Verdict Backing Police Stirs Protest : Narcotics: A Miami crack dealer was fatally beaten. The jury had to decide if the officers conspired to violate his civil rights.

Fiery protests erupted in the streets at nightfall here Monday, hours after six undercover Miami drug squad officers were acquitted of federal charges that they conspired to violate the civil rights of a small-time crack dealer who was punched, kicked and beaten to death with a heavy flashlight almost two years ago.

In a largely Puerto Rican neighborhood just blocks from the house where Leonardo Mercado died, several businesses were set afire and bands of young people threw rocks and bottles at patrolmen. Police initially withdrew from the area, just north of downtown, but around 9 p.m. the first of about 300 special riot police were sent in to reclaim the streets.

Authorities managed to bring the area under control by 11 p.m.

Asked about the delay in responding to the disturbance, Miami City Commissioner J. L. Plummer said: “We were not prepared for this.”

The demonstrations of anger in the streets stood in sharp contrast to earlier jubilation on the part of the accused policemen and their relatives on the courthouse steps.

One of the defendants called the verdict a vindication of the “war on drugs.”

“If it weren’t a war on drugs, we wouldn’t have been fighting Mercado,” said Thomas Trujillo, 33.

The jury was unable to reach a verdict on a second count, that the six men violated the civil rights of Mercado, a native of Puerto Rico and cafeteria owner well known to both neighbors and police.

U.S. Atty. Dexter Lehtinen told reporters that the civil rights charge was “the core of the indictment,” and said he would decide by Jan. 17 whether to retry the officers on that charge. If convicted, they could have faced life in prison.

A few friends and relatives of Mercado were also present for the verdict. “They treated him like an animal!” his ex-wife, Maritza Soto, screamed as she ran out of the courthouse. “They killed him worse than an animal!”

Mercado, 35, died Dec. 16, 1988, soon after the officers took him into a tiny apartment bedroom in a house in an inner-city neighborhood to question him about a death threat one of them had received just an hour earlier.

Mercado suffered massive injuries, including a brain hemorrhage, broken ribs and internal bleeding. He had 44 areas of cuts and bruises on his body, according to the autopsy report, and an expert prosecution witness testified that he had been kicked so hard that footprints from the officers’ shoes remained on his face long after he was dead.

A biracial jury of 10 men and two women sat through six weeks of testimony and spent four days deliberating before giving up on the charges they couldn’t decide.

“We said from the beginning that we were innocent, and we proved it,” said defendant Pablo Camacho. “Now I’m going fishing for about a week.”

Miami Police Chief Perry Anderson said the six men, who have been suspended with pay, would be welcomed back to their jobs.

Not even prosecutors had a kind word for the victim. Mercado was a drug dealer “with a despicable, reprehensible past,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Dan Gelber said in his closing argument last week. But Gelber insisted that what the six burly men did to Mercado was a crime. “He was beaten to soup, folks,” said Gelber. “He was gone in . . . minutes.”

The critical question for the jury was whether the officers had conspired to deprive Mercado of his civil rights and then carried out the plan. Camacho, the only defendant who testified, said there was no plan even to stop at the corner house where Mercado was known to hang out, but that the caravan of three unmarked cars pulled over after he noticed something suspicious. Camacho was never able to say what that something was.

Prosecutors contended that the six had planned to threaten Mercado. “They didn’t intend to kill him,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Edward Nucci, “but something went wrong in that apartment.”

Within 20 minutes, Mercado was dead, a victim of what a police spokesman later said was “just a frenzy.’

Camacho said it was Mercado who instigated the frenzy, by inexplicably lashing out at him with “supernatural” strength. “My life was hanging by a thread as far as I’m concerned,” Camacho, 43, testified. A small amount of cocaine was found in Mercado’s blood.

Each officer was also charged with conspiracy and civil rights violations in connection with the arrest of brothers Pedro and Jose Soto, who considered Mercado their stepfather. All but officer Nathaniel Veal Jr. were acquitted of those charges. The jury could not decide on that charge against Veal.

The Soto brothers, along with their mother, are plaintiffs in a $10-million civil suit against the police and the city of Miami. The defense cited their lawsuit as a way to attack their credibility. “They are witnesses you couldn’t believe if their tongues were notarized,” said Milton Hirsch, attorney for Camacho.

Prosecutors acknowledged that undercover work can be tough and dirty. “But (police) also have a Constitution to abide by,” Nucci said. “They are bound by rules. No matter how despicable you find Leonardo Mercado, he had a right not to be brutalized by the police. If not, why have courts? Just let the police administer their own brand of justice.”