Youths Allege Brutality, Racial Slurs by LAPD

Nearly two dozen black and Latino youths and young men contended Tuesday that they spent 90 terrifying minutes lying face down on the polo field at Will Rogers State Historic Park while a group of Los Angeles police officers taunted and brutalized them.

According to members of the group--which originally numbered 30, all close friends from the Santa Monica and Venice areas--the incident occurred Feb. 12 while they picnicked at the park on the Lincoln’s birthday holiday.

They said they were kicked and struck by officers sometimes waving handguns, accused of being gang members and subjected to a rain of threats and racial slurs.

Later, some of the group members, who range in age from 14 to 20, allegedly were forced to “walk” to their cars on their knees with their hands behind their heads.

And one officer was quoted as having told them that the scenic park in Pacific Palisades was “for rich white people” only.

Los Angeles police officials said Tuesday that at least five officers responded to a fight-in-progress call from park rangers on Feb. 12 and detained 30 people for an unspecified time. Only two people were arrested, Capt. Michael Bogdonas said.

Officials declined to comment further. An internal investigation is under way, they added.

The group’s allegations were not made public at the time, community activists who have rallied around them said, because parents, other relatives and the activists had met with police to discuss the matter. However, many were not satisfied with the police response, the activists said, and sought legal advice.

On Tuesday, lawyers retained by 21 members of the group filed a formal claim seeking an unspecified award from the city of Los Angeles for alleged physical and mental damages.

If the city rejects the claim, attorney Carol A. Watson said, she intends to file a civil rights lawsuit in federal court.

After the claim was filed, the group members, officials of the Santa Monica/Venice branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and the Mexican American Political Assn. and other supporters talked to reporters at a spot overlooking the park’s polo field. Some carried signs bearing such messages as “LAPD Out of Control” and “LAPD Stop Harassing Our Youth.”

Relatives described those involved in the incident as law-abiding young men who either attended high school or college, worked, or both.

They and the activists alleged that police in and around Los Angeles assume that all young Latino and black men are in gangs.

“When white kids get together, they call it a sorority or fraternity,” said Tony Vazquez of MAPA. “When its black or Latino kids, they talk about gangs.”

Watson said some of the young men sustained bruises and cuts during the incident. The severest injuries, however, she said, were “the really grotesque and crude racism.”

Jermaine Hubbard, 19, of Santa Monica said the racial slurs and taunts stopped after a black officer arrived at the scene to back up police who had responded to the initial call. But the mistreatment continued, he said.

Officers kicked him repeatedly throughout the 90 minutes, Hubbard alleged, adding that at one point an officer threatened to take him into some nearby woods and beat him.

The officers, accorded to Hubbard and other youths, insisted that they were in gangs, Hubbard said, even though they repeatedly denied any such affiliation.

“They would ask what gang we were in and if you said none, they would hit you,” Hubbard said. “Pretty soon, some of the guys started telling them the name of some gang they had heard of just so they wouldn’t get hit again.”

Hubbard and others at the press conference contended that police arrested not two, but four of them.

They denied that any of them had been fighting before police arrived. A park ranger, they said, had taken a baseball bat from them when they could not produce a ball. The ranger falsely accused them of hitting a horse with the bat, they said.

Norman Curry, president of the NAACP branch, said the case was unusual only in the number of people involved. His organization, he said, gets from 25 to 30 complaints a year from black people who say they were stopped for no reason by police in West Los Angeles and nearby cities and harassed.

“Most of them drop it as soon as the anger wears off,” he said. “But here are some people who are willing to follow through.”