Tape of Officer Kicking at Man Triggers Inquiry : Law enforcement: Two agencies are investigating the incident, which happened six months ago and surfaced recently. The alleged victim has filed a $10-million claim.

A videotape apparently showing a Laguna Beach police officer kicking at a 24-year-old homeless man has prompted a district attorney’s investigation and an internal Police Department inquiry.

The two-minute videotape, shown to the news media Thursday by an Irvine attorney representing Kevin A. Dunbar, seems to show Dunbar lying shirtless on a Laguna Beach sidewalk surrounded by five police officers who are apparently trying to subdue and arrest him.

The tape begins with a police officer, identified as Keith Knotek, 25, who appears to be kicking at Dunbar and shouting, “Get your hands back there, you (expletive)!” as other officers try to handcuff him. Dunbar cannot be seen at first on the videotape, because he is lying behind a parked car, but he comes into view when police pull him to his feet.

Because of the nature of the incident, Knotek will be reassigned to office duties pending the conclusion of the investigations, Police Chief Neil J. Purcell said Thursday.

“I did become very concerned with (Knotek’s) conduct and performance when I saw the tape,” Purcell said. “In reference to that, sometimes you have to say, regardless of what happened preceding (the kicking), it may not excuse an officer’s conduct. . . . I understand that officers are only human. Sometimes they can lose it.”

Knotek could not be reached Thursday to give his account of what happened. Purcell said Knotek was in San Diego County at a police-training school learning to become a field-training officer. A police union attorney has told Knotek not to speak publicly about the incident, Purcell said.

Knotek has been a Laguna Beach officer for three years and has never had a brutality complaint filed against him, Purcell added.

The videotape of the midnight June 16 incident was recorded on tape by an area resident and turned over to Dunbar’s girlfriend, his lawyers said. The tape does not show what may have led up to the confrontation or how Dunbar ended up on the ground surrounded by police. The tape also fails to show whether any of the blows aimed by the officer struck Dunbar.

But when police lift Dunbar to his feet, he has red marks and blood under his right eye. At one point, the tape also shows another officer trying briefly to push Knotek away from Dunbar.

Christopher B. Mears, Dunbar’s attorney, said that although the tape fails to show what happened before the officer kicked at Dunbar, “there’s nothing that justifies a savage kicking.”

“A kick to the head with those shoes is potentially lethal,” Mears contended.

Dunbar filed a $10-million claim against the city of Laguna Beach last Friday with the help of a former resident, John Gabriels, a frequent critic of the Police Department. In the claim, Dunbar alleges police brutality and also that police have threatened to kill him.

Dunbar was in Orange County Jail on Thursday after being arrested a week ago on warrants alleging that he interfered with a police officer, was drunk in public and on four other related offenses.

His attorney said that Dunbar had been homeless and sleeping on the beach and inside friends’ cars in the Laguna Beach area for several months. The arrest last Friday, Mears alleged, was in retaliation for filing the claim, but Purcell said that his department didn’t even learn about the claim until this week. Purcell said Thursday that he didn’t know whether the charge of interfering with a police officer stemmed from the June incident.

In an interview at the jail on Wednesday, Dunbar recalled that he had attended a friend’s party that night that police had broken up. The officers pulled him and several of his friends outside about 11 p.m., he said, and told him to sit on the curb and then to stand up. He said he told them that he wasn’t able to stand because he was drunk, and then an officer allegedly pushed him to the ground and kicked him in the face.

“I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Dunbar said. “I couldn’t believe he was doing that. I kept thinking, ‘What did I do wrong?’ I was scared. There’s no telling whether they were going to shoot me.”

The officer will be interviewed soon by a captain handling the internal investigation and by a district attorney’s investigator, Purcell said. Knotek wanted to talk to his attorney before answering questions and hasn’t explained his version of what happened that night, Purcell said. Other officers who were with Knotek the night of June 16 will be interviewed today, Purcell said.

The Police Department’s investigation of the incident is to discover what happened and whether any disciplinary action is warranted, Purcell said. The district attorney’s office will investigate whether the officer violated any criminal law.

So far, Purcell said, he has been able to piece together this account:

Police were called on the night of June 16 to an allegedly loud party in the 31000 block of Coast Highway. The two arriving officers said they were pelted with rocks and bottles and called for assistance.

After the officers broke up the party, some of the party-goers who had crossed the street continued to throw rocks and bottles at the officers, Purcell said, adding that Dunbar was arrested that evening on charges of interfering with a police officer.

Dunbar has been arrested by police at least five times, Purcell said, mostly for public drunkenness. He was also arrested for public drunkenness two days after the party incident, Purcell noted.

The district attorney’s office began investigating the incident Wednesday and sent a senior investigator to Laguna Beach on Thursday, Assistant Dist. Atty. John Conley said. The office will not divulge details of the investigation while it is in progress, Conley said.

“We’re only in the first days of what could be a long investigation,” he added.

In general, state law allows police officers to use reasonable force to control a violent or potentially violent situation, Conley said. A charge of using excessive force likely to cause great physical harm carries a maximum penalty of four years in prison.

One of the concerns in this case, Conley said, is whether the videotape was edited and why it begins only at the point showing the officer kicking. He also said he wonders why the tape surfaced now after six months.

Why the tape begins late in the incident and the timing of its release also concerns Purcell, who said that he heard about Dunbar’s $10-million claim Monday and saw the tape for the first time late Wednesday night.

“The tape is acutely edited,” Purcell said. “It starts right with the upstroke of an officer’s leg going up, then it goes for a minute and a half and fades off. We’re trying to determine what led up to that point. That will take a few days.”

Purcell said the incident will be more difficult to investigate because so much time has passed and witnesses’ memories tend to fade.

Gabriels said all this arose after he ran into Dunbar on the street in Laguna Beach and urged him to go public with his brutality complaint. Gabriels said Dunbar’s girlfriend, who was not identified, had heard of the existence of the tape last summer and knocked on doors in the area to find it. But until last week, Gabriels said, Dunbar had been afraid to press the complaint. Gabriels said Dunbar was referred to his attorney by the Orange County Legal Aid Society.

Times staff writer Lily Eng contributed to this report.