Officers Plead Not Guilty in King Beating : Investigation: FBI civil rights inquiry slowed. Members of LAPD’s Foothill station refuse to answer questions without immunity from prosecution.

Four Los Angeles police officers captured on videotape during the beating of Rodney G. King pleaded not guilty to criminal charges Tuesday, as dozens of their colleagues refused to be questioned by FBI agents investigating possible civil rights abuses by the force.

The FBI has interviewed only a handful of officers since Monday, when agents began contacting all 246 officers assigned to the LAPD’s Foothill Division in the northern San Fernando Valley.

Officers have been counseled by their union to seek immunity from criminal prosecution before talking with agents. However, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which is coordinating the inquiry, is still considering whether to make such offers.

At the same time, a Justice Department source told The Times that the FBI may be unable to prove that a pattern of police brutality exists.

“My gut reaction is this (investigation) will settle into the King affair,” the source said.

Teams of FBI agents continued to work their way Tuesday through a list of officers assigned to the division as part of a federal probe into alleged police misconduct.

The few officers who have agreed to talk were contacted at their homes before they had a chance to seek legal advice, according to the Los Angeles Police Protective League. None were questioned at the Foothill station Tuesday.

The reluctance of officers to speak with FBI agents caught the attention of Mayor Tom Bradley.

“I have asked for cooperation, the police chief has asked for their cooperation and, frankly, I’m disappointed there would be reluctance,” Bradley told a City Hall news conference. “ . . . I think the next step will be up to the FBI and to the chief.”

Although critical of the Justice Department for sending agents to officers’ homes, Gates has instructed his officers to cooperate with the federal investigation.

“The chief’s position is that officers have an affirmative duty to cooperate in official investigations of this type.” said LAPD spokesman Lt. Fred Nixon. “(But) our officers have Constitutional rights and we would not in any way seek to deprive them of those rights.”

A lawyer retained by the Protective League said that Foothill officers are torn between obeying Gates’ orders and protecting themselves.

“They’re caught in this dilemma of not violating the chief’s orders but at the same time looking out for their own interests,” said attorney Diane Marchant.

She said FBI agents told her that for now they did not plan to pursue unwilling officers and were concentrating instead on those making “voluntary statements.”

While the FBI probe continued, the four indicted officers appeared in Los Angeles Superior Court to answer the charges.

The officers, depicted on a videotape of the March 3 beating, pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and excessive force. Standing with their attorneys, Sgt. Stacey C. Koon and Officers Laurence M. Powell, Timothy E. Wind and Theodore J. Briseno, individually denied their guilt.

The five-count indictment, returned by the Los Angeles County Grand Jury, charges each officer with one count of assault with a deadly weapon and one count of unnecessarily beating a suspect under color of authority. The indictment further alleges that Koon, Powell and Wind inflicted great bodily injury on King, that Koon and Powell filed a false police report, and that Koon’s cover-up efforts render him an accessory after the fact. Lawyers for Briseno indicated that they will seek to have him tried separately.

If convicted, the officers face sentences ranging from four years to more than seven years.

Supervising Superior Court Judge Gary Klausner denied defense motions to delay the trial or to reject the indictment as insufficient. He also ruled that, under the newly enacted Proposition 115, the defendants do not have a right to a preliminary hearing.

He assigned the case to Superior Court Judge John Reid, 43, who in a non-jury trial this month convicted a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy of killing his girlfriend.

The officers were ordered to return to court Thursday, when pretrial motions will be heard and a tentative trial date set.

Defense attorneys, citing their clients’ inability to get a fair trial in the glare of intense publicity, said they are considering whether to ask the judge to move the trial out of the county. Only twice in the past decade have such motions been granted in Los Angeles County.

But noting that even President Bush has expressed an opinion on the incident--Bush said the videotape made him “sick”--the lawyers said they may also seek a continuance “until the case dies down and there is less interest.”

The grand jury that indicted the four will return Thursday to examine the actions of other officers who were present at the beating scene but failed to intervene.

King was beaten after he stopped his car to end a short pursuit for speeding. The 25-year-old Altadena man was hospitalized with severe injuries caused by more than 50 baton blows and kicks by the arresting officers. The beating triggered nationwide outrage and prompted the Justice Department to conduct a sweeping review of police brutality in cities across the country.

It has also prompted calls for Gates’ ouster.

Former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein joined the critics Tuesday, saying the failure of uniformed LAPD officers to intervene in the beating shows a “failure of command” and that Gates should go. “The incident has had a demoralizing effect I think on every police department,” she said. “It would be helpful for the Police Department (if Gates resigned).”

Gates has steadfastly refused to step down. A Police Department spokesman said Gates was planning to hold a news conference today to unveil a plan for “restoring the luster” of the department, both in the eyes of the public and police officers.

“You can’t have this much distraction without it having a negative impact on morale,” said LAPD spokesman Nixon, adding that it is time for police to leave the King incident to the courts while resuming their efforts to protect Los Angeles.

The man whose videotape led to local indictments and national outrage was honored Tuesday by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. George Holliday also was thanked and hugged by Rodney King’s wife, Crystal Waters, as television cameras rolled.

Times staff writer Leslie Berger contributed to this story.