Plea Bargain in Shooting Case Angers Police

To police who work a gang-dominated neighborhood in Northeast Los Angeles, the April 26 shooting was attempted murder of an officer, plain and simple, and the suspect deserved nothing less than a stint in state prison.

To the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, the case demanded a more complicated analysis, in part because it involved a young witness and a suspect with no criminal record. But when the D.A.’s office cut a controversial plea bargain that calls for the shooter to spend nine months in jail--and no prison time--the case rocked LAPD morale, incensed rank-and-file officers and frayed relations between police and prosecutors.

“They [prosecutors] feel that this is a totally appropriate sentence based on the fact that this kid has no prior record,” Det. James McCann, who works at the Northeast station, said this week. “That’s just outrageous. . . . This was a good case, a state prison case. This is not a county lid [jail] case, not when you try to kill a police officer.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kelly Chun, who negotiated the plea, suggested that officers are overreacting because the case involves fellow cops.

“LAPD is usually that way when it’s one of their own,” she said. “It’s not always that way when it’s somebody else.”

The hotly debated plea bargain grew out of an incident involving LAPD officers Andy Aguayo and Raul Pedroza, who work a special gang detail in the Northeast area. On April 26, Aguayo and Pedroza, who had received a number of complaints about gang activity in the neighborhood, decided to get out of their car and patrol the area on foot.

As they roamed the neighborhood near Avenue 52 and Marmion Way, an 18-year-old named Gilberto Romero allegedly pulled a .22-caliber pistol from his pocket or waistband, flashed it to a girl and fired six shots in the direction of the two young officers, whose backs were turned at the time.

According to statements by the officers, some of the shots came within three to four feet of hitting them.

Romero ran off but was caught trying to escape from a building by climbing out on a tree branch. His gun was found in the building and he was arrested on suspicion of the attempted murder of a police officer--a charge that could have put him in prison for years.

But rather than try Romero for attempted murder of an officer, prosecutors negotiated a plea, knocking the case down to an assault and recommending a sentence of nine months in County Jail. A judge will review that sentence recommendation Tuesday.

Although the case is one of thousands of plea bargains by local prosecutors each year, it resonated among police officers in the Northeast Division. In the wake of the deal, many officers contend that prosecutors failed to go to bat for cops whose lives were threatened and that the district attorney’s office is generally reluctant to bring anything other than a slam-dunk case to trial.

Moreover, the recent shooting case has drawn comparisons to a 3-year-old incident well known among police in the Northeast area. During that altercation, one gang member pointed a sawed-off shotgun at another, and even though he never fired it, he was sentenced to five years in prison, far longer than Romero is likely to spend behind bars.

“How does that square?” asked one Northeast patrol officer who was briefed last week about the Romero sentence. “One guy goes to prison for pointing a gun at a gang member, but a gang member who shoots a gun at a police officer gets off. Nobody can believe that.”

Romero’s sentence includes probation and calls for him to serve the entire nine months behind bars, but that does little to soften the blow for angry police officers.

“It’s hard for us to understand [why Romero gets nine months] when a gang member points a shotgun at another gang member and gets five years,” said Lt. Harold Clifton, the officer who supervises the Northeast station’s anti-gang CRASH unit.

Chun declined to comment, but others noted that there are differences between the two cases and subtleties in the Romero incident that could affect a trial lawyer’s strategic decisions.

In his statement to police, Romero--who has a tattoo on his neck reading “Dogtown,” the name of a local street gang--acknowledged having fired several shots from the handgun. But Romero said he was aiming at another gang member, one who allegedly had fired first at him. If true, that would suggest that police officers were not the intended victims and that Romero was not guilty of trying to kill cops.

Whether Romero’s story would have held up in court is difficult to say. Police interviewed a young girl who witnessed the shooting, and she said Romero had told her to watch as he fired toward the officers. According to her statement, the girl said she believed that Romero intended to shoot the officers, and she also undercut Romero’s story about being fired on first by someone else.

But the girl was reluctant to testify, and prosecutors were hesitant to expose her to danger by putting her on the stand. What’s more, officers did not summon detectives to the scene and did not collect physical evidence that might have strengthened their case. All that made a plea bargain more attractive, according to sources close to the case. Still, Aguayo and Pedroza made no secret of their unhappiness about the outcome, one that they believed all but exonerated a known gang member of trying to kill them.

As word spread among their colleagues at Northeast, anger boiled so furiously that Clifton decided that he needed to brief officers at roll calls last week. Asked how officers reacted, the lieutenant responded wryly: “Not well.”

Some officers vented their anger among their colleagues and with supervisors. Others quietly fumed and complained that the prosecution’s decision puts their lives at risk by sending a message that few consequences exist for shooting at officers.

McCann and others at Northeast agreed, and said the effect of the plea bargain was to treat the shots at the two officers less seriously than if they had been civilians.

Chun stressed that her decision in no way was intended to undermine the police. “The disposition is not because of the fact that it’s police officers,” she said.

Those reassurances notwithstanding, that’s a hard sell at Northeast station these days. It is, after all, the same district attorney’s office that prosecuted four LAPD officers for beating Rodney G. King with their batons. And the resentment from that case, compounded with the most recent one, has left a deep scar on the relationship between police and prosecutors.

“I don’t know why a policeman goes to prison for use of a stick, while a gang member only goes to jail for using a gun,” Det. McCann said. “This case is just flagrant.”