LAPD Officer Testifies He Feared for His Life

As the suspects pulled away from the bar they had just robbed, Det. Rodney Rodriguez went into high gear. He put an extra round into his shotgun as his partner pulled their unmarked police car out into the street.

He would be ready when, after cornering the suspects in a cul-de-sac, one leaned out of the getaway car and pointed a gun in his direction.

“I yelled: ‘Gun,’ Rodriguez, a Los Angeles Police Department officer, testified Friday. “And I leaned out the passenger side of the car and I started shooting at the vehicle, especially at the guy who was leaning out of the back seat with the gun.”

Those tense moments when a hail of police gunfire claimed the lives of three robbery suspects go to the heart of the trial of the only survivor. Michael Rochelle Smith, a police informant who implicated his friends in a series of robberies, is accused of murder in the deaths, which occurred in the shootout with police on Feb. 25, 1997.

In the trial, which began this week in Los Angeles County Superior Court in Van Nuys, Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol Fisch said the officers shot in self defense, making Smith criminally responsible under the rule that any member of a group of criminals is responsible for the acts of the others.

Rodriguez also told jurors that he was in fear for his life, and that of his partner, each time he fired.

When one robber leaned out of the car and aimed his revolver at them, Rodriguez said he responded by firing his shotgun “three or four times.”

“I thought he was going to shoot [my partner] Charlie or myself,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez withstood cross examination by Deputy Public Defender James Coady, who is attempting to persuade jurors that the self-defense story is contrived. Coady contended that the police had prior intent to shoot the robbers, which makes them responsible for the deaths, not Smith.

Coady has attempted to turn the trial into one on Rodriguez’s controversial unit, the Special Investigations Section. He has said that the unit has engaged in a pattern of shooting suspects while claiming self defense.

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Similar allegations have been swirling around the elite unit for a decade.

A federal jury decided in a lawsuit in 1992 that SIS officers wrongfully shot three robbers to death and injured a third after a Sunland McDonald’s holdup. Others lawsuits against the unit and department are pending, including five involving the shooting for which Smith is now standing trial.

At least one criminal jury has rejected similar arguments. Robert Wayne Cunningham, who--like Smith--survived a 1995 gun battle with police, was convicted last year of murder for the death of his accomplice at officers’ hands. Cunningham poked out a sunroof and shot at officers when they tried to apprehend him.

But, unlike Cunningham, Smith simply ran away and was later found hiding under the deck of a nearby home.

Rodriguez, the detective who testified Friday, said the 20-man unit had been following Smith and two accomplices for about two weeks before they saw some of them enter the ClassRoom bar in Northridge and rob the register and patrons while Smith’s half-sister waited in the get-away car.

The group drove off and, apparently unintentionally, turned into a cul-de-sac. When they made a U-turn to get out, they were boxed in by four detectives in two unmarked cars.

That’s when the shooting started.

Rodriguez is expected to continue testifying on Monday.