L.A. Officer Shot to Death by Undercover Policeman

One Los Angeles police officer shot another to death Tuesday in an armed car-to-car confrontation after the two men--both in plainclothes--got into a shouting match in traffic on a busy boulevard in Studio City, authorities said.

Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams said it appeared that the two men didn’t recognize each other as police. The slain officer was off duty when the shooting occurred, and although the undercover detective who shot him was on duty, he was riding alone in an unmarked car.

“We don’t know what occurred,” said Williams, who cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the incident. He said that there was nothing to indicate that the two officers had ever met, and he refuted speculation that the shooting resulted from a narcotics investigation gone wrong.

“This shooting arose from some other issue,” another high-ranking police source confirmed. “Their paths were not supposed to cross.”

The names of the two men involved were not immediately released. However, their colleagues on the force said that the 31-year-old officer who was shot had been with the LAPD Pacific Division for nearly a decade, and the undercover narcotics detective had spent a similar number of years with the Central Division’s field enforcement unit.

Police said the incident occurred about 4 p.m. in the 3700 block of Cahuenga Boulevard West, where undercover officers--including the detective who did the shooting--were working a sting operation. As the detective and the off-duty officer drove southeast on Cahuenga near Universal Studios theme park, the off-duty officer’s Mitsubishi Montero pulled up alongside the detective’s car.

“Some kind of verbal confrontation ensued,” LAPD Lt. Anthony Alba said. Alba said the off-duty officer then apparently pulled a gun and pointed it at the detective, who then pulled his weapon.

The detective fired twice into the Montero, and the off-duty officer slumped over the wheel, police said. Both cars pulled into an Arco station a couple of blocks away, the Montero hitting a parked Jeep. The mortally wounded officer was pulled out of the Montero by the detective as paramedics reached the scene.

James Lee Dillard, a 48-year-old homeless man who watched the incident unfold, said he heard two gunshots, then saw the man in the Montero “push up on his car door and fall out.”

“The next thing I knew, there were eight detectives,” said Dillard, who said he figured someone had tried to rob the gas station. Nervous, Dillard fled the scene.

“I didn’t want to stick around,” he said. “I got warrants.”

Tim Richardson, who lives across the street from the gas station, said he had gone into the station’s mini-mart when the two vehicles pulled in.

Richardson said he looked up to see the place aswarm with plainclothes officers wearing badges on their belts. He said paramedics pulled the shirt and what appeared to be a bulletproof vest from the officer’s bleeding body.

The off-duty officer was subsequently pronounced dead at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Burbank.

Colleagues of the two men decried the incident as a tragedy.

The undercover detective “is a good guy, a very hard-working guy,” said an officer who asked to remain unidentified.

Likewise, Leonard Ross, president of the Oscar Joel Bryant Assn., a black police officers group, said he had known the slain officer and was “shaken” by his death.

“He was a solid officer,” Ross said.

Times staff writers Andrew Blankenstein, Jose Cardenas, Matt Lait, Solomon Moore and Jim Newton contributed to this story.

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Police Shooting

A shouting match in traffic between two plainclothes policemen led to the death of one officer Tuesday afternoon. The incident began as an off-duty officer and undercover detective drove side-by-side on Cahuenga Boulevard. When they got into an argument, both men allegedly pulled their guns and the detective shot the officer.