Police Ignored Probable Cause

Don Schweitzer’s letter of Dec. 22, about the murder conviction of armed robber Robert Cunningham (“First Comes the Crime, Then the Arrest”), poses the question: “How could their (LAPD) officers have tried to arrest the suspects until they had committed a crime?” The answer is probable cause.

Probable cause is a requisite element of a valid arrest. Probable cause has been defined in various cases to consist of the existence of facts and circumstances within one’s knowledge and of which one has reasonably trustworthy information, sufficient in themselves to warrant a person of reasonable caution to believe that a crime has been committed. In Cunningham’s case, the LAPD had ample probable cause to make an arrest before the crime of robbery ever occurred.

At the time Daniel Soly and Cunningham committed their crime, Soly had a parole violation warrant for his arrest as well as two outstanding criminal charges. He could easily have been arrested before he ever set foot in the liquor store. Furthermore, during the police surveillance of Soly, one LAPD detective witnessed Soly in a drug buy. This is yet another reason why an arrest could have been made before the suspects committed the robbery, and before anyone was shot and killed.

The LAPD motto is “To Protect and to Serve.” It is the job of the LAPD to bring criminals to justice. Bringing criminals “to justice” however means bringing them to court, not killing them where they find them. My questions to Mr. Schweitzer are these: Why should detectives from the LAPD permit innocent people to be victimized, perhaps even killed, in order to witness an armed robbery? Is it the function of the LAPD to ignore probable cause to arrest in order to shop around for a crime commission that carries a stiffer sentence and better probability of conviction? And just whom did the LAPD protect and serve here?

BING SMITH, Attorney, Ventura