D.A. Clears 6 Cops Who Killed Robbery Suspects

The Orange County district attorney’s office has cleared six Anaheim police officers in the shooting of two alleged armed robbers who died in a barrage of gunfire this year at a busy Garden Grove shopping plaza.

The April 20 shooting killed Anaheim residents Sergio Perez, 29, and Claro Hernandez, 24, sent bystanders diving for cover and left the suspects’ car riddled with bullet holes.

Police say the men were responsible for a string of more than 20 fast-food restaurant heists. Officers fired on them shortly after they robbed an El Pollo Loco of $2,100 at the bustling Harbor Town & Country Center, investigators said.

There has been much debate nationally over when police should intervene when following people suspected of committing crimes. Prosecutors concluded that the Anaheim officers’ actions were warranted and that they should not be held criminally culpable for the deaths.

“The shootings of Claro Hernandez and Sergio Perez were reasonable under the totality of the circumstances that existed at the time,” wrote Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary Anne McCauley in a letter to the Anaheim Police Department on Tuesday.

The officers were part of a surveillance team that had followed Hernandez and Perez to the shopping plaza. Officials said the goal of the operation was to identify the suspects, not to catch them in the act of committing a crime.

Officers had been trailing the men in a caravan of three cars, when they watched the men wheel into the plaza at about 9 p.m. Officers said they watched as the pair backed into a parking space, hurried toward the restaurant, pulled on masks and demanded cash at gunpoint. Officers waited for the men to leave, then blocked their getaway with police vehicles. Police say that when the men refused to surrender, the shooting began.

Given ‘Every Opportunity’

The suspects “were given every opportunity to comply before they were shot,” said Orange County district attorney’s spokeswoman Tori Richards.

“The passenger was told to surrender and didn’t,” Richards said. “He reached between his legs and was shot and killed. The driver got out and reached for his waistband. Afterward, police found two guns in the driver’s waistband and the passenger had a sawed-off shotgun between his legs.”

Anaheim police spokesman Rick Martinez on Wednesday characterized the shooting as “unfortunate, but justifiable.”

“We’re pleased that this independent investigation has shown what we already knew to be the case,” Martinez said.