Crime Beat

emptying his shotgun of shells. In the meantime, other officers shot the man who had run from the car when he allegedly turned and pointed a pellet gun at them.
    “I knew I was out of ammo on my shotgun,” Helms said. “I put it in my car and took out my .45.”
    Helms then described how he and his partner approached the car to make sure the three robbers inside were no longer a threat. He said that when he looked into the car one of the men in the backseat was reaching for a gun on the floor. Helms said he yelled for the man to stop and fired twice when he did not comply. Helms said the other man in the backseat then reached for the weapon, and Helms fired at him as well.
    Helms said he did not know how long the shooting lasted. “When I believe my life is in danger, I am not a good estimator of time,” he said.
    During cross-examination of Helms, the plaintiffs’ attorney, Stephen Yagman, pointed out that the weapon the officer claimed to have seen in the car was an unloaded pellet gun. Yagman has said that the jury will have to decide whether it is plausible that the robbers would have pointed or attempted to reach for pellet guns when confronted by nine officers with shotguns and .45s.
GATES WANTS TO BE ‘JUDGE, JURY, EXECUTIONER,’ LAWYER SAYS
Courts: Attorneys make their closing arguments in the trial stemming from a February 1990 shooting in Sunland in which officers killed three robbers.
March 25, 1992
    The Los Angeles Police Department is a “Frankenstein monster” created by Chief Daryl F. Gates, who has allowed a squad of officers to operate as “assassins,” a federal jury was told Tuesday in a trial over a police shooting that left three robbers dead.
    But the allegations made by an attorney representing the robbers and their families was rebutted by the city’s attorney, who defended Gates and said members of the police squad—the Special Investigations Section—use tactics designed to avoid shootings.
    The statements came during closing arguments in a three-month trial stemming from the Feb. 12, 1990, shooting outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Sunland.
    “The police have gone too far in Los Angeles by using excessive force,” plaintiffs’ attorney Stephen Yagman said.
    “The LAPD and Daryl Gates have ruled this community for 14 years by fear,” Yagman said. “He does and has done as he pleases. The LAPD is his Frankenstein monster. It is something that has gone beyond all bounds. . . . He wants to be judge, jury and executioner.”
    Gates and nine SIS officers are defendants in the lawsuit filed by the families of three bandits who were killed by police and a fourth who was shot but survived. The lawsuit contends that the officers used excessive force and fired on the robbers without cause. The 10-member jury is expected to begin deliberations today.
    Deputy City Atty. Don Vincent countered Yagman’s claims by telling jurors that evidence presented in the case clearly shows the nine officers opened fire when they sensed they were in imminent danger. He defended the firepower—35 shots from shotguns and handguns—as being an appropriate response when the officers saw the robbers brandishing weapons. The weapons were later discovered to be pellet guns resembling real handguns.
    Vincent cautioned jurors not to confuse the superior firepower of police with excessive force, noting that each officer feared for his life and had reason to fire. “This is not the Old West where you get out on the street and have a shootout at noon,” Vincent said. “They are not the sitting ducks of the public.”
    According to trial testimony, the officers opened fire on the bandits after they watched them break into the closed McDonald’s, rob the lone employee inside and then return to their getaway car. The shooting started almost immediately when officers converged on the car.
    The plaintiffs contend that the bandits had put their unloaded pellet guns in the trunk of the car and therefore were unarmed when the shooting started.
    Noting that U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts ruled earlier that the police had probable cause to arrest the four suspects before the robbery, Yagman argued that the officers allowed the crime to take place and orchestrated the stakeout in such a way that the shooting was “inevitable, inescapable.” He said the special police unit has a long record of using tactics that often end in shootings.
    Yagman said police took the pellet guns from the trunk after the