Officers Told to Get Stories of Shooting in Line, They Say : Law Enforcement: Three Torrance police officers fired for lying about the shooting of an unarmed man last year say investigators told them to meet and 'get your stories straight.' The police chief says they are lying again.

By JAMES RAINEY

Dec. 21, 1989 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Three former Torrance police officers, fired last year after they were accused of lying about the shooting of an unarmed man, say they were put in a room by Police Department officials on the night of the shooting and told to “get your stories straight.”

Department officials investigating the shooting of Patrick J. Coyle last year violated basic police procedure when they encouraged the three officers to discuss the shooting among themselves, Timothy Pappas, the officer who fired the shot, said in an interview.

Deputy Police Chief Jim Popp denied the officers’ accusation. “The department made no effort to get these three together to make up a story that is a lie,” Popp said. “They can grasp at all the straws they want and make all the innuendoes they want. The bottom line is, they didn’t tell the truth.”

Coyle, a Torrance construction worker, was partially paralyzed in the shooting.

Pappas was fired along with two officers, Mark Holden and Timothy Thornton, who backed him up on the night of the shooting, May 9, 1988. All three were accused of lying when they said that Coyle was shot because he appeared to be reaching for a weapon in his waistband.

Without telling the officers to lie, department investigators encouraged them to present the same account of the shooting, the three officers say. Thornton made the claim last week in court testimony; Pappas concurred a day later in an interview. Holden’s attorney, Scott Furstman, would not allow him to comment but said his client had confirmed that the officers conferred about the shooting.

The Torrance Police Department “wanted to make this case go away,” Furstman said. “One of the ways they did this was to tell the officers to get their stories straight, so there would be no discrepancies.”

The investigation was reopened four months after the shooting, when Thornton told a superior that the shooting was unprovoked, police reports say. Thornton was a probationary employee at the time of the shooting and said he feared that his job would be in danger if he did not go along with the story.

Earlier this month, Pappas was fined $2,250 and placed on probation for one year after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of falsifying a police report and obstructing an investigation. Holden was ordered Tuesday to stand trial on felony charges of conspiracy to falsely charge another with a crime and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Thornton was given immunity to testify against the other two.

Pappas described the incident last week in his first interview since the shooting. He said he was patrolling on the east side of the city, in a neighborhood where several armed prison parolees reportedly shared a house, when he saw Coyle astride his motorcycle.

Pappas said that, given the neighborhood, he became suspicious when Coyle spotted the squad car and backed quickly off Western Avenue and onto 226th Street.

In earlier interviews, Coyle has said he was merely waiting by the side of the road for a friend when Pappas approached him.

Pappas later told superiors that he fired a single shot when Coyle reached toward a shiny object in his waistband. Holden, who arrived in a backup unit and was behind Coyle to put him in a restraining hold, also told investigators that Coyle moved suddenly, as if for a weapon. Thornton, who arrived with Holden, gave essentially the same account.

Holden and Thornton were allowed to drive back to the station together after the shooting, Popp said this week. “That is against our normal procedures,” Popp said. “At the moment I don’t know what the explanation was.”

Investigators typically separate police officers and other shooting witnesses so that their statements are not influenced by others, Popp said.

Pappas returned to the station in a separate patrol car. Not long after he arrived, Pappas said a detective asked him: “Have you had a chance to talk to Holden and Thornton? I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Well, go into the room and get your stories straight.’ ”

Moments later, Holden and Thornton joined him in a small interview room, Pappas said. The three took about five minutes to describe to each other what they had seen at the shooting scene, but no one suggested that they lie, Pappas said.

Pappas concedes now that he lied to the other officers and later to investigators when he said that Coyle reached for a shiny metal object in his waistband and that a wrench fell out of Coyle’s pocket. In fact, Coyle had removed the wrench from his pocket and dropped it on the ground before the shooting, Pappas said.

But Pappas, 27, still contends that Coyle was uncooperative from the moment he was stopped, raising his hands only after several commands to do so. Coyle dropped his hands slightly just as Holden moved behind him to place him in a restraining hold, Pappas said.

Pappas said Coyle’s movement made him tense up and pull the trigger accidentally.

“I’m not going to find out where the hand is going,” Pappas said. “This guy was being so froggy at the time, and I jerked and the gun went off. . . . I was in fear for my life.”

Coyle has said in past interviews that he did not move and cooperated fully with police.

The shot from Pappas’ .45-caliber pistol threw both Coyle and Holden backward. When Holden picked himself up, Pappas said, Holden spotted the wrench on the ground and said: “He had a wrench.”

Holden’s lawyer, Scott Furstman, said the training officer had no way of knowing that the wrench was on the ground and honestly believed that the suspect made a threatening movement before he was shot. Neither of the other officers at the scene told Holden that the wrench was already on the ground before the shooting, Furstman said.

But Thornton told superiors that he and the other two officers intentionally gave false statements, police reports say. When he came forward four months later, Thornton told supervisors that Holden had pressured him on the ride back to the station by saying: “We need to go to Tim’s (Pappas’) aid. . . . The story’s got to be right.”

Pappas said that in his version he “put the wrench back in Coyle’s pocket” because he did not want his account to differ from that of Holden, a respected member of the department. Pappas said he had been unfairly labeled a “fink” in the past by fellow officers and did not want to face the same accusation by giving a different account than Holden.

Furstman said department investigators spared themselves a complicated investigation of the shooting by permitting the officers to talk about the incident.

Pappas agreed. “They came back to me later and said, ‘All three of your stories are pretty much the same,’ ” he said in the interview. “Surprise, surprise.”

Popp said the Police Department has thoroughly investigated the officers’ claim that they were told to present one account of the shooting.

“I checked with the supervisors and the detectives who were involved and they verified for me that that did not take place,” Popp said.