Computer Messages Reveal Racist, Sexist Comments by Officers : Bigotry: Panel takes pains to praise most police, but transcripts show incidents of callousness and violence by some.

Just as the Rodney G. King videotape gave the American public an unfiltered glimpse of police brutality, so did the Christopher Commission report open a window Tuesday on the working lives of Los Angeles police, exposing strains of racism, violence and callousness toward the public they are sworn to protect.

In its 228-page report, the commission depicted a world as raw and disturbing as any imagined by the grittiest television serials and crime novels--a milieu populated by rogue cops prone to violence and patrol officers who bully minorities, spew racial and sexual slurs and protect each other’s misdeeds.

Over squad car computers, officers called black men “Buckwheat” and referred to arresting Latinos as “mexercise.” A street cop with six complaints of excessive force already lodged against him dragged a cord-shackled suspect down the hall of a police station, only to be commended in his performance review for “high professional quality, mixed with a truly caring attitude.” Patrol officers repeatedly bragged about violent encounters with suspects, joking about “busting heads” and “street justice.”

When one officer messaged a colleague to ask if he was busy, the second officer responded electronically: “I was for awhile. But now I am going to slooow it down. If you encounter these negroes, shoot first and ask questions later.”

Christopher Commission members took pains Tuesday to acknowledge the difficulty of police work and the efforts by many Los Angeles police officers to uphold their sworn oath of duty.

“Certainly we do not wish to cast a shadow on the multitude of police officers who perform their arduous duties in exemplary fashion,” the report noted.

Reaction by police officers differed, some maintaining that the commission’s revelations of racism and brutality were long overdue while others contended that many good officers have been smeared along with the relative few who are bad.

The commission, using internal police surveys, hundreds of uncensored computer messages and scores of candid interviews, amassed vivid incidents of bigotry and violence to shape a portrait that could trouble the department for years to come.

“For the time being, I think it will be very tough to be a Los Angeles cop,” said James J. Fyfe, a New York police veteran and professor of criminal justice at American University.

As disconnected shards of the report filtered out to the public Tuesday, police officers, law enforcement experts and LAPD critics all reached for evidence that buttressed their own views on the state of law enforcement in Los Angeles. Reaction among police officers differed, some maintaining that the commission’s revelations were were long overdue, others contending that many good officers have been smeared along with the relative few who are bad.

Sgt. Gene Fretheim, a Foothill Division officer who was asked by superiors to review some of his division’s computer communications from the past six months, said that he had “read every single one of those messages and couldn’t find anything that might be interpreted as racism, sexist or not work-related.”

Melanie Lomax, who resigned as a police commissioner on Tuesday at the urging of the Christopher Commission, used similar computer messages to damn the department. Lomax grew irate at an unnamed officer’s message that it was “monkey slapping time”--an apparent reference to physical force against blacks.

“We are talking about a cancerous attitude towards minorities,” Lomax said, adding: “I don’t think there is anything more compelling, mean-spirited, racist or vicious than to use terms like ‘it’s monkey slapping time.’ That speaks volumes.”

Such references to blacks as “monkeys” are common over police channels, claimed Harbor Division Officer Janine Bouey, a black officer who left the Foothill Division after she herself was subjected to racist and sexist remarks by fellow officers.

“A week before the King incident, I was in Harbor and I heard . . . officers say, ‘Let’s go on a monkey hunt,’ ” Bouey said. “I don’t think its a little problem like (Police Chief Daryl) Gates is trying to pretend it is.”

In the moments before the King incident, police computer messages show an exchange by Foothill officers who referred to a black family’s domestic dispute as “gorillas in the mist.”

On Tuesday, Gates agreed that some messages “included inappropriate racial and ethnic comments,” but he emphasized that they represent “a relatively few number of transmissions (Gates said they accounted for only two-tenths of one percent of all transmissions audited).

Yet page after page within the Christopher Commission report features long lists of such messages, culled from police Mobile Digital Terminal computer banks. Each details the inner rage, frustrations and bitter humor that police vented to each other, unaware that their private musings would one day be collected and used against them.

Some communications, often full of misspellings, were thick with ethnic insults, mimicking inner-city black and Latino dialect. In one, an officer said he “would love to drive down Slauson with a flame thrower. We would have a barbeque.”

Said another: “Its busy out here. This hole is picking up. I almost got me a Mexican last night, but he dropped the dam gun too quick. . . . “

And when one officer told of stopping the occupants of one car, another lapsed into dialect: “Bees they naugahyde?”

“Negrohide,” came the response.

Electronic banter sometimes showed some male officers’ sexism, the commission concluded. At times, they ridiculed women they had met during the course of their duties. In other instances, they made gratuitous sexual remarks to women officers.

One joked that he had “left a 14-year-old girl that I me(t) yesterday handcuffed naked (t)o my chin-up bar wearing nothing but a blind-fold and salad oil. . . . “

Another advised a friend that he would be working with a new recruit, “a breathtakin’ blonde with huge kazoopers.”

The messages also were rife with allusions to violence, and coldly casual talk about physically abusing suspects.

After one officer asked another if he had just arrested an 85-year-old lady and “beat her up,” the responding officer said: “We just slapped her around a little bit . . . she’s getting m/t (medical treatment) right now.”

Another officer fired off a cavalier computer verse about the supposed joys of his job: “They give me a stick, they give mee a gun, they give me 50 G:s to have some fun.”

The commission’s review of internal police surveys and the department’s own database of brutality complaints concluded that there is a rogue element of police officers who are repeatedly involved in excessive force cases, yet still receive praise in their performance evaluations.

One officer, identified as “Officer B,” was “accused of striking an arrestee on the back of the neck with the butt of a shotgun” and was cited for “improper tactics,” according to the commission. Yet “his performance evaluation for the same period does not discuss the sustained complaint,” the report notes.

“There are several hundred officers beyond the pale who are not upbraided for what they do,” said Paul Hoffman, a legal director for the regional office of the ACLU. “That sends a message to the rest of the force . . .”

Meanwhile, a group of ethnically diverse officers who work in the crime-ridden Central Division in Skid Row disputed the commission’s findings that racism and violence are common in the ranks of street cops.

“There is no underground evil empire in the department trying to get anyone because of race,” insisted John Francois, a 23-year-old black officer.

“I’ve never worked with anyone like that (racist or violent),” agreed Officer Deborah Reed, 32, whose background is Filipino, Spanish and white.

“Look at this desk,” exclaimed training officer Ed Dadisho, who is of Middle Eastern extraction. “You’ll find a mix of all races and cultures, and we all get along like brothers and sisters.”