LAPD Unit Tails Men to Heist in Orange County; Gunfire Erupts

Police opened fire Thursday in a shopping center parking lot after five men, being tailed by undercover police from Los Angeles, stormed a Wells Fargo bank here.

Two of the suspects were wounded, but no one was injured in the parking lot or the bank, where the masked and armed men jumped over counters and emptied drawers.

The suspects, who had been under surveillance for up to a month by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Special Investigations Section, were being followed Thursday when the robbery occurred about 10:30 a.m., said LAPD Cmdr. Tim McBride.

Five gun-toting men dressed in dark T-shirts and jeans drove into a parking lot behind a Ralphs grocery store in a van and a Jeep Cherokee, which had been stolen from Culver City, Buena Park Police Lt. Robert Chaney said.

As one man stayed with the van, four went in the Jeep 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 customers and employees 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 parking lot. They apparently were loading the cash into the van when “an undercover police car came screeching in,” said Deane Champagne, a hairstylist working nearby. Several undercover police cars surrounded the van and were trying to arrest the suspects when shooting erupted, Champagne and other witnesses 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.”

Champagne and other witnesses estimated that between 10 and 15 shots were fired, which left the van riddled and its windows shattered. It was not known if the suspects also fired.

One suspect was grazed in the head by a bullet and another was injured in the leg, apparently from flying glass shards or a ricocheting bullet, a UC Irvine Medical Center spokeswoman said.

Both men were reported in stable condition, and three others were being held at the Buena Park City Jail and awaiting transfer to the Orange County Jail, police said. Their names were not available Thursday afternoon.

The men, ages 20 to 25, are suspects in at least 13 other robberies over the past two years, according to the FBI. The targets include three other Orange County banks and banks as far as Desert Hot Spring and Moreno Valley.

In addition, they are suspected of robbing the Wells Fargo branch hit Thursday at least once before, and possibly as many as six times before, Chaney said.

“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.”

The capture of the five suspects also highlighted a controversial practice by the SIS team of trailing suspects and watching them commit violent crimes before stepping in to arrest them.

The unit has been involved in 52 shootings since it was formed in 1965, according to the LAPD. Over the past 15 years, SIS officers have been involved in the arrest of 700 suspects, 300 of which were armed. Eighteen people have been killed and 16 wounded.

To some, SIS officers are steely nerved officers who bring some of the region’s most dangerous criminals to justice. To others, they are too willing to engage crooks 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. “It’s pretty clear that we need somebody out there to follow the absolute worst criminals in the area,” said Dave Hepburn, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents some 9,300 LAPD officers. “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 position and have asked them to do a difficult job. The potential violence is always there.”