COLUMN ONE : Arrests, Lies and Videotape : Home video is capturing more disputed police actions on tape. But cops and critics alike are finding that a camera isn’t always the most reliable witness.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been a classic case of one man’s word against another’s--and the cop probably would have won.

Eric Johnson, a 24-year-old computer technician, said a Sacramento sheriff’s deputy put a pistol to his throat after pulling him over on suspicion of drunk driving. The deputy, Kevin L. Wise, denied it.

“Did you ever draw your weapon and point your weapon at Mr. Johnson?” defense attorney Steven E. King asked during a preliminary hearing. “No, sir,” Wise replied under oath, totally unaware of the evidence to come.

He was captured on videotape. Taken by a security guard at an industrial complex near where the car was stopped, the tape showed the deputy taking his gun from his holster and sticking it under Johnson’s chin.

When prosecutors saw it, the drunk-driving case was dropped. Now it is the deputy who faces criminal charges, counts of perjury and assault.

“There’s no question but without the tape we wouldn’t have a case,” said Sacramento County Supervising Deputy Dist. Atty. Al Locher.

Although such a turnaround is extraordinary, the case is merely one of a string of recent incidents in which the Video Age has put police unexpectedly on film--and on the spot.

In the last 18 months, onlookers with home video cameras have recorded efforts by police to break up boisterous parties in Victorville, Torrance and Cerritos, prompting brutality complaints and lawsuits. Videotapes made by bystanders fueled scrutiny of officers clearing a park in Manhattan and dispersing students who flocked to Virginia Beach, Va., over Labor Day weekend.

And, of course, there is former Hawthorne Sgt. Don Jackson, who took his camera throughout the Los Angeles area in search of police misconduct, finally “stinging” two Long Beach officers.

So how are law enforcement officials responding to what the director of one video trade group calls “the democratization of surveillance”?

Often by videotaping the action themselves.

The Los Angeles and San Francisco police departments have special crews that tape demonstrations and other events where officers’ actions may be questioned. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has started putting video cameras in the cars of field supervisors.

“If the citizen is going to stand by and photograph or record the actions of our officers, then we feel it’s in our best interests to do something similar,” Sheriff’s Cmdr. Ray Morris said.

The Los Angeles Police Department has five sworn officers and four civilians in its “TV, Photo and Sound Unit.” Most of their time is spent producing weekly training videotapes, but the crew also goes out in the field to record sensitive events such as last spring’s Operation Rescue anti-abortion demonstrations. “We videotaped them for the courts so they can see what we’ve done,” Officer John Green said.

In that case, however, the tapes backfired.

Prosecutors thought they provided graphic evidence of protesters trespassing at a women’s clinic. But Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry and four colleagues were acquitted, and jurors later explained that they had been shocked by the “pain compliance” holds used by police in making arrests.

Police Tapes Cited

In Pittsburgh and Sacramento as well, Operation Rescue protesters cited police videotapes in complaining of excessive force by officers.

But police in Miami, more in tune with the Video Age, used stretchers in April to carry more than 100 anti-abortion demonstrators to waiting buses, carefully avoiding the “pain compliance” holds.

“Prosecutors have told us that the come-along holds don’t look good on videotape in court,” explained Metro Dade Police Maj. Madeline Pearson.

The San Francisco Police Department videotapes 200 demonstrations a year “for evidence and training purposes,” according to Sgt. Jerry Senkir. “We have a couple of guys who routinely do this so they get pretty good at it,” he said.

The department came under criticism this spring when two officers were discovered pretending to be TV cameramen from Seattle at a demonstration in front of the El Salvador consul general’s office. Police Chief Frank Jordan quickly promised to stop such impersonations.

San Francisco police are embroiled in what is, in essence, a battle of videotapes--a type of dispute that may someday become common with the proliferation of video cameras.

Dolores Huerta, co-founder and vice president of the United Farm Workers, filed a $23.7-million suit against the city Sept. 14, alleging that an officer broke five of her ribs and ruptured her spleen during a rally last year.

The officer was reassigned after television videotapes showed him thrusting his wooden baton into a crowd outside a hotel where then-Vice President George Bush was holding a campaign fund-raiser. Huerta was distributing grape boycott literature.

‘Somewhat Deceptive’

Senkir complained that one crucial TV tape is “somewhat deceptive” because it was edited to show two points of views of the incident, stretching 30 seconds of action into a minute of film.

“That’s one of the reasons we do it,” he said of the police filming. “Nobody can tamper with ours.”

But Dianna C. Lyons, the attorney for the United Farm Workers, complained that the police tape, while showing Huerta in the crowd, missed the moment when she was struck.

The police photographer “immediately pans to the pavement when he notices anything questionable,” she said. “It’s amazing.”

Lyons said she may recommend that the UFW use video cameras to monitor police responses to all its demonstrations. “We used to use still cameras for the same purpose,” she said. “It’s just not as effective.”

Some of the most startling videotapes of police in action have been made when there was no way to predict a confrontation, when a home video camera--which can operate without the conspicuous crews and lights of television--just happened to be around.

It is a situation police may be confronting almost routinely. Introduced in 1985, small camcorders are being sold at the rate of 2.5 million a year and are in about 8% of American homes, according to the Electronic Industries Assn.

They have come into play in some recent incidents:

- On June 30, 1988, an onlooker videotaped an altercation between five Mexican nationals and San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies at a party in Victorville. Latino community leaders said the tape was evidence that the men were kicked and clubbed without provocation. “If you want to see brutality in the videotape, you will see it,” responded Sheriff Floyd Tidwell. “But if you look at it with an open mind . . . you will not see brutality.” He ruled that his men used proper force to overcome resistance. A $15-million suit is pending.

- In August, 1988, videotapes shot by two amateur photographers at New York’s Tompkins Square Park showed people being clubbed by officers whose badge numbers were concealed with black tape when they moved in to enforce a 1 a.m. curfew. Mayor Ed Koch called the videotapes “very disturbing.”

- Armed with a videotape of two policemen choking and beating 20-year-old Thomas Tice, attorneys for Tice and five friends filed suit in 1988 against the Torrance Police Department over efforts to break up a party in that community. Police said the officers had to subdue Tice, who later pleaded no contest to disturbing the peace, after they were surrounded by 35 hostile party-goers.

- Last Feb. 11, a camera at a Cerritos bridal shower photographed a Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy using his baton to hit two men on the ground. “Once anyone sees those tapes, they’ll realize this is not an empty complaint,” said Garo Mardirossian, an attorney for the family hosting the party. Sheriff Sherman Block said 10 deputies were battered and bruised by party-goers, including a female professional wrestler known as “Mt. Fiji.”

- The FBI is reviewing videotapes of Virginia Beach officers using clubs to clear the streets of black youths, who later complained that they were roughed up over Labor Day weekend. The police crackdown followed a night of rioting, looting and bottle-throwing that resulted in 43 injuries.

To Norman Abrams, a professor and associate dean at UCLA Law School who teaches a course on evidence, such incidents illustrate both the value and limits of videotapes.

“If it’s a picture of the actual event . . . rather than the statements of witnesses, obviously that’s very powerful,” he said.

Open to Challenge

But such evidence is also open to challenge as to whether it is authentic and whether there is “distortion based on the location and the timing,” he said, for instance if the taping begins “in the middle” of an incident.

Few instances of videotaping have occurred more by chance than in the April 13, 1988, arrest of Eric Johnson on suspicion of drunk driving in Sacramento.

Johnson’s gray BMW just happened to be stopped outside an industrial park. A security guard just happened to notice the flashing police lights on a surveillance monitor. The outside camera just happened to have remote control and zoom-in capabilities.

The guard pushed the record button.

Johnson worked at the industrial park and learned of the videotape. But his attorney, King, did not alert prosecutors until after a preliminary hearing when he got Deputy Wise to deny on the record that he pulled his gun.

Then King delivered the tape to the Sacramento County district attorney’s office, declaring, “The deputy lied.”

According to an affidavit filed by prosecutors in Sacramento Municipal Court, Wise was confronted with the videotape and acknowledged his actions were “inappropriate.” The deputy’s defense was that he did not remember drawing his gun and did not consciously lie at the court hearing.

Trial for Wise, who resigned from the Sheriff’s Department, is scheduled for January.

“It was kind of a stroke of luck,” concluded King, who figures his client would have been convicted without the tape. “Typically, when push comes to shove, jurors go along with police officers over private citizens.”

Prosecutor Locher said there is a lesson in the incident for police: “I don’t think anyone, particularly a law enforcement officer, should conduct themselves in public in a way they wouldn’t want to be seen on the evening news.”

Some law enforcement officials say the lesson is so obvious that there is no need to give students at their training academies special instructions in dealing with home videotapers.

“As long as the officer is doing what he’s supposed to be doing, there is no fear of video cameras,” said Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputy Betty Sanders.

But the leading advocate of citizen videotaping insists that police, in fact, are far from casual about the phenomenon.

“It’s having dramatic impact. . . . They’re looking over their shoulder,” said Jackson, the former Hawthorne sergeant who gained national renown when a television crew secretly recorded his arrest by two Long Beach officers after a traffic stop.

The officers’ report claimed that Jackson cursed them. But the tape showed only the officers cursing during the arrest, in which Jackson’s head appears to be pushed through a store window. Both officers are awaiting trial on charges of filing a false report, and one also is accused of assault under the color of authority.

After complaining of racism in his own department, Jackson, who is black, began carrying a video camera in his car in late 1987, cruising the Los Angeles area looking for police in action. He also conducted what he described as “stings” to test police.

In February, 1988, weeks after 27-year-old Karen Toshima was killed in gang cross-fire in Westwood, Jackson drove six black youths to the community, then videotaped Los Angeles police as they questioned and searched the youths.

Jackson quickly drew a rebuke from Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, who called his action “a crazy, crazy, stupid, idiotic act.”

Gates made his comments in a statement to his officers--by videotape.

Ironically, Jackson encourages videotaping by police themselves. He noted that some officers have long carried small tape recorders to document their interaction with citizens as a defense against complaints of mistreatment.

“I think that’s a smart move,” he said. “The sword cuts both ways. I don’t have any stomach for people who make false claims against police. . . . They’re under enough pressure already.”

The idea of all sides carrying video cameras into public forums seems a healthy thing to Lawrence Sapadin, executive director of the Assn. of Independent Video and Filmmakers, a New York-based trade group.

Sapadin is the one who calls it “the democratization of surveillance. . . . Ordinary citizens can take pictures of the world around them, and if some of that involves catching cops making mistakes, that’s good.”

In the long run, he said, a benefit of all the videotaping will be to teach people the limits of the camera.

“One educational aspect to this ‘dueling cameras’ aspect of it is that cameras are just an extension of an individual’s point of view,” he said. “Each person pointing a camera may see a different thing.”