D.A. Vows Wider Probe of Beating as 4 Are Arraigned : Justice: The sergeant who allegedly did nothing to stop the attack and three patrolmen face felony charges. Reiner will investigate 11 other officers at the scene.

Four Los Angeles police officers were arraigned Friday on felony charges stemming from the controversial videotaped beating of an Altadena man, and the district attorney vowed to press ahead with a criminal investigation of 11 other officers who witnessed the incident but did not intervene.

The indicted officers--three patrolmen who allegedly participated in the beating and a sergeant who authorities say did nothing to stop it--were each charged with one count of assault with a deadly weapon and one count of unnecessarily beating a suspect under color of authority.

The five-count indictment also accuses Sgt. Stacey C. Koon and Officer Laurence M. Powell of filing a false police report. Additionally, Koon is charged with being an accessory after the fact for engaging in what Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner termed “a cover-up to conceal from his superiors his own criminal conduct” and that of his colleagues.

“It is a terrible moment,” Reiner told a televised press conference Friday, “and time for serious reflection when officers who have sworn to uphold the law are indicted for these most serious felonies.”

In Washington, meanwhile, government sources told The Times that Justice Department civil rights lawyers are considering ways to bring federal charges against some of the police officers who stood by during the March 3 beating of Rodney G. King. The lawyers are studying whether to move against the officers on the grounds that they had an obligation to keep King free from harm.

The four officers arraigned Friday include Koon, 40, of Castaic; Powell, 28, of Valencia; Timothy E. Wind, 30, of Canyon Country, and Theodore J. Briseno, 38, of Sepulveda. They did not enter pleas. Instead, at the request of their attorneys, Superior Court Judge Gary Klausner ordered the four to reappear next Friday to answer to the charges.

It was the first time the officers had appeared in public since King’s beating.

They began their day in the district attorney’s Special Investigations Division--the office that handles crimes committed by law enforcement officers--where they were photographed and fingerprinted. They looked grim, holding booking cards bearing the criminal case number 100-7020 beneath their chins.

Powell was accompanied by his father, who is a county marshal, and his girlfriend, who is also an LAPD officer. Wind arrived with his wife. Briseno and Koon were joined only by their lawyers.

Dressed conservatively in business suits, the officers and their attorneys filed past a throng of reporters and TV cameramen waiting outside Klausner’s courtroom on the 13th floor of the downtown Criminal Courts Building. After entering the courtroom, Klausner called their names.

They stood silently as the judge read from the Los Angeles County Grand Jury indictment. Koon held his head high, his chin tilted upward. Wind, a rookie officer still on probation, cast his eyes downward. Powell and Briseno stared straight ahead.

The hearing lasted about 10 minutes. Afterward, the four were taken to a holding cell, where they remained locked up for more than an hour as their lawyers made arrangements for bail: $30,000 for Koon, Powell and Wind, and $5,000 for Briseno. All made bail and were released.

Because the grand jury inquiry is continuing, prosecutors provided few details of the evidence against the officers. However, Deputy Dist. Atty. Terry White, who is prosecuting the case, said Powell and Wind used their batons during the beating, while Briseno allegedly kicked the victim once. Although the videotape does not show him striking King, Sgt. Koon is being charged with assault for aiding and abetting the crime.

If convicted, Koon and Powell could be sentenced to a maximum of seven years and eight months in state prison. Wind faces a maximum seven-year prison term, while Briseno faces a maximum of four years.

Lawyers for Koon, Powell and Wind declined comment after Friday’s arraignment. Briseno’s lawyer, John Barnett, said his client is innocent.

“He didn’t kick Mr. King and he didn’t commit any crime,” Barnett said.

The beating, captured on videotape by an amateur photographer, has touched off a national furor over police misconduct, as well as calls for the resignation of Police Chief Daryl F. Gates.

Police initially said King, a 25-year-old unemployed construction worker who is on parole after a robbery conviction, was pulled over by Foothill Division officers after he led them on a chase that reached 115 m.p.h. on the Foothill Freeway and 80 m.p.h. on surface streets.

On Friday, the LAPD released a partial tape of radio transmissions of the chase along surface streets involving the California Highway Patrol, the LAPD officers and King. The six-minute tape reveals that King was described by CHP officers as traveling “about 55 miles an hour”--10 miles over the speed limit--as they followed on Glenoaks Boulevard in Lake View Terrace.

LAPD officers then took over the pursuit. They can be heard telling the dispatcher that the white Hyundai stopped at a red light on Van Nuys Boulevard but refused to yield for police. The officers said there were “two male blacks driving the vehicle” and then called for backup. The tape ends with the LAPD officers getting out of their cars on Foothill Boulevard and telling the dispatcher that “sufficient units” were on the scene. It does not include transmissions during the beating.

The videotape, replayed over and over again on television stations across the country, shows King being kicked repeatedly and struck as many as 56 times by officers wielding batons.

King was held in custody for three days before prosecutors determined that, in light of the conduct of the officers, they could not press charges against him. He suffered numerous injuries; his doctors said the bones that hold his right eye in its socket are permanently damaged, that he has suffered fractures in the bones at the base of his skull and remains confused in the wake of the attack.

The beating is being investigated separately by the FBI, and has also prompted U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh to order the Justice Department to conduct a nationwide review of 15,000 police brutality complaints.

In Los Angeles, the beating prompted Mayor Tom Bradley to order the Police Commission to investigate LAPD training and tactics, and determine whether the department has shown a pattern of brutality against minorities. The beating has carried racial overtones because King is black and the four indicted officers are white.

Responding to the indictment, the mayor said Friday: “The conduct of those officers on that scene that night is the most reprehensible thing that I’ve seen occur in this city. And I think that we are now on the road to bringing to justice those who committed the illegal acts.”

Civil rights leaders, who have been highly critical of Gates and the LAPD, expressed satisfaction at the indictments but said they want more officers punished. “This is the first leg of a long journey,” said Danny Bakewell, president of the Brotherhood Crusade, an African-American civic group.

The grand jury spent Monday through Thursday taking testimony in the case. Fourteen witnesses testified, among them the man who made the videotape from a nearby balcony, bystanders from the same apartment building, a Los Angeles Unified School District police officer who was at the scene, at least two LAPD officers and a California Highway Patrol officer who participated in the initial chase involving King.

The grand jury’s indictment goes beyond recommendations put forth by Gates, who suggested several days after the beating that only the three patrolmen--and not Sgt. Koon--should face criminal charges. Rather than prosecution, the chief recommended administrative discipline for Koon and the 11 other officers who were at the scene.

At that time, Gates said his detectives, who conducted their own criminal investigation into the beating, could find no evidence that a false police report was filed, nor could they find any reason to prosecute Koon, a 14-year LAPD veteran.

But according to White, the prosecutor, the grand jury determined that Koon was an “aider and abettor.” Under California law, that meant he could face the same assault charges as the others.

Although Koon fired a Taser stun gun dart at King, that was not cited in the indictment. White would not comment on the use of the stun gun Friday, saying it was confidential evidence before the grand jury. The indictment mentions only “batons and shod feet” as weapons.

Criminal law experts interviewed Friday termed the charges against the four officers tough but by no means excessive, considering the graphic videotape that serves as the heart of the case.

“You don’t have to be a legal expert to have watched that tape and realized that probably wasn’t a misdemeanor assault and battery taking place,” said Loyola Law School Prof. Stanley A. Goldman. “But attempted murder--the next most serious charge in these kind of cases--seemed unlikely too.”

Defense attorney Barry Levin, who frequently defends police officers in criminal cases, agreed that the charges “were appropriate and relevant to the conduct that’s contained in the videotape.”

Prosecutors said they took the King case to the grand jury because they wanted to bring it to a speedy trial, and White said Friday that he would like to go to trial within 60 days. Under Proposition 115, passed by California voters last year, prosecutors may bypass lengthy preliminary hearings by taking their cases to grand juries for indictments.

However, lawyers for the four officers said during Friday’s arraignment that they may challenge the constitutionality of the indictments and press for a preliminary hearing.

“The constitutionality of (Proposition 115) has yet to be tested,” Barnett said in asking the judge to permit the four to wait until next week to enter their pleas. “We need time to evaluate both the constitutional issues and the grand jury transcript.”

Times staff writers Leslie Berger, Paul Feldman, Andrea Ford and Tracy Wood contributed to this story.

INDICTED LAPD OFFICERS Theodore J. Briseno

Charges: Assault, excessive force.

Background: Joined the LAPD in 1982. Prior suspension for excessive use of force.

Laurence M. Powell

Charges: Assault, excessive force.

Background: Joined the LAPD in 1987. Is a training officer.

Timothy E. Wind

Charges: Assault, excessive force.

Background: Joined the LAPD in May after 8 years of experience in Kansas.

Sgt. Stacey C. Koon

Charges: Assault, excessive force, false police report.

Background: Joined the LAPD in 1976. Involved in a nonfatal shooting in 1989 found to be justified.