BASHING THE BLUE : LAWYER YAGMAN ASSAILS WRONG `BARBARIANS'.

Byline: Joe Gelman

``Civil rights'' attorney Stephen Yagman doesn't live in the real world. In the kingdom of Yagman-Lawyerland, there is no such thing as innocent human error or tragic accidents.

Every human misstep or tragedy is cause for outrage and blame, expensive litigation, and of course, substantial financial compensation of which he should conveniently receive a large percentage.

In the kingdom of Yagman-Lawyerland, suspected criminals are helpless victims, and the police are out-of-control evil racist thugs, indiscriminately and purposefully preying upon innocent minority civilians; ``these people are barbarians'' to quote him directly.

Yagman has a new client these days.

In his relentless effort to cash in on any police misstep, he is now representing 20-year-old Grover Smith.

On the evening of Feb. 25, Grover Smith was accidentally shot by police during a red-hot pursuit of dangerous armed suspects in Northridge.

But this story actually begins a few months before the shooting incident, when the LAPD concluded that a string of at least 20 violent armed robberies in the San Fernando Valley area were the work of a single dangerous gang that was in the habit of physically assaulting customers while doing their dirty deed.

With no end to the robberies in sight, the LAPD assigned the case to its Special Investigation Section, an elite unit that specializes in tracking down the most vicious of violent robbery suspects in the L.A. area.

Acting on a tip, the SIS unit was able to identify the whereabouts of the gang and they proceeded to monitor their movements.

It didn't take long for the gang to get caught in the act one night, and when they did, the LAPD gave chase.

Cornered and desperate, with helicopters buzzing overhead and floodlights illuminating the area, one of the four suspects aimed his .45-caliber handgun at the pursuing detectives, who immediately responded in self-defense with gunfire. Three brutally violent criminal suspects were killed, a fourth, Michael Smith, ran from the car and escaped into the neighborhood.

As this drama unfolded, Grover Smith (no relation to Michael Smith), who was in one of the residences of the cul-de-sac, heard the helicopters and police cars, and for some suspicious and not exactly plausible reason, thought that the entire Los Angeles Police Department was coming for him.

He bolted out of the house like a fugitive into the dark, jumped over two neighbors' fences and hid in another neighbor's bushes.

With trained police dogs and helicopter-mounted infrared night tracking technology, the LAPD came across what they justifiably believed was their fourth suspect. Hiding in the bushes and fitting the description, Grover Smith was assumed to be armed and dangerously violent.

He was commanded to surrender, but failed to respond immediately, and when he did respond, tragically, he made a quick motion which the jittery officers believed to be a threatening move for a gun. They fired at the legs of their suspect to incapacitate him.

Wrong man

As it turned out, of course, Grover Smith was not the man they were looking for, and a few minutes later, after further combing the neighborhood, police successfully apprehended the fourth suspect.

Grover Smith was rushed to Northridge Hospital Medical Center, and the LAPD dispatched representatives to express the concern and sympathy of the entire department.

The city, bending over backward, quickly allocated $50,000 from the police overtime budget to pay for all of his medical bills, even though the lame excuse that he gave for running and hiding from the police, was that he had ``an outstanding speeding ticket.''

I'll let you, the reader, reach your own conclusion.

Along comes the money-grubbing, publicity-seeking sleazy lawyer. On the planet that he lives on, it wasn't the violent armed criminals who were responsible for the tragic shootout, it was the police ``death squad,'' these ``barbarians'' as he so righteously put it.

And his client, Grover Smith, who is expected to recover, should somehow now, in true Rodney King fashion, receive millions of taxpayers' dollars in compensation.

A few days after the shooting, Yagman seemed to be on a roll, the newspapers, including this one, described his client oh so sympathetically, as ``the innocent bystander,'' and many people began to believe that perhaps the LAPD were guilty of over-aggressive, insensitive tactics.

In a move that would endanger public safety, Yagman even filed for a temporary restraining order to halt SIS operations. Yagman currently has five lawsuits pending against the SIS. The environment was ripe for another round of mindless LAPD-bashing.

Bad luck for Yagman

But then bad luck suddenly struck poor Yagman. A couple of armed robbers hit a Bank of America branch in North Hollywood, and the great North Hollywood bank shootout unfolded in everyone's living rooms.

Eleven LAPD officers and six civilians were wounded. The graphic scenes were played over and over again and the reality of what our police force faces, and how they really react, became crystal clear to any objective observer.

Yagman's rantings began to suddenly ring hollow.

Dennis Zine, vice president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League said it best, ``for once, people were able to see with their very own eyes the kind of violence and callousness that the men and women of the LAPD are forced to deal with.

``Violent suspects, with total disregard for life and property, total disregard for the laws of civilized society, can terrorize our communities at will. We are simply doing our best to protect and serve the innocent under very difficult circumstances. It's our reason for being, it's why we wake up in the morning. Call me sentimental, but we love our city deeply, and want to make it safe for everyone.''

That is the attitude that I encountered with virtually every officer that I have spoken to over the past week, and it is no wonder that a wave of sympathy for the LAPD is sweeping the city.

All of this of course is bad news for attorney Yagman, who makes his living off denigrating the men and women who protect and serve.

While watching the North Hollywood shootout unfold, I remember how one of the suspects, crouched behind a white sedan, finally surrendered after having indiscriminately fired in all directions. Apparently, he was wounded but still functioning.

As police approached him, one officer in shorts put his foot on the suspects back to shove him flat on the ground. At that moment, I thought to myself, that attorney Stephen Yagman is probably preparing a police brutality lawsuit. He could show the 10 seconds of video when the jittery officers were manhandling the suspect, as proof of LAPD over-aggressiveness and brutality.

What is relevant

All that other video, when the suspects were busy shooting everyone in sight, robbing a bank, terrorizing an entire community, well, that's not relevant. What would be relevant to Yagman is that poor suspect, insensitively knocked to the ground by a mean, out-of-control LAPD officer.

Our police make mistakes - everyone makes mistakes. The shooting of Grover Smith was a mistake, but it was an understandable, and justifiable mistake that happened mostly as a result of Smith's own actions. It was not an act of police brutality, or even police insensitivity. It was something that can happen in the real world, and could very well happen again.

If we are to deter and control crime, we need to stand up and defend our police from the likes of opportunistic lawyers like Stephen Yagman. We need to remember the Northridge and North Hollywood shootouts as examples of how our police acted in a professional and appropriately aggressive manner. It's a dirty, thankless job, but at least it's an honorable job, which is more than can be said about the likes of Yagman.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) A line of LAPD officers keeps friends of Grover Smith, who was accidentally shot by police mistaking him for a robber, away from the Northridge crime scene Feb. 25.

(2) An armed robber fends off police with a hail of gunfire during the Feb. 28 North Hollywood shootout that wounded several officers.

Gene Blevins/Special to the Daily News