Crime Beat

shooting and “planted” one inside the car and one on the body of a robber who had run from the car before being shot by police. He said police photos show the gun inside the car in different positions, indicating police tampered with the evidence.
    He said that while the claim that guns were planted might be “hard to digest,” the alternative—the police story—defies common sense.
    “What person, when faced with nine officers with shotguns, would point an unloaded, inoperable pellet gun at them?” he asked. “What does common sense tell you?”
    In his closing argument, Vincent denied that Gates condones excessive force. He also said an extensive department investigation cleared the officers of any wrongdoing.
    He recounted police testimony that the gun was indeed moved. Vincent said the gun was photographed as it was found by officers and then removed from the car but later replaced so additional photos could be taken. But the original photographs are clearly marked, he said.
    Vincent noted that the weapon allegedly planted on the body of Herbert Burgos was the same weapon the survivor, Alfredo Olivas, testified that Burgos used during the robbery. Vincent asked jurors how the officers could have known on which robber to plant which weapon.
    “Nothing was planted in that car,” he said. “It would mean that it was happenstance that they placed the right gun with the right body.”
    Vincent said the explanation for why the robbers pointed unloaded pellet guns at the police will never be known. “They might have thought it was someone else and raised the guns to scare them,” he said.
    NOTE: The federal jury hearing the SIS case found for the plaintiffs, awarding the families of the killed robbers and the lone survivor a total of $44,042 in damages.
COUNCIL SUED OVER FATAL POLICE SHOOTING
Attorney offers to drop members as defendants if they make Gates pay damages assessed in same incident. Officials angrily charge extortion.
April 2, 1992
    Los Angeles city council members were sued Wednesday over a police shooting that left three robbers dead, but the attorney who filed the case offered to drop them as defendants if they make Police Chief Daryl F. Gates personally pay for damages assessed against him this week for the same shooting.
    Council members familiar with the new suit and a city attorney who defends the city in police-related cases reacted angrily to the offer from civil rights attorney Stephen Yagman, which was contained in a letter to the council that accompanied the new $20-million suit.
    “Sounds like extortion, doesn’t it?” said Deputy City Atty. Don Vincent, head of the city’s police litigation unit.
    Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who favors making Gates pay the damages from his own pocket, said he was nonetheless disturbed by Yagman’s letter.
    “Nobody likes to be threatened,” he said.
    Councilwoman Joy Picus, who is undecided on the issue of whether Gates should pay, said Yagman was using tactics of intimidation and harassment.
    “The nerve of him,” she said. “I’ve dealt with attorneys who have tried to extort and threaten me before. I’ll be damned if I’ll be intimidated by him.”
    Yagman denied his offer to the council was improper or threatening.
    “Everybody has a right to ask people in the government to do or not do something, and to say if you do it the way we want we will take action or refrain from taking action,” Yagman said. “That’s not extortion. That is trying to settle the lawsuit.”
    The lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court against the council and numerous police officers and officials is the latest twist in the case that has followed the Feb. 12, 1990, shooting outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Sunland.
    The shooting initially spawned a lawsuit on behalf of four family members of three robbers killed by members of the police Special Investigations Section and a fourth robber who was shot but survived.
    The plaintiffs, represented by Yagman, contended that the police used excessive force and fired on the robbers without provocation. Gates was named as defendant because the suit said he was ultimately responsible for the officers’ actions and condoned the use of excessive force.
    After a three-month trial, a federal jury returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiffs Monday and awarded punitive damages of $44,042 against Gates and nine members of the SIS. Jurors said the damage award was purposely set low because they believed