Answers Sought From Police, Fire Departments in Robber’s Death

The head of the Los Angeles City Council’s Public Safety Committee said Tuesday that she will ask top police and fire officials to respond to allegations that a bank robber in last year’s North Hollywood shootout was allowed to bleed to death.

Council member Laura Chick said a Times investigation of the incident “raises concerns in terms of both policy and procedural issues and fiscal liability.”

According to The Times’ report, Emil Matasareanu slowly and unnecessarily bled to death because some of the officers involved made a series of mistakes and some of the firefighters violated their department’s guidelines for dealing with such situations.

Chick said she will request that a closed-door briefing with the city attorney and police and fire officials be held “sooner rather than later,” perhaps this week.

Earlier in the day, Police Chief Bernard C. Parks denounced any suggestion that officers allowed Matasareanu to die during the Feb. 28, 1997, incident, saying that a wounded officer or citizen would have been treated in the same manner.

“It’s a ludicrous allegation to believe that Los Angeles police officers allowed anyone to die as a conscious act,” Parks said. “Everyone got the same amount of treatment, and I think it’s inappropriate to try and come a year later and make some clarification whether one person got better treatment than another.

“Let’s keep it in perspective,” an agitated Parks said after the regular weekly Police Commission meeting. “We’ve never seen a situation where people are walking through city streets firing high-powered weapons at anyone indiscriminately.

“Now we’re trying to make it sanitary and clinical and say why didn’t we do something that someone a year later thought was important?” Parks asked. “We should not try to put a negative bent on something that appears to be one of the more positive . . . operational responses by Los Angeles police officers.”

Police Commission President Edith Perez criticized The Times story saying, “It assumes facts not in evidence.” She declined to elaborate on what those facts were.

“When the chief submits the full investigative report, our specialized staff will review [it], and we will then look at facts and evidence which we don’t have quite yet,” she said. “I think it’s very interesting that [The Times] managed to have some facts and evidence that we don’t have,” Perez said.

Commissioner Herbert F. Boeckmann said the only problem he had with the shootout was that “officers didn’t have equal firepower.”

The commission is scheduled to review the shooting within the next few weeks, officials said. Additionally, sources said commissioners may have their inspector general investigate The Times’ findings.

Meanwhile, attorney Stephen Yagman, who has sued the LAPD on behalf of Matasareanu’s two children, announced Tuesday that he had filed a lawsuit against Fire Department paramedics and Chief William Bamattre, alleging that they conspired with the LAPD to kill the gunman.

Bamattre strongly denounced The Times’ report, saying rescuers followed policy and did not cause the death of Matasareanu. “To imply that the actions of our members contributed to the deaths is inappropriate,” he said.

He also said rescuers chose to transport a patient with minor wounds rather than the more severely wounded robbery suspect because they feared Matasareanu may still be armed or booby-trapped. Fire Department rescuers, in police and fire reports, have not cited that as a reason for failing to transport the suspect.

Before rescuers arrived at the scene, officers had already handcuffed and searched Matasareanu. They later interrogated Matasareanu, prodded him with their feet and helped him shift positions.

The Times found that a police officer at the shooting scene erroneously told Fire Department rescuers that he thought Matasareanu was dead, and emergency medical technicians accepted that assessment without examining the suspect, Fire Department records show. Later, when the rescuers discovered that Matasareanu was still alive, the Fire Department’s dispatchers never were informed, according to one of the commanders on the scene.

Tapes of Fire Department radio messages show that rescuers were fully aware that a citizen they took to the hospital instead of the critically wounded Matasareanu had suffered only minor, not life-threatening, injuries. As a result, Matasareanu lay bleeding in the street for nearly 30 minutes after firefighters at the scene realized he was alive, because dispatchers still assumed he was dead.

After the ambulance departed, police let a critical 20 minutes elapse before calling to remind a dispatcher that the wounded robber still needed treatment, police communications tapes show. Though Matasareanu was just a few minutes from death at that point, the officer told the dispatcher to send an ambulance only “when there’s one available,” according to the LAPD communications tapes.

By the time an ambulance sent to his aid arrived, it was too late. Matasareanu had succumbed to injuries that could have been treated with standard emergency care. These findings contrast sharply with city authorities’ version of events.

Police and fire department officials have said rescuers in the first ambulance to reach the scene opted to take a wounded citizen to the hospital because his injuries were severe but treatable, while Matasareanu appeared to have little chance of survival. Authorities also said they could not send a second ambulance to pick up Matasareanu because the scene where he lay wounded was a so-called kill zone in which other suspects were believed to be at large.

“I don’t think [The Times’ report] gave the [the police officers and firefighters] a fair shake,” said Don Vincent, the deputy city attorney who is defending Los Angeles in the suit filed on behalf of Matasareanu’s children.

For example, Vincent said, the fact that a 3-year-old child was allowed to play on her family’s patio just a few feet from where Matasareanu lay bleeding should not suggest that the area was not dangerous.

“That doesn’t lessen the danger,” Vincent said. The Times’ reconstruction of the events, he said, “diminished the danger these [police officers and firefighters] felt.”

Contrary to The Times’ findings, police and fire officials contend that the area where Matasareanu lay was “too hot” for an ambulance to come to his rescue.

Vincent added: “You cannot point out anything a police officer did that was malicious or intentional.”

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Times staff writer Matt Lait contributed to this story.