April 30, 1992

THE POLICE VERDICT; Los Angeles Policemen Acquitted in Taped Beating

By SETH MYDANS, Special to The New York Times

IMI VALLEY, Calif., April 29 -- Four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted of assault today in the videotaped beating of a black motorist that stunned the nation. The verdicts immediately touched off a storm of anger and scattered violence in the city.

As residents set scores of fires, looted stores and beat passing motorists in the downtown area and pockets of predominantly black south-central Los Angeles, Mayor Tom Bradley declared a state of emergency, and Gov. Pete Wilson said he would send in the National Guard.

After hearing seven weeks of detailed testimony and studying the 81-second amateur videotape of the beating, the jury concluded that the policemen, all of whom are white, had not broken any laws when they clubbed and kicked the mostly prone motorist, Rodney G. King.

It was deadlocked on one of the 11 charges, and the prosecution said it might seek a new trial on that charge, which affected only one defendant.

The beating last spring, with its kicks and its 56 baton swings, was shown over and over on television. It immediately became one of the most visible uses of force by police in this country's history and put the issue of police brutality on the national agenda.

Immediately after the verdicts, an unusually impassioned Mayor Bradley appeared on television to appeal for calm in a city where the videotape has come to symbolize complaints about police brutality, racism and street violence.

"Today the system failed us," the Mayor said.

Despite Mr. Bradley's plea, street violence, looting and fires broke out in inner-city Los Angeles within hours of the verdicts. The Mayor called for the California National Guard to restore order and declared a local emergency. Governor Wilson ordered some units into the city, his spokesman said. Shortly after 11 P.M. Mayor Bradley said that he believed the scattered disturbances had been brought under control.

Although they, too, called for calm, community leaders expressed outrage that what had seemed on the videotape to be a clear-cut instance of police brutality had gone unpunished. The absence of blacks on the jury, picked from mostly white Ventura County about 45 miles northwest of Los Angeles after a change of venue to avoid pre-trial publicity, was used to enforce their allegations of racism.

The prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Terry White, said the verdicts "sends out a message that whatever you saw on that tape was reasonable conduct."

A Quick Decision

Jurors said it had taken only a day to reach their acquittals on the main charges against Sgt. Stacey C. Koon, 41 years old; Officers Laurence M. Powell, 29, and Theodore J. Briseno, 39; and former Officer Timothy E. Wind, 31. Jurors said that after six more days of deliberation they remained deadlocked on a charge against Officer Powell of use of excessive force. Mr. White said his office would seek a new trial on that charge, but prosecutors said later that they would reassess their plans. A hearing was set for May 15.

Late Wednesday night assistant United States Attorney General John R. Dunne said that the Justice Department, which monitored the trial, planned to review the case to see if any further action should be taken under Federal civil rights laws. The three officers have been suspended without pay since the beating and still face disciplinary hearings by the department; Mr. Wind, a rookie without tenure, was dismissed.

The four men were among two dozen officers who were present shortly after midnight on March 3, 1991, when Mr. King was stopped after a 15-minute high-speed chase, beaten, hogtied, thrown into an ambulance and sent to a hospital with multiple cuts and fractures. He was never charged in connection with the traffic stop.

The charges against the policemen included assault with a deadly weapon, excessive use of force as a police officer, filing a false report and acting as an accessory after the fact.

Jurors, 10 of whom are white, 1 Asian and 1 Hispanic, refused to be interviewed by reporters, issuing a brief statement that gave no indication of the basis on which they reached their verdicts.

Ted Koppel, the anchor of the ABC News program "Nightline," said he had interviewed a juror who declined to be identified on television and who had said that the video was weakened as a piece of evidence because Mr. King did not testify for the prosecution.

"The cops were simply doing what they'd been instructed to do," the juror was quoted as saying. "They were afraid he was going to run or even attack them."

Mr. Koppel said the juror criticized the video as unsteady and out of focus, and questioned the seriousness of Mr. King's injuries.

"A lot of those blows, when you watched them in slow motion, were not connecting," the juror was quoted as saying. "Those batons are heavy, but when you looked at King's body three days after the incident, not that much damage was done."

As a court officer read out 10 separate verdicts of not guilty, the defendants sat motionless and expressionless, as they have throughout most of the trial. Then they rose and embraced their lawyers.

'What Race Are You?'

Loud arguments broke out between whites and blacks outside the courthouse.

"What race are you?" a black man shouted.

A white man yelled back, "I'm an American!"

The black man then shouted, "We're not judged as Americans!"

Stones were thrown at Officer Powell as he left the courthouse, said Sgt. Dick Southwick of the Ventura County Sherrif's Department. Angry groups of shouting spectators also confronted Mr. Wind and Sergeant Koon as they left the building.

After nightfall, more crowds gathered at police headquarters and City Hall, where they set a small fire in the lobby. Throughout the afternoon and into the night, young men in south-central Los Angeles smashed storefronts, set fire to shops and vehicles and pulled motorists from their cars and beat them. There were about 120 separate blazes, the Fire Department said.

As a news helicopter filmed one scene, a group stopped a car and beat the driver. Several men approached the driver and, one by one, kicked him and smashed bottles over his head.

A line of police cars, their lights flashing, approached cautiously as a nearby liquor store, surrounded by looters, burst into flame.

Strong Words From Mayor

In his news conference after the verdicts, Mayor Bradley, a former police officer, said, "The jury's verdict will never blind us to what we saw on that videotape. The men who beat Rodney King do not deserve to wear the uniform of the L.A.P.D."

The Los Angeles County District Attorney, Ira Reiner, whose office prosecuted the case, said: "We disagree with the jury, but are obliged to accept the integrity of that verdict. It's a time for sober reflection, not recrimination."

President Bush, who said last year that the videotape sickened him, also appealed for reason tonight, saying: "The court system has worked. What's needed now is calm, respect for the law."

Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, the likely Democratic Presidential nominee, said, "Like most of America I saw the tape of the beatings several times, and it certainly looks excessive to me so I don't understand the verdict."

Willie L. Williams, who has been named to succeed Police Chief Darryl F. Gates, said, "There are obviously two camps operating out of Los Angeles, one that believes the police officers are guilty, one that they are totally innocent. And whether we like it or not, we have to accept the judicial process." Mr. Williams added that the verdict would make his new job "a little more challenging. It will place additional pressures on me and the department to convince the community that the Police Department is a fair institution . . ."

The jury's verdicts flew in the face of the verdict of public opinion, which over the past year has condemned the videotaped beating as police brutality in its rawest form.

Police departments in other cities played the tape for their officers as a cautionary lesson. But many civil rights groups and black community leaders said Mr. King's beating was unusual only in that it had been captured on videotape.

As a result of the publicity, United States Attorney General Dick Thornburgh ordered a review of police-brutality complaints around the nation.

In Los Angeles, an independent commission headed by Warren M. Christopher, a Deputy Secretary of State in the Carter Adminstration, recommended broad changes in the Police Department. Under intense pressure, Chief Gates announced he would resign his tenured position, and although he has continued to hold onto office, his replacement, Willie L. Williams, the Philadelphia Police Commissioner, was announced this month.

The videotape was the central piece of evidence at the trial. As defense lawyers sought explanations for this or that baton swing or kick, the prosecutor urged jurors simply to watch the tape and to believe their eyes.

Arguing that Mr. King was making potentially threatening movements as he rolled on the ground under the blows, the defense brought experts in police procedures to testify about the propriety of the actions on the tape.

"If reasonable police minds could differ over the propriety of the use of force on March 3, 1991," the lawyer for Officer Powell, Michael P. Stone, told the jury, "then I suggest to you there is no proof beyond a reasonable doubt" that the beating was a criminal assault.

The prosecutor presented his own expert to testify that the beating was unjustified and countered that at some point each juror would find himself saying, "Enough is enough."

'Thin Blue Line'

In their closing arguments, both sides focused on an issue at the heart of the controversy over the police department, what Mr. Christopher called its "siege mentality."

Defense lawyers referred repeatedly to the "thin blue line" and the role of a police force in protecting society from "the likes of Rodney King."

"This unpleasant incident is what we have police for," said Paul dePasquale, the lawyer for Mr. Wind. "The circumstances here were consistent with the job the man was hired to do. He was part of the line between society and chaos."

The videotape was shown repeatedly during the trial at slow, super-slow and normal speeds, with the roar of a police helicopter, the muffled shouts of the police and the occasional crack of a baton blow filling the courtroom.

Mr. King's lawyer, Steven Lerman, said his client did not appear as a witness because he had been confused and frightened since the beating and had problems with short-term memory.

Sergeant Koon, a 14-year veteran, is not shown on the tape hitting Mr. King but was being held responsible for the actions of the men under his command. He faced a maximum sentence of four years, eight months on charges of assault with a deadly weapon, using excessive force as a police officer, filing a false report and being an accessory after the fact.

He testified that Mr. King's erratic and uncooperative behavior after the traffic stop made it necessary to use force. "Sometimes police work is brutal. That's just a fact of life," he said.

Officer Powell is shown on the tape delivering most of the baton blows and was described by prosecutors as making racial slurs and laughing about the beating. He faced seven years and eight months on charges of assault, using excessive force as a police officer and filing a false report. He was also the subject of two special allegations of causing great bodily injury.

Mr. Wind, who was in training with Officer Powell, is shown on the tape delivering about 15 baton blows and several kicks. He faced a possible total of seven years on the same charges as Officer Powell, except for that of filing a false report.

Mr. dePasquale argued that his client was applying in textbook fashion the use-of-force techniques he had so recently learned in the police academy. "Watch Timothy Wind's posture: cautious, withdrawn, quick feet, sliding back, keeping moving, keeping clear but doing his job," he said. "This is not some orgy of violence. This is careful police work."