CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : SAN FRANCISCO : 2 Receive Stiff Terms in Beatings

Stiff prison sentences were handed to two former Oakland Housing Authority officers Friday for beatings and corruption. One of them, Juan Dale Reese, 31, said they were being unfairly singled out. He agreed police brutality is a problem but said “making an example of us is not the cure.” He was sentenced to 7 1/4 years in federal prison. Reese, convicted of using unnecessary force and conspiring to violate civil rights, suggested that the jury had been influenced by the furor over the Los Angeles police beating of Rodney G. King. U.S. District Judge Fern Smith acknowledged that “other officers in the past have been given a slap on the wrist,” but said new uniform sentencing laws should rectify that. She denied trying to make an example of Reese, saying that he and his colleagues “made examples of yourselves.” The leader of the Housing Authority’s disbanded drug task force, Sgt. Daniel Broussard, 40, got an eight-year sentence.