Officers Won’t Be Charged in Slaying of Tyisha Miller

Four Riverside police officers were cleared of criminal wrongdoing Thursday in the December shooting death of Tyisha Miller, 19, but their tactics in trying to grab a gun from her lap as she sat unresponsive in her car were a “mistake in judgment,” the county’s top prosecutor said.

The four young officers acted hastily in breaking a window of Miller’s locked car, said Riverside County Dist. Atty. Grover Trask. They did so, they told police investigators after the shooting, because they believed Miller was in medical distress and they wanted to clear the way for paramedics to treat her.

The shooting, which is still being investigated by the FBI for possible civil rights violations, has generated racial tension and national notoriety because of the circumstances and because of the fact that the officers were white and the victim was black.

The decision not to file criminal charges in the death of Miller, who was struck by 12 bullets and never fired her own handgun, was a “close call,” Trask acknowledged at a tense news conference.

“The police were called to a dangerous situation where there was no question that a gun was present,” Trask said. “Their response to that situation was a hastily planned attempt to break out the window and grab the gun on the victim’s lap, believing that some type of medical and/or safety emergency required their immediate action.

“It was a judgment call and a mistake in their judgment,” Trask said.

The officers have told their superiors that they saw Miller arise and reach for her gun after they broke her driver’s side window. Consequently, they said, they fired to protect themselves.

“We do not believe, after reviewing all the available evidence, and understanding the potential legal defenses, that there is sufficient evidence for any criminal charges against the four officers,” Trask concluded.

The Rev. Bernell Butler, a cousin of Miller’s, immediately denounced the district attorney’s decision. Meeting with reporters outside the news conference, Butler said, “I feel sickened.”

The FBI has not yet completed its own investigation, spokeswoman Laura Bosley said Thursday.

Trask said he has asked the U.S. Justice Department and the state attorney general’s office to investigate possible civil rights violations because of racial comments made by other Riverside police officers in the wake of the shooting.

In Sacramento, Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer called actions of the four officers in the shooting “unwise and ill-conceived,” but agreed that the evidence against them was insufficient to secure criminal convictions of the policemen.

Twelve attorneys and investigators from the attorney general’s office participated in the investigation of the officers at the request of Trask, Lockyer said. He said his employees concurred unanimously in the decision not to bring criminal charges.

‘No Evidence’ Race Played Role

“There is no evidence whatsoever that these four officers killed Tyisha Miller because of her race,” Trask said. Rather, he said, the officers so firmly believed that Miller was in medical distress, because of the jerky motions she was making, that “they risked one of their fellow officer’s lives by planning to have him enter the car and grab the gun.”

The fact that Miller was shot in the back--with no damage to her reclined car seat--was evidence that Miller indeed had sat up when she was shot, Trask said.

The Rev. Butler disagreed.

“They’re sending a message that racism goes to the core in Riverside . . . and that police officers are above the law, that they can get away with murder,” said Butler, his eyes tearing.

“Their plan was, ‘We’ll break the window and if she moves, we’ll kill her,’ ” Butler said of the police officers. “It was an idiotic, doomed plan. . . . They were racist. They murdered that girl.”

Critics of the shooting, who have already staged several marches and church rallies, said another march would be held Monday, from Riverside City Hall to the district attorney’s office a block away, to protest Trask’s decision.

The protests, which have twice brought the Rev. Jesse Jackson to Riverside, have included calls for the officers’ immediate arrests on charges of murder. Miller’s relatives have filed a civil lawsuit in the shooting.

Riverside Police Chief Jerry Carroll did not attend Trask’s press conference but later said, “If they had retrieved that weapon without further incident, they would have been heroes.”

Bill Hadden, the attorney for the four police officers, said his clients were relieved by their exoneration, but expect to remain on paid administrative leave until the Riverside Police Department conducts a further inquiry into the appropriateness of their tactics. That analysis--and decisions on any possible internal disciplinary action against the officers--was delayed pending the results of the district attorney’s criminal investigation, he said.

The officers were identified as Daniel Hotard, 23, and Paul Bugar, 24, both of whom had been on the force for less than a year, and Wayne Stewart, 25, and Michael Alagna, 27, who had been police officers for less than four years.

Miller, who lived in Rubidoux, had spent the day of the shooting with friends and had been drinking gin, according to the district attorney’s report. Later that evening, the car Miller was driving, which belonged to her aunt, got a flat tire, and ultimately she ended up parking at a Riverside gas station.

A friend who was with Miller called Miller’s home for help and then left the scene, leaving Miller alone. A cousin and another friend arrived and found Miller apparently unconscious in her car, which was locked but idling.

The cousin called 911, saying in a somewhat frantic voice that “my cousin’s in a car and she has a gun on her but she’s passed out. We can’t get in the car ‘cause it’s locked.”

Sequence of Events Described

Within minutes, the four police officers arrived, talked to the two other young women and then tried to awaken Miller by shouting at her, banging on her window, shaking her car and pointing a flashlight into her face.

“She remained in her trance-like state, moving slowly in an odd fashion with a white substance around the edges of her mouth, and unresponsive to the officers’ commands,” the district attorney’s report stated. In her lap was a .380-caliber semiautomatic Lorcin pistol.

After police first rapped on a car window, Miller--who had been lying flat in the reclined driver’s seat--sat up and fidgeted with her pager, causing the officers to step back, worried that she was reaching for her gun, the report said. None of the officers fired.

Hotard then broke the driver’s door window and had just begun to reach in for the gun when, he told police investigators, he heard a loud, single crack of gunfire and felt its concussion near his head.

Thinking he had been shot, he fell backward onto the pavement.

It was unclear which officer fired the first shot, but each of the other three said they saw Miller reach for the gun, Trask said. One officer said he saw Miller put her hand on the gun.

According to the report, Bugar later told police investigators he saw Miller make a “quick movement” toward the gun “that scared the hell out of me. . . . I thought she was going to shoot Hotard or one of us.”

After the initial shot that caused Hotard to think he had been struck, the officers fired a volley of bullets, paused for several seconds, and opened fire again after Miller again moved for the weapon, they said.

Altogether, the officers fired 24 times.

In considering whether to file criminal charges--ranging from murder to involuntary manslaughter--against the officers, the issue came down to whether the tactical decision to break Miller’s window was so flawed as to rise to the level of criminal negligence, Trask said.

“I am not condoning the police officers’ actions or suggesting that their plan was the correct one,” Trask said. But he said that police “are often forced to make split-second decisions about the force necessary in a particular situation.”

His own investigators did not independently interview the four officers, but relied on transcripts of interviews conducted by Riverside homicide investigators who questioned the four officers, Trask said.

Given the tensions surrounding the Miller investigation, the Riverside Police Department activated its emergency operations center Thursday to brace for any problems and to serve as “rumor control,” said Nancy Castillo, who was working there.

There were no immediate reports of problems, she said.

The Los Angeles Police Department went on modified tactical alert at 1 p.m., but called it off at 4 p.m. “when there was no unusual activity in the city,” said LAPD spokesman Jason Lee.

In a modified tactical alert, Los Angeles officers are not allowed to go off duty, but do respond to nonemergency calls and take meal breaks.

Times staff writers Carl Ingram and Miles Corwin contributed to this story.