King Lawyer Says Police Used Slurs

Rodney G. King, who told reporters in March that his beating by Los Angeles police was not racially motivated, has privately maintained that officers repeatedly hurled a racial epithet at him during the incident--but he did not say so publicly for fear of antagonizing the LAPD and stirring racial animosity, King’s lawyer said Friday.

Steve Lerman, who has filed an $83-million claim against the city and plans to file a civil rights lawsuit, said King told him about the alleged slurs the first time he interviewed him in jail, less than three days after the March 3 beating.

On Friday, King’s aunt verified Lerman’s contention, saying she urged her nephew to divulge the racial slurs to the public in the days immediately after the incident in Lake View Terrace. Angela King, who is the sister of Rodney King’s deceased father, said she and other family members were overruled by King’s mother, Odessa, a deeply religious woman who thought the revelation would cause divisions between blacks and whites, and Lerman, who wanted to respect her wishes.

King is an African-American and the four officers accused of beating him are white.

“His mother did not want to mention it and the lawyer had us thinking it would start a riot,” said Angela King. “I feel like he should have told the truth straight out. It came out anyway, so what was the use in hiding it?”

She was referring to comments, generally regarded as tinged with racist undertones, that officers made to each other by typing them into their patrol car computers shortly after King was taken into custody.

Three days later, when a battered, swollen King was released from the County Jail, he answered “no” when reporters at a packed news conference asked him if he thought he was beaten because he is black.

Robert Rentzer, who along with Lerman represents King, said at that news conference that King’s family wanted to keep the case from turning into one about racism.

“They are not looking to turn this into a racial crusade,” Rentzer said at the time.

King’s response at the news conference and Rentzer’s statement dismayed civil rights activists, who felt the beating vindicated them in their contention that some LAPD officers were engaged in a long-established pattern of brutalizing African-American citizens. They hoped the case would become a vehicle for bringing about reforms. Lerman eventually began characterizing the case as racial.

Angela King said Friday that soon after he was arrested, Rodney King told his family and Lerman that the officers had taunted him using a derogatory term for black people.

When King watched the full video for the first time several weeks ago--a process that Lerman said King painfully endured frame by frame and in slow motion, while holding his wife’s hand--he was able to point out places where he thought the slurs may have been made.

In a contention that is denied by police, Lerman said the slurs can be heard at two points on the videotape. Lerman is having professional movie technicians enhance the audio, but said he heard the derogatory term when he played an unenhanced copy on a videocassette recorder with stereophonic sound in an electronics store.

The FBI, which has enhanced the sound and turned the tape over to local authorities, and county prosecutors who have listened to the tape would not comment on whether they heard any racial epithets.

LAPD Cmdr. Rick Dinse, however, said he and other Police Department investigators have listened to the FBI tape and heard only “unintelligible remarks” where Lerman contends there are slurs.

“We have studied this over and over and I even had Mr. Lerman show me where he thinks he hears it and we hear nothing on there except unintelligible remarks.” said Dinse. “Quite obviously, I don’t put a lot of credence in Mr. Lerman’s rhetoric anymore.

“If you put yourself into the mind-set that you hear it, then you’ll hear it,” Dinse said. “On top of that, we have nobody at the scene--including eyewitnesses, officers and Mr. (Bryant) Allen and Mr. (Freddie) Helms--who indicate they heard anything like that.”

Allen and Helms were passengers in King’s 1988 white Hyundai when it was stopped by several LAPD patrol cars and a California Highway Patrol unit, for allegedly speeding. The men have acknowledged they could not hear anything that was being said by the officers during the beating because of the noise of a police helicopter circling overhead.

Lerman contends that the racial slurs, if verified, will help the prosecutors in the criminal case against four officers and his own civil case because it brings into question the officers’ contention that they were trying only to subdue an out-of-control King.

“It shows all of that stuff about them thinking he was on drugs is absurd,” Lerman said.

In another development Friday, a spokesman for the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department said the panel will hear closed-door testimony next Wednesday from Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, former New York Police Department Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy and former LAPD Chief Tom Reddin. The commission will hold its second public hearing later that day.

The only other session scheduled for next week will be on Tuesday, when the commission will hear testimony, again behind closed doors, from seven Los Angeles police officers who will talk about police training.

The panel, known informally as the Christopher Commission after its chairman, Warren Christopher, was appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley to conduct a sweeping review of the Police Department, including the use of excessive force by officers.

Commission spokesman Bryce Nelson said the commissioners have seen the King beating video several times and are interested in hearing a tape with the sound enhanced.