Police Fire on Robbery Suspects, Wound 2

Police opened fire Thursday morning in a busy shopping center parking lot after five men being tailed by undercover officers stormed a Wells Fargo bank.

Two of the suspects were wounded by gunfire, but no officers or bystanders were injured. All five men were arrested on suspicion of armed robbery.

The suspects had been under surveillance by the Los Angeles Police Department’s controversial Special Investigations Section or SIS, which has been criticized for trailing suspects and watching them commit violent crimes before stepping in to arrest them. The five men arrested Thursday were targeted because they are suspected in at least 13 other Southern California robberies, but LAPD officials said they believe the group could be linked to as many as 30 holdups.

The SIS unit has been following the robbery suspects for up to a month and were again trailing them when the robbery occurred about 10:30 a.m., said LAPD Commander James T. McBride.

Five gun-toting men dressed in dark T-shirts and jeans drove into a parking lot behind a Ralphs supermarket at Lincoln and Knott avenues in a tan van and a white Jeep Cherokee, which had been stolen from Culver City, Buena Park police Lt. Robert Chaney said.

While one man stayed with the van, four went in the Cherokee to a Wells Fargo Bank in the same block, Chaney said. Three of them donned ski masks and at least one wore body armor as they stormed into the bank and ordered about 10 customers and employees, including two security guards, to the floor at gunpoint, Chaney said.

“They jumped the counters and emptied the bank-teller drawers,” Chaney said. “This is a pattern that they’ve used in other robberies.”

After taking an undisclosed amount of cash, they drove back to the Ralphs parking lot. The suspects apparently were loading the cash into the van when “an undercover police car came screeching in,” said Deane Champagne, a hairstylist working nearby. Undercover police cars surrounded the van and plainclothes officers were trying to arrest the suspects when the shooting erupted, Champagne and police said.

“What provoked the shooting is unknown to us,” Chaney said. “They had been boxed in. They were all in the same vehicle. . . . Something must have happened to provoke the shooting, but we don’t know what that is right now.”

Bill Norris, a receiving clerk at Ralphs, said he was standing behind the store when the shooting occurred. He saw an undercover police car speed by, with two black-and-white patrol cars on its heels.

“Some of the officers were motioning the others to stay back because they hadn’t detained the robbers,” said Norris, 50, of Anaheim. “Then I heard one gunshot, then I heard a bunch of gunshots.”

Norris said he had seen the Cherokee pull up to the parking lot moments earlier, but “didn’t pay much attention to it.”

Champagne, the 28-year-old hairstylist, also heard gunfire and hid behind some shelves.

“They were very loud and powerful gunfire,” she said. “I just knew it was something very serious. . . . I panicked. I ducked down to the ground.”

Champagne and other witnesses estimated that 10 to 15 shots were fired, leaving the van bullet-riddled, its windows shattered. Shell casings were scattered on the ground.

It was not immediately known if the suspects also fired.

One suspect’s head was grazed by a bullet and another’s leg was injured, apparently by flying glass shards or a ricocheting bullet, according to a spokeswoman at UCI Medical Center in Orange. Both men were reported in stable condition.

Three others were being held at the Buena Park city jail. Their names were not available.

“A number of the people arrested are not cooperating in terms of giving us their true identity,” Chaney said.

Authorities said they recovered the cash taken from the bank. It was not known whether there were any weapons inside the van, Chaney said.

Wells Fargo released few details about Thursday’s holdup, saying only that employees were traumatized, “especially because it involved more than one robbery.” Spokeswoman Kathleen Shilkret said that robberies had occurred at the same branch twice in the last month, and that in 1996 the branch was robbed three times. The suspects in Thursday’s robbery are suspected in at least one of those holdups and possibly all five, police said.

Bank officials stepped up security after the heists, hiring additional guards and installing other safety devices, but “there are only so many things that one can do,” Shilkret said.

Investigators said the same group of men, ages 20 to 25, are wanted in at least 13 other robberies over the last two years, according to the FBI. The targets included three other Orange County banks and other banks as far away as Desert Hot Spring and Moreno Valley. Investigators nicknamed the five men the “Jeep Cherokee bandits” because of their preferred getaway car.

“They have been operating long enough that they have a pattern that they found worked for them,” McBride said. “They have a strong-arm, very jeopardizing kind of style. . . . They usually vault the counter and go through drawers. It’s unusual because a lot of the bank robbers we’re used to dealing with have a more passive style.”

Because of the group’s reputation for potential violence, SIS officers waited until the suspects went back to the parking lot instead of arresting them at the bank, McBride said.

“If anything went wrong, we’re talking lives,” McBride said. “That make us more fearful.”

But the way the five suspects were captured Thursday also brought criticisms and highlighted a controversial practice by the elite SIS team.

The unit has been involved in 52 shootings since it was formed in 1965, according to the LAPD. Over the last 15 years, 18 people have been killed and 16 wounded in confrontations involving the special unit. SIS officers have arrested some 300 armed suspects over the same period.

“The public is better protected because this unit is in existence,” McBride said.

To some, SIS officers are steely-nerved cops who bring some the region’s most dangerous criminals to justice, but to others, they’re too willing to engage in gun battles in public surroundings.

Since its creation, the unit has been investigated by federal authorities for possible civil rights violations and sued by the relatives of suspects shot by SIS officers. One attorney who has filed several lawsuits against the city and LAPD because of SIS shootings has equated the officers to an urban “death squad.”

Two months ago, SIS officers shot and killed three people suspected of a string of holdups in the San Fernando Valley. The shootout followed the robbery of a Northridge bar. More recently, the team followed and helped arrest the man suspected of killing Ennis Cosby, the 27-year-old son of entertainer Bill Cosby.

“It’s pretty clear that we need somebody out there to follow the absolute worst criminals in the area. I think the North Hollywood shootout proved that,” said Dave Hepburn, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents some 9,300 LAPD officers. “These officers protect innocent people from getting injured or killed.

“Nobody should be surprised that their cases result in shootings because they are dealing with the worst of the worst,” he added. “We’ve put them in a difficult positions and have asked them to do a difficult job. The potential [for] violence is always there.”

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Bank Shootout

Police arrested five suspected bank robbers after a midday shootout in Buena Park. Two of the suspects were injured. How the confrontation unfolded:

1. Bank robbers drive to Wells Fargo Bank in stolen Jeep Cherokee; rob bank

2. They drive to Ralphs supermarket parking lot where getaway van is parked

3. While moving cash from Cherokee to van, robbers come under fire from police

Crime Calendar

Police say the so-called Cherokee bandits are suspects in 13 other bank robberies dating back two years:

1995

Date: March 15

Bank: Home Savings

City: Riverside

*

Date: Aug. 14

Bank: 1st Pacific National

City: Moreno Valley

*

Date: Aug. 31

Bank: Bank of America

City: San Pedro

*

1996

Date: March 18

Bank: Hawthorne Savings

City: Tarzana

*

Date: March 29

Bank: Wells Fargo

City: Sherman Oaks

*

Date: May 31

Bank: Wells Fargo

City: Buena Park

*

Date: Dec. 27

Bank: Bank of America

City: Buena Park

*

1997

Date: Jan. 3

Bank: Bank of America

City: Garden Grove

*

Date: Feb. 19

Bank: Bank of America

City: Desert Hot Springs

*

Date: March 25

Bank: Century Bank

City: Encino

*

Date: April 4

Bank: Bank of America

City: Torrance

*

Date: April 14

Bank: Home Savings

City: La Habra

*

Date: April 17

Bank: Bank of America

City: Arcadia

Source: Buena Park Police Department; Researched by THAO HUA/Los Angeles Times