Black Caucus Urges Broadened U.S. Inquiry Into LAPD Beating Case

The Congressional Black Caucus on Tuesday urged federal officials to broaden their inquiry into a March 3 beating incident involving the Los Angeles Police Department to include a federal investigation of “systemic” police brutality in the city and the nation.

When FBI Director William S. Sessions said the FBI lacks the authority to conduct the expanded inquiry, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), a senior caucus member, asked for a meeting today with Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh.

“There are hundreds of these cases (in Los Angeles) that will have to be reviewed,” Conyers said, referring to the beating by Los Angeles officers of motorist Rodney G. King, 25, of Altadena.

Thornburgh’s chief spokesman, Dan Eramian, indicated that federal officials can investigate only specific allegations and cannot conduct a general investigation of Los Angeles Police Department operations.

“If anyone has evidence of other such incidents, they should bring it to the attention of the bureau,” he said.

He added that the department is trying to arrange a meeting between Conyers and Thornburgh.

California Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose) said Tuesday that the House Judiciary subcommittee on civil and constitutional rights will open hearings March 20 on police brutality and the federal response. Edwards, who heads the subcommittee, made his remarks after attending a 90-minute meeting between the Black and Hispanic caucuses, Sessions and other FBI officials.

A second subcommittee hearing will take place in Los Angeles the first week of April, Edwards said.

“We think it’s an epidemic,” Edwards said, referring to police brutality in Los Angeles.

Conyers said the beating of King, which was videotaped by an amateur photographer, has “created an international outrage.”

A House staff member who attended Tuesday’s meeting said a separate federal investigation of the King case is important because it would open the possibility of using a federal conspiracy civil rights statute to charge several police officers who watched the beating and did nothing to stop it. The staff member, who declined to be identified, said this element was not discussed at Tuesday’s session.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who attended the meeting, challenged Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates’ description of the incident as an aberration. She contended that such police action is “the order of the day in Los Angeles” and evidence of the “siege mentality” that she believes exists there.

“Men (and) sometimes women have been brutally attacked and beaten and even killed by the Los Angeles Police Department, and this has been going on for years,” Waters said. “It’s time for the Justice Department to step in . . . and take serious action.”

Rep. Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles) emerged from the meeting and charged that Los Angeles police officers are “intimidated and encouraged not to report violations of law by fellow officers. . . . We have a serious problem of police brutality within the department . . . and officers who do not report those crimes.”

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a leading civil rights activist whose skull was fractured in the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march in 1965, said the Los Angeles beating of King exceeded any police brutality against an individual that he had seen in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia during more than 30 years as an activist. Lewis said he has watched the videotape of the King beating “over and over again.”

Conyers said Sessions “indicated he is outraged and vigorously acting in this matter. On that one case, we have no quarrel.”

He said Sessions assured the caucus members that he would relay their comments and enthusiasm for an expanded investigation to the Justice Department and Thornburgh. An FBI spokesman said Sessions did so later Tuesday.

Los Angeles police had no immediate comment on the allegations raised during Tuesday’s session.