Police Develop Wary Courtesy, Thick Skin

As Robert Goring tells it, he was hanging out at a Watts liquor store the other day when a Los Angeles Police Department patrol car pulled up. This made him nervous. A black man, he assumed that the officers had flagged him as a suspicious character.

“I was already reaching for my identification,” Goring, 42, would recall, “and getting ready to lay on the hood.”

But the cop who rolled down the window surprised him, asking cheerily: “How’d you like that rain last night?” And that was the end of the encounter.

This is a peculiar time on some of Los Angeles’ tougher streets, a time of delicate manners and wariness. Customary rules of engagement between patrol officers and potential troublemakers have been revised--at least temporarily--by the videotaped Rodney G. King beating and its repercussions. Cars that last month would have been pulled over by police on the slightest pretext so that the occupants could be questioned now are allowed to glide by. Sometimes officers are openly taunted, but for now they let it slide.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been flipped off in the past week . . . mostly by youngsters and gang-bangers,” said Los Angeles Police Sgt. Dallas Gibson of the 77th Street Division. “I say, ‘Fine, flip me off. I’m going to overlook it this time.’

“These are tough times for us,” Gibson added. “It’s a time for thick skin.”

At 45th Street and Vermont Avenue last week, several men watched warily with arms folded from the front yard of an old wooden house as nine patrol cars swarmed around a nearby motel. It was clear that an arrest was about to be made.

“Watch how the cops treat those people. Just watch,” one man muttered, nodding in the direction of the motel.

“They’re like Ku Klux Klan,” said another. “They ain’t never gonna change.”

A few minutes later, police officers led by Sgt. Gibson emerged from one of the motel rooms with a suspect in handcuffs. And to the onlookers’ surprise, the cops and the suspected crook alike were wearing smiles.

The King case has exposed a longstanding undercurrent of tension between the Los Angeles Police Department and segments of the city it protects. In addition to some always-vocal community activists, people who once tolerated or even encouraged such heavy-handed enforcement tactics as battering rams and massive “Operation Hammer” sweeps are openly expressing their resentment over what they recall as personal experiences with aggressive police behavior.

Much of the uproar has centered on Chief Daryl F. Gates and whether he should be forced to step down, but more subtle evidence of fallout from the King case can be found on street corners, parking lots, housing projects and other places where the line between aggressive police work and excessive force is heavily trod.

Doshon Fuller, 16, told of being stopped Tuesday in his South-Central neighborhood by a plainclothes officer who wanted to know why the young man’s finger was bleeding.

“I told him I cut it at school,” Fuller said. “In a polite way, he asked if I was all right, and then asked me to put my hands on the car and searched me--then he said, ‘Get along now.’ ”

Fuller marvelled at how “polite” the policeman had been and he, like others in the 58-square-mile community of 550,000 residents patrolled by the Police Department’s South Bureau, believe the newfound courtesy of officers stems directly from the King case.

“I’m not surprised there is some cynicism,” said Police Department spokesman Fred Nixon, but he added that “this intensified courtesy will not end next week.”

At morning roll calls, South Bureau’s police supervisors offer some additional advice.

“I’m telling my people: ‘Don’t get paranoid; be professional and try to restore our image out there,’ ” said Sgt. Lon Salzman of the Police Department’s Southeast Station.

“Of course, some officers will go back to being hard-nosed. But others will realize they get better results relating to people in a kinder manner. At the same time, I’m worried some people in the community will try to take advantage of that kindness, which could make us revert to being unemotional instead of nice and sweet.”

Some Police Department officials believe that the King case might be partially responsible for a reduction in arrests since the black motorist was clubbed and kicked March 3 in the San Fernando Valley community of Lake View Terrace.

Citywide, the department reported 6,445 arrests between March 1 and March 15, 1991, compared with 7,341 during the period a year ago--a decline of 12.21%. Police Department arrests in the San Fernando Valley have dropped 16%, authorities said. Charles Drescher, director of systems for the Police Department, maintained that beyond the King beating, other factors may have contributed to the drop in arrests, including a spate of rainy weather that can restrict criminal activity.

Still, witnesses to a violent disturbance in Westwood the first weekend after the King incident said police officers appeared unusually restrained, almost timid, in their response to widespread looting. And, in interviews, some street officers admitted that they are being overly cautious, less aggressive, and more reluctant to jump into confrontations with citizens.

“The King thing is on everybody’s mind,” said one officer who patrols in West Los Angeles. “It’s having a direct impact on the way we’re policing this city.”

Police seemed to be especially wary of civilians wielding cameras.

On Friday night, Doug Colescott, 27, was out testing film when he pointed the lens of his movie camera out the passenger window of a car he was riding in and toward a patrol car stopped at a red light near Cahuenga and Hollywood boulevards in Hollywood.

Colescott said he was pulled over and he described what happened next as “your basic roust.”

“What the hell are you doing? Have you ever been arrested?” he said a Los Angeles police officer asked him. When Colescott, a graduate film student, declined to answer, he said he was ordered out of the car for a body search. But it didn’t end there.

Colescott said he was handcuffed and taken to the Hollywood police station, where he was shackled to a bench for 20 minutes while officers ran a warrant check on him. He said he was later released without charges. On Saturday, police could not confirm the incident.

Nowhere is the tension greater than in gang- and drug-related “hot spots” surrounding the city’s 21 housing projects, where police officers have also been treading a little more lightly in what has become a bell-jar working environment.

“I don’t know if the cops are scared or what, but they’ve been kind of laying low because they know people are watching them real close,” said Roslyn Polk, 30, a community college student and resident of the sprawling Nickerson Gardens housing project in South-Central Los Angeles.

“Sure, people are mad; that video brought it all out,” Polk added. “What that man did with that video camera was sharp--too sharp!”

Chief Gates said last week that one response to the King beating will be a “brick-by-brick” review of the department’s training procedures. The department also has decided to reinstitute a practice of sending roving inspectors into the field to provide surprise checks at crime scenes.

Deployment of the so-called “operations duty officers” was stopped in the late 1970s because of budget constraints.

“This officer is there for the sole purpose of making ongoing, unannounced inspections,” Nixon said. “The purpose is to see things as they are occurring rather than have to learn about them the morning after and then have to try and reconstruct or interpret from an officer’s written description.”

At the same time, assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon said, “We have no intention of pulling back from (our) commitment to protect the people of Los Angeles from crime and violence.”

Vernon and other Police Department officials said flooding gang domains with police officers and patrol cars succeeded in deterring crime. This heavy police presence also can create friction between officers and residents, which must be weighed against its results in preventing crime.

Even with the King beating, the delicacy of this balance between aggressive and excessive police work is not lost on all residents.

“I don’t like what happened either, but not all of the officers are like the ones who beat King,” said a community activist from Watts. “There are lots of people in South-Central Los Angeles fed up with being robbed and mugged, and they’re fed up with the drugs. What would we do without the police?”

Interestingly, this woman asked that her name not be used for fear she would be ostracized by people who hold a different view.

Some community activists fear that the increasingly divisive atmosphere surrounding the King case will jeopardize experimental Police Department programs in certain South-Central Los Angeles neighborhoods. Frustrated by their inabilities to curb gang violence and troubled by increasing complaints about excessive force, South Bureau police officials two years ago agreed to supplement their law enforcement policies with community efforts sponsored by organizations including the Brotherhood Crusade.

The result has been a dramatic reduction in gang-related crime. There were 106 gang-related homicides in the South Bureau in 1990, compared with 137 in 1989.

The King incident threatens to dash hard-won trust between the Police Department and community leaders, said Brotherhood Crusade President Danny Bakewell, who doubts the sincerity of suddenly courteous cops.

“When one day a guy makes you spread-eagle and the next day he wants to talk about the weather, wouldn’t you be suspicious?” Bakewell asked.

Times staff writers Richard A. Serrano and Sheryl Stolberg contributed to this story.