Ex-Officer’s Crusade Against Discrimination : ‘Star’ of Police Video Seizes Spotlight

He sits on the dais at a New Orleans conference of black activists. He sips orange juice in a limousine carrying him to a TV talk show appearance in Connecticut. He writes a commentary for the New York Times. His face fills the cover of an Italian magazine.

At a Hollywood dinner in his honor, Dionne Warwick sings “That’s What Friends Are For.” Jesse Jackson passes the hat and comes up with $15,000 for “the best America has.” Maxine Waters calls him “my son.”

These are heady days for Don Carlos Jackson, all because of a four-minute videotape showing the off-duty black police sergeant from Hawthorne being shouted at and apparently shoved through a window by a white Long Beach police officer. Jackson, in greasy coveralls, had driven with a friend into Long Beach to see if two black men would be stopped without cause. An NBC crew followed.

Broadcast nationally in January, the tape clearly struck a nerve. Months later, people black and white corner Jackson to tell him their own horror stories of being humiliated or hurt by police. He offers tempting bait as well to politicians, producers and reporters: a well-dressed, 31-year-old former cop with radical notions about police brutality and racism and a videotape to back up his always well-phrased, sound-bite-quality allegations.

And Jackson has seized the moment by the throat. He has plans, major plans, for his crusade and for himself. He is “networking,” his word, as fast as he can. He hopes soon to establish a foundation to expand his “sting” program, in Los Angeles and across the land. He wants to expose discrimination, not only in law enforcement but in housing and hiring as well. The near future holds the possibility of a lecture tour of college campuses, perhaps a book. For some day, there is talk of politics. Maybe the Los Angeles City Council, he muses. Maybe Congress.

“I’m not a national figure,” he tells one audience, then pauses to add, “yet.”

Agenda for the ‘90s

Last month, the African-American Summit drew 1,000 activists and elected officials from dozens of states to New Orleans. They were planning an agenda for the ‘90s. In his welcoming remarks, the city’s mayor, Sidney Barthelemy, mentioned the Long Beach incident as evidence that racism still exists.

When Jackson later introduced himself to Barthelemy, the mayor ushered him to the dais in the main auditorium. “The young man that I was talking about this morning is here,” he told the crowd. “Stand up, Don.” And after the audience stopped clapping, Jackson sat down, remaining on stage during a keynote address by Democratic National Chairman Ron Brown.

Afterward, a tall man in a red polo shirt stepped forward and gripped Jackson’s hand. “I’m a retired police officer, and I appreciate what you did,” he said. His name was Solomon Haymon, of Gary, Ind. He asked a favor: “Can my brother get a picture of you?” Haymon and Jackson stood together as brother Moselle’s camera flashed.

Then, as Jackson drifted away, Moselle said, “Now it’s my turn.” He walked over to Jackson and put an arm around him. Jackson saw Solomon with the camera and smiled. Flash again.

Over and over, people stopped him:

“I just want to congratulate you. I saw the tape. . . . “

“You can never overemphasize the importance of what you’re doing.”

“That was a gutsy thing you did.”

Interrupted by Applause

His presentation at a seminar on crime and drugs was interrupted four times by applause.

A fellow panelist, Berkeley activist Pedro Noguera, had a ready explanation for Jackson’s appeal: “Because what happened to him, or something like it, happens all the time.”

On the way back to his riverfront hotel, Jackson slowed for an approaching television reporter from Chicago. The reporter’s name is John Davis. He did not want an interview. He wanted to tell a tale of his own, of working late one night, walking outside in jeans and boots, being hauled into the police station. When officers found a card identifying him as a network newsman, Davis was released with a “sorry for the inconvenience,” he said.

For now, Jackson is a symbol. His mentors, who range from Waters to a cousin working for Warwick, believe he could be more. He is not a latter-day Rosa Parks but “an ‘80s version of young Andy Young and Jesse Jackson,” Waters said.

Jackson believes, and civil rights leaders agree, that his “sting” methods and his video cameras are a way to bring drama back to the movement, to highlight the frustratingly subtle racism that succeeded Bull Connor’s dogs and the Klan murders of the ‘60s.

He does, however, have his critics. The mail brings more than speaking invitations and accolades. It brings correspondence like this, from a Missouri policeman: “I think you are more concerned with . . . lining your wallet . . . than you are with the so-called harassment of Afro-Americans.” He shares the letter with a reporter; it is part of the Don Jackson story.

A former ally also suspects Jackson of using the issue of police brutality for wealth and glory. “It’s a valid issue, but any issue can be exploited,” said Henry McCray, a former Santa Monica policeman who with Jackson once led a small civil rights group.

Denies He’s After Money

Jackson flatly denies such allegations. “I’m not in it for the money,” he said. As for his aggressive courtship of the press, he said, “you have got to get some type of media hype for people to feel you’re doing something worthwhile.”

His supporters point out that well before the Long Beach incident, Jackson abandoned a successful career to go public with charges of racism within the Hawthorne Police Department. They talk of the long nights Jackson spent monitoring police activity when his work passed unnoticed by the press or was relegated to the back pages, the early meetings when only two or three or five people attended. And most of all, they add, he faced personal danger for his cause.

“Why question the motives of Don Jackson? Who cares?” said Geri Silva, director of the Equal Rights Congress, a civil rights organization that has investigated allegations of police misconduct. “Question the outcome of what he’s done. More people are aware that we have a problem.”

Jackson’s foray into Long Beach certainly has gotten results. Although a charge against Jackson--interfering with a police officer--was dropped, the arresting policeman, Mark Dickey, faces arraignment Tuesday on charges of assault and writing a false report. Dickey’s partner, Mark Ramsey, will also be arraigned on the false report charge.

The Long Beach police chief stepped in with a “sting” of his own, discovering in the process that his officers sometimes fail to report residents’ complaints of abuse. The Long Beach City Council is considering a civilian review board to oversee the Police Department. In Los Angeles, groups concerned with police misconduct have formed a coalition.

The issue has momentum, the stuff of national network talk shows.

Going National

Going national was the point of the New Orleans visit. “That’s why I came,” Jackson said, “to . . . deal with people that are movers.”

A few blocks from the convention center, Jackson was hailed by a man in a pinstriped suit and a gray mustache, with a smoldering cigarette in hand. “You sure look different in real life than you look on CNN News,” the man said. “America’s something else, isn’t it?”

Jackson laughed. People are always surprised, he said, that he stands just 5-foot-10.

The man introduced himself as Clarence Davis, a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, representing a Baltimore district. “I’m glad you’re here,” he told Jackson. “We talk about that incident oftentimes.”

As the two parted, Jackson said: “I’ll look you up when I come East.”

“Do that,” responded Davis, offering his business card. “We’ll take in a little ballgame.”

Jackson walked on, exultant.

“I’ve got coast-to-coast connections now,” he said.

On the second day of the conference, a gangly, mustachioed young man with horn-rimmed glasses slipped into the chair directly behind Jackson’s. Myron Osirio, a New Orleans computer operator, already had collected autographs from the poet Sonia Sanchez and Angela Davis. Now he was intent on one more.

Jackson took Osirio’s program booklet, borrowed a pen and leaned forward to write. The other inscriptions were brief. Jackson’s was not: “I do my best to engage the enemy in ways that directly effect change. I thank you for your support. I stand on the backs of brothers like you. African man will step into the ‘90s with our backs straight and our eyes looking forward. Onward and upward is the call.”

Brought Tears

He passed it back and turned his attention to the podium, not noticing the reaction to his words. Osirio looked, then lowered his head, as tears coursed silently down his cheeks. He took his glasses off. His eyes were red.

“That touched me,” Osirio said softly.

After New Orleans, there was a return trip to Los Angeles. There, Jackson spent the better part of two days with an Italian television crew working on a documentary about the city. With his cousin he flew to New York where a uniformed chauffeur greeted him and took his bag, preparing for the ride to Connecticut. The next day, Jackson was to tape the Sally Jessy Raphael show, based in New Haven and syndicated to 150 markets.

In the limo, he switched on a tiny color television set and settled on a channel. “I don’t really like baseball,” he said happily, “but in the back seat of a car, it’s all right.”

A year ago, Jackson was on disability leave for stress, having publicly denounced his department as racist. His pay was about $12,000 a year, less than Jesse Jackson shook loose for him in a single night. His retirement--and pension--kept getting postponed. As president of a small group called Law Enforcement Officers for Justice, he had been showing reporters racially offensive handbills that circulated in police departments. But he was not getting much ink, and he was not getting much air time--local or national.

It was not working. He told his friend, Henry McCray, the group’s chairman: “I need to go to jail.”

He spoke, McCray would recall, “about how the civil rights movement has changed. There’s no restaurants to sit in. There is very little happening, and events have to be created.”

A small band tested the concept in Westwood, following a gang shooting in January, 1988. There are disputes about who led the expedition. Anyway, Jackson got himself arrested, and McCray was unhappy. “He didn’t entrap. (But) he talked his way into going to jail. It was a gray area,” McCray said. “He shouldn’t have had to go, but just reading his body language, he was challenging.”

No one was hurt. The incident received a flurry of local press, but attention soon faded.

Jackson and a girlfriend broke up. He was in danger of losing his beloved Corvette. He was behind in the rent on his Hawthorne apartment. In his father’s van, he went out every weekend to videotape police, but he failed to record any dramatic events.

In November, he moved into his father’s condo, a difficult adjustment for both. Jackson’s father complained about the way his son left hairs in the sink and orange peels in the van. In response, Jackson stomped about. “Some civil rights movement,” he would mutter.

Meanwhile, his former landlord was calling. Jackson had left owing nearly $1,000.

Then, at last, came The Tape. It has run on the “Today” show and on “West 57th.” It was shown to a Harvard Law School class on criminal procedure.

On the Raphael show, it flickered across the studio monitor. Once more, in sequence, Jackson quarrels with Dickey, bleeps drowning out the officer’s expletives. Jackson is ordered to put his hands on his head. Jackson goes through the plate glass window.

“Wow!” said Raphael, who somehow achieves the look of a thinner, female Phil Donahue. “Was that shocking!”

As Jackson described what happened--”he took my fingers and bent them back to my wrist”--audible sharp intakes of breath rose from the audience. Jackson sounded very much the solid citizen as he told the group that most police officers do their jobs well. But, he added, “these bad people are carrying guns, and that’s why it’s criminal. And they can take your rights away.”

During a break, Jackson chatted with another guest, a New York woman who said police brutalized her family. One sentence carried clearly from the stage. “They should be prosecuted,” Jackson was saying.

‘Go Out and Protest’

When the taping resumed, so did Jackson: “I think you’ve got to go out and protest. . . . It could be you. . . . Take it to city council meetings.”

After the Raphael show, Jackson returned to Los Angeles to continue promoting “the issue.”

He has an agent at Triad Artists screening his phone calls. A 30-year-old singer has volunteered to type his letters after she saw the “sting” tape on TV. His cousin, Henry Carr, fills out his papers, travels with him, tells him to smile instead of frowning so much and scouts out new opportunities. Not much as entourages go, but a beginning.

His money problems for now are behind him.

“I see nothing but roses,” he said.

Earlier this month, his retirement came through, providing a tax-free $2,200 a month. On Tuesday, he paid his old landlord the $997 he had owed for six months. According to Jackson, more than half of the $16,000 donations he has received has been spent on flights to New Orleans and Washington for meetings and on the settlement of personal loans. Since April, the money has also paid for an apartment in a luxury Mid-Wilshire building. (“I needed a refuge,” he says.) The rest, pledges that are still outstanding, will go to his foundation once it is established, he said.

Next month, Jackson plans to speak at a lawyers’ convention that, only days before the Long Beach incident, had sent him a rejection letter.

Friday afternoon he spoke at a seminar in a conference sponsored by Black Radio Exclusive, a music trade publication. That night, “A Tribute to Don Jackson” was the theme of the conference’s entertainment program.

This conference, oddly enough, was held in Long Beach. Dionne Warwick, angry that the City Council there is paying legal fees for Police Officer Mark Dickey, had qualms about appearing at the Jackson tribute as originally planned. “It’s a big decision,” she said.

She declined to perform, reasoning that a concert would bring too many people and too much income to Long Beach. She did, however, plan to attend a conference session today.

Jackson is unhappy with the council as well, but there was never any doubt that he’d attend. He could not pass up a chance to reach 3,000 black radio executives, record industry representatives, pop artists and agents.