Judge Gives Ex-Officer Probation for Beating : Jurisprudence: Former member of Foothill Division is also ordered to perform 500 hours of community service for using excessive force against 2 people on Pacoima street corner.

A former Los Angeles police officer convicted of using excessive force when he beat two people on a Pacoima street corner last year was sentenced Friday to 3 years’ probation and 500 hours of community service.

In handing down the sentence against Lance L. Braun, 42, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John H. Reid reduced one of the two felony assault counts against Braun to a misdemeanor and said he did not think imprisonment was appropriate in the case. Braun had faced a maximum sentence of three years and eight months in state prison.

Both the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jodi B. Rafkin, and Braun’s defense attorney, Larry H. Layton, said they thought Reid’s sentence was appropriate, although Layton said his client should never have been convicted. Rafkin had not asked for imprisonment in the case, noting the “perils” that former police officers often face during incarceration.

Braun, who was shielded from the news media by two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies as he left the courtroom Friday, declined comment.

He spent 21 years on the police force before retiring last April, shortly before the charges were filed against him. He had been working out of the Foothill Division, where four other officers face charges in the now-notorious beating of motorist Rodney G. King.

Braun was found guilty by a jury last month of assaulting Theresa Carney, 25, and William Gable, 44, while on duty on Aug. 2, 1990. The incident occurred after Braun ordered a group of people, including Carney and Gable, to leave a corner that police consider a gathering place for illicit activity.

Carney said that when they didn’t leave, Braun “jabbed” his baton at her, knocking the wind out of her. Gable said Braun hit him 10 or 15 times and kicked him.

Braun testified that he did nothing wrong and acted in self-defense. He said he bumped Carney with his hip because she was “invading my space” and hit Gable with his baton because Gable attacked him with a large bottle.

Braun said he lied to superiors about his whereabouts at the time of the incident because he “wanted to find out what the supervisors had, what the complaint was before any statements were made.”

One of the issues discussed in the court before Friday’s sentencing was whether the attack resulted from bigotry on Braun’s part.

Braun, like the officers charged in the King case, is white. Carney and Gable, like King, are black.

Rafkin told the court Friday that Braun had shown prejudice against blacks on previous occasions, including one in which he hurled racial epithets against a fellow officer, a woman. Layton responded that Braun “is not the bigot that . . . (Rafkin) tries to make him out to be.”

Judge Reid told Braun he couldn’t determine whether bigotry played a part in the attack “because I don’t know what’s going on inside your head. . . .

“I don’t know what happened out there,” the judge said. “But I do know that it shouldn’t have happened.”

In view of the lack of severity of the injuries sustained by Carney, Reid said he was reducing the conviction involving the assault of Carney to a misdemeanor.

The felony conviction involving the assault on Gable was allowed to stand, although Reid said he was “disturbed” that Gable had “gone to a lawyer to see what kind of medical treatment he needed.”

Reid said that after completion of his community service, Braun can ask the court to reduce the remaining felony conviction to a misdemeanor, “and there is a strong likelihood I will do that.” In addition to the community service, Reid ordered Braun to make restitution to be determined by the Probation Department.