Settlement OKd in Brutality Suit : Police: The Rodney King incident prompts an out-of-court agreement in a case in which a plumber says he was beaten by Culver City officers.

Influenced by the publicity surrounding the beating of Rodney G. King by Los Angeles police officers, Culver City has agreed to an out-of-court settlement of a federal police brutality lawsuit filed by a West Los Angeles man who said two of the city’s police officers beat him needlessly.

“We thought we had a good case, but the timing may just be wrong, (with) the King situation,” Councilman James D. Boulgarides said Wednesday.

William Schaub, who charged that the Culver City Police Department uses and encourages excessive force, will receive $75,000 under the settlement reached late last week. Schaub had sued two officers, alleging that they beat him needlessly after they tried to pull him over for a traffic violation in early 1989.

He also had sued the Police Department, the police chief and the city, alleging that the department has an unconstitutional policy of refusing to take citizen complaints of police misconduct if the incident has been described in police reports.

Schaub’s trial started last week before a jury in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

“We couldn’t afford to turn it down,” said Robert Mann, Schaub’s attorney, who hailed the settlement as a victory. Schaub, a West Los Angeles plumber, “is 22, he has a 2 1/2-month-old son, he wanted to get on with his life.”

Boulgarides said the $75,000 figure was “fair,” and “if it had gone beyond that, we were ready to go to trial.”

Culver City would have been at a disadvantage because the “frame of mind of the public who would make up juries” has been swayed by the videotaped March 3 beating of King, Boulgarides said.

Mann said he was disappointed that the department policy would not be tested, but predicted that it would be in other cases. “I would have loved to have gotten to the policy issues, but the policy issues are not as important as my client’s issue in a given case.”

The Culver City Police Department manual states that whenever officers engage in a physical struggle during an arrest, police reports “‘must contain the specifics of the force used by the officer and the arrestee.” But complaints against personnel “will generally not be taken on an altercation which is adequately described in an arrest report.”

Mann said that there were discrepancies between the police reports and the officers’ testimony at trial. If the testimony is to be believed, then that shows another hole in the policy, because “the police report that’s supposed to eliminate any need for any investigation whatsoever is inaccurate.”

“If the officers on the street know they have a Police Department that insulates them from liability, and even investigation, they are more likely to engage in wrongful conduct,” Mann said.

Boulgarides defended the policy, saying he believed that citizens “can always file a complaint, they can always appeal.” The alleged misconduct, as detailed in police reports, “is a matter of public record” and “it’s redundant to have two reports on the same issue,” he said.

He added, however, that the city might reexamine the policy.

“I have a very high level of confidence in the behavior of police in Culver City,” said Boulgarides. “They do their job, they’re very courteous . . . the public likes them. They’re truly professional people.”

Schaub’s case stemmed from his arrest on Feb. 20, 1989, when Officers Pamela Graves and Steven Schultz spotted him driving out of a motel parking lot. When they tried to stop him for an expired car registration, Schaub said he sped away, fearing that he would be jailed for driving with a suspended license and without insurance. The officers said they thought Schaub was a felony drug suspect.

Two more officers joined the chase, which ended when Schaub crashed into a stop sign. Schaub said he stepped out of his car and surrendered, and that officers knocked him to the ground with batons and kicked him in the head.

The officers say Schaub attempted to flee and then fought. They say he grabbed Schultz’s belt near his gun, and Graves testified that she thought Schaub would get the gun and kill them.

But Boulgarides said that, had it not been for the King publicity, the city would have had “a very high probability” of winning the Schaub case. The officers, particularly Graves, had a “just and defensible position,” he said. “I don’t think we put women officers in the macho category,” he said. “They’re usually . . . not prone to use force, I believe.”