Rash of Deaths Haunts Police Departments

With terrifying frequency, Southern California law enforcement officers have fallen in recent months: one in Oxnard, one in Pomona, one in Brea, one in Fullerton, one outside Ojai, and three in a murder-suicide in La Mesa.

This week alone, officers from San Diego County to Ventura County are wearing black bands across their badges, silent testimony to colleagues killed.

The reasons for those deaths are as different as the officers themselves. Some died in domestic disputes, some were killed by fleeing or desperate criminals, one was struck by a train in Brea and another was shot by a colleague.

But every one of them stirs deep trauma for friends, families and the law enforcement agencies, whose employees often feel overwhelmed by the dangers they face daily.

“We’re a small department, just 129 officers, probably closer knit than a lot of big city departments,” Capt. Bill McClurg of the El Cajon Police Department said after the La Mesa shooting July 12 that cost the lives of two of that city’s officers. “When we lose someone, it’s like losing family.”

The deaths of those and other Southern California officers come at a time when statistics indicate that crime is declining, but those statistics do not account for the full reality of life for today’s police. For even as some types of crime diminish, experts fear that the proliferation of weapons and strict sentencing laws may be empowering criminals and making them more desperate, a combination that may be making police work increasingly dangerous.

Since 1993, every year has seen a modest national increase in the number of officers killed on duty, ticking upward from 155 to 172 in 1995. Similarly, California peace officers’ deaths on duty have marched higher through the 1990s: Ten California law enforcement officers died in the line of duty in 1991; last year, 16 working officers lost their lives to killers or accidents.

Nowhere is the threat to police more carefully scrutinized than in Los Angeles. Police Chief Willie L. Williams commands Southern California’s largest law enforcement agency, one that has recorded 186 officers killed in the line of duty since about the turn of the century. About half died in accidents and half in shootings.

No LAPD officer has died on duty since Gabriel Perez-Negron was killed in a traffic accident Nov. 4, 1995. But a rash of confrontations between police and suspects in March caused department officials to reflect on the rising tide of violence directed at their officers. In a space of less than 48 hours, police said, two suspects sped off in cars with officers hanging on; another opened fire on police when they responded to a domestic violence call; a fourth was shot trying to ram a police car.

Three of the suspects were killed and one was wounded.

When members of the Los Angeles Police Commission asked Williams about the incidents, he said he believed the state’s three-strikes law could be prompting suspects to act more aggressively in resisting arrest. Two of the suspects in the March incidents were repeat felons facing 25-year-to-life sentences if caught and convicted of another crime.

“Some suspects are committing heinous crimes to get away from police,” Williams said at the time, adding that he believed suspects would continue to resist more because the stakes for getting arrested had risen so dramatically in some cases.

That theory is hotly disputed in criminal justice circles. Some observers agree with Williams. If criminals know they’re going to prison for life if caught, the reasoning goes, they may be more likely to shoot a police officer in order to escape.

Others are not so sure. Criminals in the act of inflicting violence on police officers or others, they say, may not be inclined to consult sentencing guidelines.

“Three strikes doesn’t make these guys kill coppers,” said Los Angeles Police Protective League President Bill Harkness. “This guy who killed the CHP officer [Don Burt] in Fullerton wasn’t worrying about three strikes. He was a hard-core . . . gang puke.”

Whether or not suspects strike out at police in response to the threat of going to prison, only a few of the recent police deaths have been the result of officers confronting suspects. But those are the most striking examples of the rising threat to police from armed criminals.

One of those was the July 13 attack on Burt. According to police, Burt was killed by a man who shot him six times, then stood over him and fired one last and fatal shot into the officer’s left eye.

Police have arrested Hung Thanh Mai, a 25-year-old Orange County man and alleged gang member. He was apprehended in Houston, but is expected to be returned to California soon.

Four days later, on Wednesday night, a Ventura County sheriff’s deputy was responding to a domestic violence call at a home outside Ojai when a suspect opened fire. Deputy Peter Aguirre was shot in the head and upper body and was pronounced dead at a hospital.

The suspect in that case had a long criminal record, authorities said. And, like so many suspects encountered by police today, he was armed with a gun.

The proliferation of weapons, say veteran officers, has been among the most striking changes in policing in modern times. Where it once was a rarity for officers to encounter an armed suspect, today it is all too common. More than any other single factor, police say, the availability of weapons contributes to the danger confronting officers, even on seemingly routine calls.

“An awful lot more people are carrying guns around these days,” said Lt. Bruce Hansen of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. “That’s certainly more true than when I was a patrol officer.”

And it was the case for Daniel Fraembs, a Pomona police officer on patrol shortly after midnight May 11. Fraembs was patrolling a darkened industrial complex and was working alone. He was shot and killed.

A suspect was arrested 10 days later in Lake Havasu, Ariz. He has been charged with homicide of a police officer, said Sgt. Michael Ervin of the Pomona Police Department.

As with any police killing, the region’s most recent one, the shooting outside Ojai, reverberated through the local law enforcement community. In Ventura, sheriff’s deputies donned the black bands on their badges that serve as memorial to a fallen officer. And officers at agencies throughout the region said the shooting was a reminder of what many have long known: that some of the most dangerous situations involve domestic violence.

“Those calls are the most dangerous,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy George Ducoulombier. “They’re so unpredictable. You’re going into someone’s house, and they’re all riled up. You’re in their environment, and you don’t know where there might be weapons.”

With domestic violence calls on the rise--and with the suspects more likely than ever to be armed--police say they rarely have a respite from fear. That’s true regardless of the crime rate, they said.

“Just because there are 10 less burglaries in the city,” Harkness said, “doesn’t mean there are 10 less bad guys out there willing to attack a copper.”

But that is not the whole story in the region’s recent police killings. Half of the deaths in recent months have come at the hands not of hard-core criminals or battle-scarred gang members but of fellow officers--one by accident and three in a shocking murder-suicide.

When Oxnard police officers raided a house in March, one sergeant mistook James Rex Jensen Jr. for a drug dealer. In the smoke, noise and confusion, he shot and killed his fellow officer. A few days later, the despondent sergeant escorted Jensen’s widow to the funeral. Last week, however, the widow sued the Oxnard department and the sergeant.

The murder-suicide remains under investigation, but authorities say it appears to have been the work of a young LAPD officer named Guillermo Delacruz, who allegedly killed his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend before killing himself.

Like Delacruz, the two victims were police officers. Patricia Garcia and Mark Amato worked for the El Cajon Police Department.

Although elements of that case make it a particularly striking one in the history of Southern California law enforcement, it was not the first domestic violence killing involving police officers--either as victims or as perpetrators. Nor, some officials are sure, will it be the last.

Indeed, the changing nature of police departments has had unintended side effects: Once the domain of men, law enforcement agencies are increasingly open to women, and the natural emergence of police officer couples has brought relationship stresses inside police departments.

Relationships will only become more common, and the fallout, officials warn, may increasingly explode within the ranks.

“We now have police officers dating police officers,” one senior LAPD officer said. “When they break up, everybody has their own gun.”

Times staff writer Mack Reed contributed to this story.

* DAILY DANGERS: O.C. officer’s slaying reminds CHP’s Bonnie Lingan of risks she faces. B1

Fallen in the Line of Duty

In recent months, a number of Southern California law enforcement officers have died violent deaths. Of them, three have been shot while on patrol or responding to calls for help.

Daniel Fraembs, 37

He had served three years with the Pomona Police Department. Fraembs was found dead near his patrol car about 1:30 a.m. May 11. He had a gunshot wound to his upper body. A suspect was arrested 10 days later in Arizona.

Don Burt, 25

Burt had been a California Highway Patrol officer for just over a year. On July 13, he was shot six times at close range by an assailant who then stood over him and fired one more bullet into his left eye. A suspect is in custody.

Peter Aguirre, 26

He joined the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department in 1994 and became a patrol officer about three months ago. Aguirre was responding to a domestic violence call July 17 when he was fatally shot. A suspect with a long criminal record is in custody.