LAPD Employee, Officers Scuffle : Police: The woman is struck with a baton during the confrontation. The lawmen had asked the non-uniformed jail worker for identification in Parker Center parking lot.

A civilian woman who works for the Los Angeles Police Department was struck with a baton by two male officers in a confrontation that occurred as she arrived for work at the downtown jail, police officials said Saturday.

The woman, Jennifer Jones, 41, and one of the officers were treated for minor injuries, officials said.

The woman was walking in a Parker Center parking lot that is off limits to non-department employees late Friday night when she was confronted by two uniformed officers who demanded that she show her identification, police officials said. She apparently was reporting for her 11 p.m. shift as a station officer at the jail but was not in uniform and was not wearing any identification, officials said.

An argument broke out, and when Jones started to leave, one of the officers “attempted to stop (her) from walking away,” Lt. Fred Nixon said.

Further details on how the confrontation escalated into a scuffle were sketchy. The woman is black and the two officers are white, Nixon said, but he added that there was no indication race was an issue.

“We’re just beginning our investigation,” he said. “She’s very upset and we’ve been informed that she has retained counsel and counsel has indicated that he would prefer she not be interviewed until he can be with her.”

As a matter of policy, officers are supposed to challenge anyone who enters the restricted area without identification, Nixon said.

In the confrontation, one of the officers, identified by United Press International as John Puis, grabbed Jones by the arm. She reportedly responded by hitting him on the forehead with a department-issued pain-compliance weapon. Puis’ partner, identified as Michael Daly, pulled out his baton and struck Jones. She was handcuffed and taken inside headquarters, where co-workers identified her as a station officer, Nixon said.

Jones, a Police Department employee for nine years, was treated for bruises at a Kaiser Foundation Hospital and released.

Puis was described as a 17-year department veteran, and Daly was reported to have been on the force for nine years. They were at the jail to book a suspect.

In 1987, Daly fatally shot a Nigerian national who police said had struggled with Daly and his partner as they tried to stop him from harassing an estranged girlfriend.

Nixon conceded that Friday’s incident was an embarrassment to a department reeling in the aftermath of the beating of black motorist Rodney G. King by white officers.

City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, condemning the confrontation as “very, very disturbing,” called for an investigation by the civilian Police Commission.

“I can’t imagine for the life of me . . . how it could get out of control like that,” he said. “I don’t know how you dismiss the race question, or the gender question. . . . It’s all there. These are questions that are obviously very problematic.”