Police Watch-Then-Catch Tactic Draws Fire

Despite several wild shootouts and hefty damage settlements, the police tactic of catching criminals by watching them as they strike has emerged as a common method of stopping the most sophisticated robbers and burglars.

Much of the focus--and criticism--over these tactics has centered on the Los Angeles Police Department, whose Special Investigations Section has been involved in more than 50 gun battles with dozens of suspects killed, and legal settlements and costs topping $2 million.

But other police agencies across the country are increasingly adopting similar tactics--and grappling with some of the same questions.

“I can’t believe they admit they’re doing it,” said Joseph McNamara, the former police chief of San Jose and Kansas City, Mo., now a researcher at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute. “I find it mind-boggling. . . . How in the world can they justify that?”

The frequency and nature of surveillance varies greatly, with some departments such as Chicago’s encouraging undercover officers to intervene immediately to prevent violent crimes. Others, such as in San Francisco and Phoenix, track suspects regularly.

Although the operations usually end without incident, they sometimes produce bloody results such as last week’s wild shootout at a Garden Grove shopping center, which left two robbery suspects dead and customers diving for cover.

Undercover police detectives shadowed the robbers for much of the day and had to make a split-second decision whether to intervene and stop a possible holdup or allow events to unfold in the hope of making an arrest.

For police surveillance teams, such moments present an agonizing choice between protecting people about to be victimized and gathering evidence that can put criminals behind bars, thereby preventing future crimes from being committed.

The surveillance is considered an effective way to combat “serial” robbers and burglars, whose expertise and speed at striking targets make them among the most prolific and elusive of criminals.

“You can’t understand, unless you’ve done it, the adrenaline thrill you get when you watch someone break into a car and when they’re through you say, ‘Hi, how are you? You’re under arrest,’ ” said Rick Stelljesa, a manager with the St. Petersburg, Fla., Police Department who once worked on its surveillance team.

But opponents of the practice argue that police are duty-bound to stop a robbery before it happens and that most surveillance operations are not worth the potential risk.

Often, critics contend, detectives allow suspects to carry out crimes before closing in simply to develop stronger cases.

“I think they have confused their obligation,” said Gilbert Geis, professor emeritus of criminology, law and society at UC Irvine. “Their object is to stop criminal behavior and protect the public.”

Police usually have other options, Geis and others said, such as arresting suspects on weapons or conspiracy charges before they commit a robbery or burglary.

“All they need to do is stop and frisk them, and they’ve got them for very serious crimes with mandatory sentencing, “ McNamara said.

That’s exactly how the Chicago Police Department handles surveillance operations. The city has a special intelligence unit that tails suspects, but team members are trained to make arrests immediately if they think a violent crime is about to occur, spokesman Patrick Camden said.

“The question is: Which is more important, to be able to charge someone with a robbery or prevent someone from being hurt? We’ll always go with the prevention,” Camden said. “You have no control of the situation once the robbery begins.”

For their part, supporters said the choices that surveillance teams must make are rarely clear-cut. In some instances, events slip beyond officers’ control, leaving them scrambling to make instant decisions to avoid possible bloodshed.

“If you had enough to arrest them on the spot, you would do it without putting anyone else at risk,” Stelljesa said. “But short of that, you go out and conduct that surveillance, and if a robbery occurs, you have a judgment call whether to interrupt it.”

Officers on Stakeouts Faced With Tough Calls

Calls

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The decision comes not only when these special police units follow suspects but also when they stake out banks, liquor stores and other locations they believe will be targeted by robbers.

Three months ago, Philadelphia police watched as two men walked toward a house where officers suspected drugs were being sold. Suddenly, the men donned masks, drew pistols and ran inside, Officer David Yarnell said.

“We’re waiting for them to come out now, and hoping that they don’t do anything terrible inside,” he said. “It’s such a fluid and varied situation, you have to leave it to the best judgment of the officers at the scene.”

Anaheim police said detectives also held back last week as two robbery suspects walked into an El Pollo Loco in Garden Grove because they did not have enough evidence to make an arrest.

Police had started trailing the pair earlier that day after getting a tip that the car they were driving might be linked to more than 20 holdups in Orange County in the last few months. None of the robbery victims had been able to give a good description of the robbers, who covered their faces during each heist.

As detectives looked on, the two suspects unexpectedly pulled on masks, drew pistols and robbed the store of more than $2,100, officials said. Officers decided to wait until the robbery was over to avoid bystanders getting hurt or hostages being taken inside the restaurant, officials said.

When the robbers ran out and jumped into their getaway car, a group of 10 well-armed detectives confronted them, trying to pin their vehicle in with their own cars. Dozens of rounds were fired in a wild gun battle that left the two dead.

“Sometimes you have to stay with it as the case develops in front of you,” said Anaheim Police Capt. Dave Severson, whose department ran the surveillance operation. “And when it does, usually it happens very quickly.”

Fresno police grappled with a similar incident several years ago when a group of officers trailed suspected robbers to a pizza parlor.

Detectives originally planned to intercept the bandits as they approached the restaurant, said Fresno Police Sgt. Frank Rose, who coordinated the effort. But in an unexpected move, the robbers split up before arriving at the eatery and entered before officers could act, he said.

In the end, the police unit watched as the four armed robbers ordered customers and employees to the ground before fleeing with cash. Police shot and wounded two of the robbers as they tried to escape.

“It’s almost like skating on thin ice sometimes,” Rose said. “When it comes to surveillance, more times than we’d like to admit, our actions depend entirely on the bad guys. If they do things contrary to what we expect them to do, then we’re stuck with what our next plan is.”

Surveillance operations attract publicity only when events lurch out of control. But experts believe even agencies where surveillance has not resulted in bloodshed have an ethical duty to question the risks they are taking. Some have suggested giving officers in the field less discretion by creating uniform standards that dictate when they should stop observing and make arrests.

“You have these large departments that have these [LAPD]-type units, but there are a lot of smaller departments that use investigative teams that do exactly the same thing,” said Geoffrey Alpert, professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina. “That is a moral issue that really needs to be looked at by American policing.”

No program has come under more scrutiny than the Los Angeles Police Department’s SIS unit, which critics accuse of “lying in wait” and then watching as armed robbers strike.

LAPD officials declined to comment for this story. But in previous interviews, SIS officers said they try whenever practical to make arrests before crimes are committed. In response to criticism a decade ago, the unit adopted a “reverence for life” policy, which states that “no arrest, conviction or piece of evidence can outweigh the value of human life.”

LAPD Criticized for Using Deadly Force

Nevertheless, the SIS has continued to draw criticism over its use of deadly force. In 1997, SIS officers killed three people suspected of a string of holdups in the San Fernando Valley. Two months later, the unit wounded two suspects in a gunfight at a busy Buena Park shopping center after watching them rob a Wells Fargo Bank. In 1999, SIS officers trailing a group of bank robbery suspects for three weeks shot and killed two of them after the holdup of a Granada Hills travel agency.

By contrast, Newport Beach’s three-person crime suppression unit has never engaged in a shootout. The unit was formed four years ago with a special emphasis on watching parolees and others suspected in serial crimes. And as long as the tactics continue to yield arrests, police officials said, they have no plans to alter what they considered a winning formula.

The team proved its mettle early on, watching drug buys in order to build a case against a well-entrenched group that supplied cocaine to restaurants and nightclubs along Coast Highway.

Two months ago, the unit struck again. Working to solve a string of burglaries across Orange County, the unit began watching a Santa Ana man who had recently been released from prison.

Investigators watched for more than two hours as he drove slowly past homes, then stopped at a Huntington Beach house and slipped into the home’s backyard. Following close behind, a detective watched the man pry open the sliding-glass door before making an arrest.

A search of the man’s home uncovered jewelry, clothes and other valuables linking him to 11 other burglaries, said Newport Beach Police Sgt. Mike McDermott, who credited the surveillance operation for the bust. “This is now a good case,” McDermott said. “What better evidence could you have against a bad guy caught in the act?”