Police Defend Gunning Down Robbers

A barrage of gunfire that killed two robbers and sent bystanders diving for cover in a bustling Garden Grove shopping center marked the violent end to a police surveillance operation by 10 Anaheim police officers investigating a string of robberies at fast-food restaurants.

The shooting, which left the robbers’ car riddled with dozens of bullet holes, occurred late Thursday night after the two masked men held up an El Pollo Loco for more than $2,100, police said. The crime occurred in full view of the officers, members of a heavily-armed crime task force that had tailed the suspects for hours in a caravan of three unmarked cars.

Anaheim police on Friday defended their handling of the case, saying the officers’ tactics helped avoid any restaurant patrons or bystanders from being injured and that they believed the robbers were responsible for more than 20 heists at Mexican restaurants across North Orange County.

Officials said the goal of the undercover operation was to identify the suspects, not to follow them until they committed a robbery. The Los Angeles Police Department has come under criticism for a special unit that followed suspects, sometimes for days or weeks, and arrested them only after they committed crimes.

“Quite frankly, these folks were suspected of the robberies. We had a hunch that this vehicle was involved in the crime,” said Anaheim Police Capt. Dave Severson. “The surveillance was just to follow them. And when they pulled into this restaurant, things happened pretty quick.”

Police said the three task force vehicles began tailing the car in shifts early Thursday morning. At one point that afternoon, the suspects, identified as Sergio Perez, 29, of Anaheim, and Claro Hernandez, 24, stopped apparently to case an Orange fast-food joint but decided not to strike, authorities said.

It was about 9 p.m. when the men, who were armed with two handguns and a sawed-off .22-caliber rifle, wheeled into the busy Harbor Town & Country Center in the 12800 block of Harbor Boulevard.

Task force and robbery detectives watched as the pair backed into a parking space, hustled toward the restaurant, pulled on masks and demanded cash at gunpoint. The undercover officers waited also as the men fled the business, hopped into the Tempo and cranked the engine. That’s when the task force swooped into action and the plaza erupted in chaos, witnesses say.

One of the police vehicles screeched to a stop in front of the robbers’ car, blocking it, as the two others closed in. The officers approached the car with their guns drawn and shouted for the men to put up their hands, police and witnesses said.

Police said neither suspect would surrender and that the driver rammed one of the police vehicles in an attempt to escape. Then the driver jumped out and ran behind the car and crouched down.

Seconds later, a steady burst of gunfire ripped through the Tempo’s windshield and door panels, striking both the passenger inside and the driver who was outside the vehicle.

Customers at a nearby video store estimated that police fired more than 50 rounds at the suspects.

Police would not say how many rounds were fired or whether the men got off any shots.

The police “just started unloading on these guys,” said video store shopper Arlene Gutierrez.

Another witness, Quang Nguyen, said he watched as the passenger slumped in his seat and the other mortally wounded suspect swore as police attempted to handcuff him.

“He was rolling around,” Nguyen said. “He wasn’t cooperating at all.”

One of the men, Perez, was a parolee with a history of violent crime, according to court records. Perez served a prison sentence for a 1989 conviction for an attempted murder in Los Angeles County. A decade later, in 1999, an Orange County judge sentenced Perez to two years in prison for pointing a gun at the head of a motorist in the parking lot of Loara High School. He’d been out on parole for slightly more than four months before Thursday’s shooting.

In the wake of the shooting, some critics said they were worried about the tactics of police.

“The practice of following suspects around and waiting for them to commit crimes has been proven both ineffective and dangerous in Los Angeles County,” said Denise Gragg, an assistant public defender in Orange County. “I hope that this recent public violence was not the result of such activity in Orange County.”

Police said Friday they did not arrest the men before the heist because they did not have probable cause. They said however that they did not want the robbers to leave the parking lot.

“Once they entered the restaurant, there was really no safe way to intervene,” Severson said. “The decision was made to stop them before they went mobile. We don’t want a pursuit.”

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Times staff writer Stuart Pfeifer contributed to this report.

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Violent Ending

Two armed robbers were killed Thursday night in a battle with Anaheim police at a Garden Grove shopping center. What happened: