Woman Didn’t Hit Officer in Scuffle, Her Attorney Says : Police: One of the patrolmen in the incident had been criticized by Gates for acting ‘out of policy’ in 1987 fatal shooting of a black man.

The lawyer for a woman allegedly assaulted last weekend by two Los Angeles officers outside said Monday that she never used a pain-compliance device to strike either of the officers, despite earlier reports that she hit one of the men in the forehead.

Darryl Mounger, an attorney for Jennifer Jones, said the 41-year Police Department civilian employee was reporting to work as a jail supervisor when Officer John Puis stopped her and asked to see her police identification.

Mounger said his client did not have her credentials at the time, but that the officers could have stepped inside police headquarters to verify that she was permitted in the restricted area.

Instead, the lawyer said, Puis, a 17-year police veteran, “put his hands on her first and she knocked his hands away.”

The lawyer said they fell to the ground and continued to struggle when Officer Michael G. Daly, an eight-year veteran, saw the scuffle and intervened. “She was struck at least once, but there possibly might have been two baton blows,” Mounger said. “I don’t know what was in Mr. Daly’s mind when he struck her with the baton.”

Mounger said Jones was carrying a small, plastic device on her key ring that can be used as a defensive weapon. But he denied that she jabbed either of the officers with the device.

Mounger said Jones was handcuffed and arrested. Later, he said, after she was read her legal rights, she was released from custody. He said she was never booked or charged with a crime.

Jones, a 10-year Police Department employee, could not be reached for comment, and Mounger insisted that she not be interviewed at this time. “My client is under the care of a doctor,” the attorney said. “She was taken off work because of her injuries. . . . Her shoulder, her back and her arms are sore.”

Daly, 33, and Puis, 43, were not at work Monday and could not be reached for comment.

Lt. Fred Nixon, a Police Department spokesman, said they have not been reassigned to desk duty, as is common in other high profile use-of-force cases.

“We have a personnel investigation that is ongoing,” Nixon said. “Our primary objective at this point is to get it concluded as soon as possible so we know exactly what happened.”

There were conflicting views about whether there were racial or gender overtones involved in the incident. The two officers are white and Jones is black.

“There’s no way to get around the fact that it’s racial or that race and gender are factors . . . when you have two white men and one black female,” said Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas.

“The LAPD is too quick to deny race and gender being factors in the way in which police officers behave. The only thing they do is continue to bury the very thing that they ought to be trying to expose.”

But Police Commission President Stanley Sheinbaum said Assistant Chief Robert Vernon briefed him on the Jones incident and that, based on Vernon’s report, it does not appear that racism or gender discrimination played a part.

But he added that the information is incomplete because Jones has not yet made a statement. “Tentatively, there’s no sign that it might have been a racist incident or even a gender incident,” Sheinbaum said. “But we just can’t tell yet on the basis of the information we have.”

Sheinbaum said Vernon told him Jones had “an excellent record. She was well respected in her own department by her superiors.”

Mounger declined to comment on whether any offensive racial or gender remarks were made in the moments before the struggle began.

Daly, in an incident four years ago, was sharply criticized by Chief Daryl F. Gates for fatally shooting a black man. Gates termed the August, 1987, incident as “out-of-policy” and gave an “administrative disapproval” rating of the incident.

Although it was unclear Monday whether Daly was disciplined after the shooting, he was ordered by Gates to undergo additional training in police work, including instruction in the escalation of force.

Daly and his trainee officer, Chris Barling, responded to a “man ringing the doorbell” call in the Hyde Park area of southwest Los Angeles. They found Joseph Anunwah, 26, standing on a stairway landing of the residence. The officers attempted to arrest him, but a fight broke out.

Barling, who was on only his third day of field duty, repeatedly hit Anunwah with his baton. Anunwah allegedly twice grabbed for the officers’ guns, and bit Daly’s thumb “to the bone, causing considerable pain and bleeding,” Gates said.

The chief, in a report of the incident to the Police Commission, said Daly feared for his and Barling’s safety and drew his gun. He said Daly placed the muzzle within inches of Anunwah’s lower body and fired twice, shooting him in the torso, right thigh and genital area. Anunwah fell to the ground, and was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Gates wrote that Daly never properly advised Anunwah why he was being detained, that he left his baton in the patrol car, and that Anunwah did not pose a serious threat of injury or death when Daly shot him.

“I have concluded that Officer Daly prematurely fired his weapon at Anunwah,” Gates wrote in the report.

The chief added that he ordered Daly and Barling to undergo “remedial training in partner communications, the escalation of force, and the application of control holds.”

Anunwah’s brother, Lennox Anunwah, sued the city for $1 million, but the case was dismissed when a judge ruled that their mother, who was living in Nigeria, should have brought the suit.