators back at the station.

And they were all told to make appointments with the LAPD’s psychologists--a routine procedure.

Kris Mohandie, a police psychologist who heads the LAPD’s Behavioral Sciences Service Section, said the officers most frequently show mixed feelings, including remorse for having killed someone, but relief at not having been hurt or killed themselves.

While the five officers involved in the Jaurequi shooting were waiting at the station, they heard the calls go out from what would be the second police shooting of the night in their division.

“There were long minutes that went by before they learned that an officer wasn’t dead,” Gale said.

“They were all in a state of shock from their shooting, and now here’s a case where a suspect nearly killed the officer again. I think a lot of people were kind of in a haze, a state of shock that this kind of violence was going on.”

*

At about 11:30 p.m., another group of patrol officers heard a radio call about a possible burglar rummaging through a construction site in Tarzana. Officer Geno Colello had struggled with William Betzner, 43, and become partly wedged inside Betzner’s El Camino pickup truck. With the officer inside, Betzner took off, driving up to 70 mph. Colello shot Betzner once in the head, police said.

Gale went to that scene immediately after a decision was made to keep all officers on duty, even on overtime. The shifts were changing and roll call was cut short to ensure that as many officers were on the streets as possible.

Gale arrived before the paramedics, the coroner and the “jaws of life” device, which was needed to extract Colello from the car. Colello was trapped underneath the profusely bleeding Betzner, police said. Even Gale, a 26-year veteran, was moved by the sight.

“It’s just so hard seeing one of your officers trapped in a car. You see a dead person laying on him.”

The top police officials summoned to the first shooting scurried to the second.

“I was at the first when I heard about the second one on Ventura,” Pomeroy said. “I’d say I spent about five hours at those two scenes and then going back to the station to check on the officers.”

Colello, who has just two years of full-time experience with the LAPD, had returned to work just three weeks before from an injury he suffered when another suspect rammed his car.

Because of the two incidents on that Saturday night, Gale decided to go out on patrol with his watch commander Monday evening. About 5 p.m., he heard the radio calls coming fast and furious. Assistance was needed in an alley in Canoga Park. Supervisors requested, along with paramedics.

Once again, Gale rushed to the scene.

*

Officer Johnny Jackson, a 15-year veteran assigned to bicycle patrol, had swung by a car stopped in the alley notorious for drug trafficking. One of four passengers immediately fled, prompting Jackson’s partner to give chase. As Jackson approached the brand new Nissan Altima to question another passenger, the man started to reach in his waistband.

Believing the man was about to pull out a weapon, Jackson reached into the car. But the driver took off, dragging Jackson along. Jackson fired a shot and killed Eduardo Hurtado, police said.

The tactics of both Jackson and Colello--of reaching into cars--will be thoroughly reviewed, authorities said. Though officers are discouraged from reaching into vehicles, department officials said, they are allowed to if they believe it will stop a dangerous situation.

“In the hectic response to the call and the adrenaline’s pumping, sometimes they did something they thought was the right thing, but may not have been,” said Lt. Bill Hall, who supervised police shooting investigations for nine years.

The parallels between the Jackson and Colello shootings were immediately obvious to Gale, who said he is personally convinced the officers believed their lives were in danger.

In all three West Valley shootings, the civilians were dead. Officers were injured. And all nine officers involved in the three incidents have been cleared to return to duty.

*

If the Jackson and Colello shootings were classic examples of the perils of reaching into a car, police officials said, then Officer Clemente Toscano’s experience illustrated the potential danger of a seemingly simple domestic dispute.

Responding to a routine radio call to Klump Avenue in North Hollywood, Toscano and his partner suddenly found themselves in a gun battle with Myron Bowers, who apparently had been expecting the police when he walked toward their patrol car and fired two shots.

Before the police car could come to a complete stop, Toscano jumped out and returned fire, hitting Bowers in the shoulder. Then he and his partner, Raymond Valois, drove after Bowers as he ran down the street, taking a hostage before being wrestled to the ground by passersby.

Two bullet holes from Bowers’ revolver--one on Toscano’s side and one on Valois’ side--pierced the windshield, police reports show. The black-and-white patrol car was kept in the parking lot at the police station, where their colleagues walked by and marveled at it. Some took pictures. Others just shook their heads.

North Hollywood Capt. Richard Wahler said the sight of the car struck him deeply.

“I gave both of them a hug when I walked into my office,” he said. He added that he immediately realized the even greater emotional impact the sight of the shattered windshield could have on the officers and their families. Like Gale, he instructed his men to see the LAPD psychologists, but Wahler also suggested that they take their wives along.

Both officers have since been cleared to return to duty.

Although the internal investigation is months away from being completed, Wahler praised the officers’ actions.

“This was a testimony to the training we receive,” said Wahler, who oversees the North Hollywood Division. “They approached that suspect exactly how they were trained. . . . They did it instinctively.”