Jury Clears Officers in Brutality Case : Police: The panel did not believe there was enough proof that an Inglewood shopkeeper, his son and a family friend were seriously hurt during their arrests six years ago.

Inglewood police officers did not use excessive force when they arrested three men after a family celebration at a local restaurant six years ago, a Torrance Superior Court jury decided Monday.

At the end of two days of deliberation, the jury voted 9 to 3 to reject claims by an Inglewood shopkeeper, his son and a family friend that police brutally beat them during their arrests.

James Boedeker, 55, his son, Michael, 30, and their friend, Tony Kemp, 35, sued the city of Inglewood and five of its officers after their arrest on April 20, 1984, on charges of being drunk in public. The three said they had been drinking beer that night but that they were not drunk.

Because a criminal trial could have cost the Boedekers a great deal in attorneys’ fees, their attorney, Linda Rice said, they agreed to plead no contest to infractions of disturbing the peace. Kemp, who was charged with felony assault on a police officer, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge for similar reasons, Rice said.

The three men testified during the three-week civil trial that after they were handcuffed, officers deliberately slammed Kemp into a car, hit Kemp and the senior Boedeker with their fists, struck the senior Boedeker with a blackjack and kicked Kemp as he lay on the ground.

But defense attorney Timothy Walker told jurors that the men concocted a story about their arrests, which he said took place after a police officer came across Boedeker and his son brawling in Boedeker’s store parking lot.

Walker was on vacation when the verdict was read and a stand-in attorney declined to comment on the decision.

Jurors said they did not believe there was enough physical proof that the three men had been seriously hurt.

“I looked at the photos and I just didn’t see it,” juror Jon DeCuir of Torrance said. “Some kind of medical evidence could have answered our questions.”

Rice said Superior Court Judge Douglas McKee barred her from putting the emergency room doctors who treated the men on the stand because they had not been cleared as expert witnesses.

“Our position was the doctors were percipient witnesses,” who did not need advance clearance as experts, Rice said.

She said she plans to appeal the jury’s decision, in part because of McKee’s ruling on medical testimony.