Crime Beat

still the finest police department in the nation.”
    He said that almost all documents used as evidence in lawsuits against the police come from police-shooting reports, policy statements and disciplinary records. So facing the commission report is not a totally unfamiliar situation. Still, Vincent said, its impact may be the most difficult to deal with.
    “I think it is significant,” he said. “It has certainly gotten recognition and prestige.
    “But I think it is something we will effectively deal with. We think some of it is flawed. It gives a skewed view.”
    That view comes from the report’s focus on problems within the department without a full reporting on positive aspects of the force, Vincent said. The report’s conclusions are too broadly drawn, he added, and jurors will be unable to ascribe them to the officers involved in the McDonald’s shooting because neither they nor their unit is mentioned in the report.
    “This type of information should never be used,” Vincent said. “It has come into this case to prejudice officers that are not even named in it.”
    Still, Vincent is resigned to having that task of deflecting the effect of the report in trials to come.
    “I am not sure of all the ways it can be used against us,” he said. “So we are thinking about it.
    “We are just going to take it one case at a time.”
L.A. DETECTIVE TELLS DETAILS OF FATAL SHOOTING
Civil rights: The officer is testifying as a defendant in a suit alleging the Special Investigations Section killed three unarmed robbers.
March 5, 1992
    In testimony lasting nearly three hours in federal court Wednesday, a Los Angeles police officer described in grim detail the shooting in which he and fellow officers fired 35 times at four robbers outside a Sunland McDonald’s, killing three and wounding the fourth.
    Detective John Helms said he fired six times with a shotgun and three times with a pistol after seeing one of the bandits flee the getaway car with a gun and a second man brandishing a gun inside the car.
    Afterward, police discovered that the weapons used by the robbers during the Feb. 12, 1990, incident were pellet guns that were replicas of real firearms.
    During the shooting, Helms said: “I was looking for any indication that these men were trying to submit to arrest. I saw nothing” that indicated surrender.
    Helms’ testimony came in the months-long trial of a civil rights lawsuit filed by the surviving robber and the families of the men killed.
    Their suit contends that the nine officers who opened fire did so without warning or provocation and that the use of excessive force violated their rights. The suit says the officers, all members of the department’s Special Investigations Section, are part of a “death squad” that specifically targets criminal suspects for execution.
    The surviving robber, Alfredo Olivas, testified earlier that the bandits had stowed their pellet guns in the trunk of the car after the robbery and therefore were unarmed when fired upon. Several officers later testified briefly that they saw guns being brandished, prompting the shooting.
    Now, in the defense phase of the trial, the officers are testifying at length about the incident and why they opened fire.
    Seemingly choked with emotion during some of his testimony about the shooting, Helms told jurors that, because of tactical and safety concerns, the officers could not move in to arrest the bandits until the thieves left the McDonald’s after robbing the lone employee inside.
    When the four men were in their car, which was parked on the street, four SIS cars moved in to block their escape. Two of the police cars actually hit the getaway car, “jamming” it behind a parked truck.
    As officers jumped out of their cars, Helms said, he heard one officer shout “Gun!”—a warning that he saw a gun in the getaway car. Helms then heard shots being fired and shouts of “Police! You’re under arrest!”
    “Things were going on simultaneously,” Helms said. “I saw a man get out . . . and I saw a gun in his right hand. I saw him start to run.”
    Helms said that, because the robbers had used guns during previous crimes, he believed the men still inside the car were also armed and that the officers surrounding the car were in danger.
    “I started directing fire at the back,” Helms said. “The next thing I saw was one of the handguns being brandished through one of the holes in the rear window.”
    Helms fired again,