Officer Lobbies Police for Fair Minority Treatment

The telephone rang early last Wednesday, waking Hawthorne Police Sgt. Don Jackson.

Urgent phone calls are nothing new to Jackson, a veteran of almost six years on the force. But for the last nine months, there has been a difference.

The man on the line was not another policeman. He is David Lynn, an activist with a group called the Police Misconduct Lawyer Referral Service. He told Jackson that a group of homeless people planned to defy orders to leave a Venice shelter. There might be a confrontation with police, he said.

Jackson agreed that he should observe the encounter. But when he arrived at the converted gymnasium at the Penmar Recreation Center he found no conflict, just a few dozen poor people listening as their leader delivered a solidarity speech. Ted Hayes, founder of the Justiceville encampments for the homeless, introduced Jackson and asked him to say a few words.

The 29-year-old officer, in neat slacks and tie, told the scruffy gathering that he would be their ally. Jackson said they should respect police but resist mistreatment. He said he was the leader of a new group of policemen who would try to prevent their colleagues from using excessive force against the disadvantaged. Then Jackson concluded with a flourish: “We are going to try to bring some justice to Justiceville.” The sleepy-eyed gathering burst into applause.

On Disability Leave

Such is the new life of Don Jackson, who has been on stress disability leave since last April, when he accused the Hawthorne Police Department of racism.

The second-generation police officer and his fledgling organization--the 38-member Law Enforcement Officers for Justice--have become crusaders for fair police treatment of minority officers and citizens.

The campaign has taken Jackson, who is black, to college campuses and television talk shows, and even to a meeting with Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. He said that his efforts are gaining momentum and that he will eventually run for City Council in his hometown of Inglewood.

But Jackson said last week that he still plans to return to work at the Hawthorne Police Department to face the problem of racism head on.

If he does return, Jackson will likely encounter lingering anger from many officers, according to some members of the department, who said that their former colleague was unfair in painting them as racists. He could have accomplished more, they said, by seeking change from within.

In an interview, Jackson said he has tried accommodation since high school and it does not work.

He was one of a few dozen black students bused from inner-city Los Angeles to mostly white Birmingham High School in the San Fernando Valley in the mid 1970s. Jackson said he gained a measure of acceptance as captain of the school’s wrestling and football teams. But he recalled bitter memories, too--such as regular racial slurs from a white student with a adjacent locker and the graduation party at which three white kids tried to force him to leave.

“I was completely by myself and that has been consistent in my life,” Jackson said. “You can’t afford to fight all the time, so you just go about your business.”

Jackson’s father, Woodrow, retired about a year ago after 29 years as a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy. The older Jackson taught his son that he could gain respect for himself and his race by performing his job with competence and restraint.

The younger Jackson said he lived by that credo for most of his life, including his first two years with the Hawthorne Police Department.

“I hoped in the first couple of years to prove something to the other officers,” Jackson said. “Once they got to know me, I thought their attitudes would change about black people, but the hostilities kept coming up.”

Jackson said he regularly heard minorities, including himself, called “niggers,” “wetbacks” or “gooks.” He charged that at one morning briefing, a white officer waved a doll of a white woman in his face and said: “Come on, Jackson, I know you want a white woman.”

Jackson said the harassment peaked after he was promoted to sergeant in December, 1986. He said officers with more tenure resented his rise and others charged that he used his new rank to favor minority suspects. He said that accusation came to a head when he refused to permit what he considered an illegal search of a black man’s apartment.

Jackson said a supervisor concluded that he failed to file the proper reports after the incident. Jackson said he was incensed when this seemingly insignificant error led to a two-week suspension.

Chief Kenneth Stonebraker refused to answer questions about Jackson’s employment with the Police Department or his accusations of racism, saying that state law requires that such matters be kept confidential. But Jackson said the chief later reduced the suspension to a written reprimand.

Jackson said he told Police Department administrators last spring that the burden of his confrontations with other officers had become unbearable. A city-appointed medical examiner recommended that he be excused because of stress, and Jackson has been on leave, with full pay, since April 9.

Hawthorne officers receive full pay for disability leaves of up to one year, according to Stonebraker. After that, the city manager must judge whether they are entitled to early retirement or continued disability payments.

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is also investigating Jackson’s allegations of racial discrimination.

Jackson said he had been on leave for just a few days when one final event persuaded him that he should publicize his charges.

His father, who was 62, was on the way home from a family gathering when he was stopped by police in Pomona. White officers said they were looking for suspects in a drive-by shooting and robbery, the younger Jackson said, when they pulled his father’s van off the road.

Without provocation, two of the policemen grabbed the elder Jackson--who was recovering from a heart attack--and slammed him to the ground, according to a $50,000 claim that the elder Jackson filed with the City of Pomona.

(Pomona Risk Manager Eugene Light said the claim is still being investigated and that it is too early for the city or Police Department to respond to the allegations.)

‘He Cried’

“I’m 29 years old and I’ve never seen him cry,” Jackson said. “He cried in front of me. He is a very strong, very firm person. For me to see him crying was the ultimate injury to him and me.”

Since then, Jackson has told his story to anyone who will listen.

He formed Law Enforcement Officers for Justice, which he says now has 38 members in 15 police departments from Ventura, Los Angeles and Orange counties. Most of the members are from minority groups.

Jackson has been an interview guest on two black radio stations and on two public service television programs. He spoke at two churches in Santa Monica and before several chapters of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. He addressed a black students group at USC and is scheduled next month to be a participant in a Black History Month forum at Cal State, Dominguez Hills.

Santa Monica Police Sgt. Henry McCray, who is black, has been active in Law Enforcement Officers for Justice, and the group has focused much of its criticism on the Santa Monica department. Late last year it called for the resignation of Chief James Keane, saying that he discriminates against women and minority-group members.

Keane has denied the allegations and has been supported by city officials, but they have asked for a response to all charges raised by Jackson’s group.

Bradley Shows Interest

In December, Jackson met Mayor Bradley for half an hour to describe Law Enforcement Officers for Justice. Bradley, a retired Los Angeles lieutenant, wanted information on the group but was not asked to make an endorsement, according to a spokeswoman, Dee Dee Myers.

Jackson also has asked Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), chairman of the House subcommittee on criminal justice, to hold hearings in Los Angeles on police treatment of minorities. The committee held such hearings in New York in 1983 and in Dallas last year.

Julian Epstein, a Conyers aide, said that information from Jackson and others has prompted the panel to consider holding hearings in Los Angeles.

Discouraged by several other politicians who were less receptive to his cause, Jackson said he has decided that he will run for office himself. He intends to start with a bid for the Inglewood City Council, but has no timetable.

Despite all this activity, Jackson said he feels compelled to return to the Hawthorne Police Department. “I’m not saying I’m not afraid of the potential hazards of going back there,” he said, “but I have to make myself brave to do what’s right. I can’t live with myself otherwise.”

A medical examiner would have to rule that Jackson’s stress disability has significantly abated before he could return to work, according to a police official. Jackson said he hopes to get that approval soon.

Chief Stonebraker and other police administrators said Jackson was a valuable employee who would be welcomed back.

“This is an intelligent, articulate, good-looking young guy,” Police Capt. David Barnes said. “It really is a tragedy that this has happened.”

But many officers felt betrayed when Jackson publicized his disagreements with the department, according to another police official, who requested anonymity. “What he did was take a problem and use a sledgehammer on it,” the source said. “I think it caused polarization. I don’t think anything positive came out of it.”

White officers are now uneasy that anything they say around the department’s four black and nine Latino officers might later be turned against them, he said. “There is a bit of distrust now.”

In the wake of Jackson’s complaints, the department held a series of sensitivity sessions with all 86 officers and 46 civilian employees. But the workers and the consultant who held the meetings said that some employees were unreceptive because they said Jackson had put them in a bad light.

“They would talk about people in the community who would call them racist and say they read it in the newspaper,” said Helen Mendes, the consultant who led the meetings. Several officers said they considered Jackson a friend and felt betrayed by his allegations of racism, Mendes added.

She said the officers’ anger lessened as the two 3-hour sessions wore on.

Hard to Judge

Mendes, who is black, said it is difficult for her to assess the department’s racial sensitivity after spending just seven days there as a visitor. She said she “came away thinking that some people had more problems than others. But I certainly wouldn’t say that it was a racist police department. It was no better (and) no worse than the rest of society.”

One police official who asked not to be identified said he wished that Jackson had not alienated the rest of the department. He said Jackson could have been a role model for recruiting other minority officers.

“Here was an opportunity for someone to exert a change in an orderly way,” the official said. “It’s an opportunity missed, not only for Don Jackson and our department but for our whole society.”