Violence at Gay Protest Examined : LAPD: Confidential reports cite strained communication and distrust between activists and police for hostilities at Century City demonstration.

A Century City protest last month turned violent because of strained communication and a growing distrust between gay community activists and the Los Angeles Police Department, according to high police sources and more than 100 pages of confidential LAPD reports obtained Wednesday by The Times.

The police documents, called “After Action Reports,” describe a series of relatively peaceful gay community demonstrations, ending with the Oct. 23 rally in front of the Century Plaza Hotel in which police armed with nightsticks and riot gear dispersed a crowd of 500.

While many activists alleged that police beat and kicked them, the reports contain no details of police abuse and instead portrayed the demonstrators as an angry mob that threw rocks and bottles and even struck a bus driver.

In addition, it appears from the reports that the crowd was incited by a new police directive preventing them from marching in the street as they had in the past.

“It was a dangerous situation, a raucous demonstration,” said one high-level police source, who asked not to be identified. “So we pushed the crowd out of the area.”

The reports are to be presented next week to the Los Angeles Police Commission. Dozens of gay and lesbian activists have attended the panel’s weekly meetings and charged that police angrily assaulted them during the rally to protest Gov. Pete Wilson’s veto of a gay rights bill.

Police commissioners have asked for the lengthy reports to determine if the allegations of police abuse are true.

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates has said he believes there was no officer misconduct during the incident, a position he reiterated during a break in the Police Commission meeting Tuesday. “I am hard-pressed to find anything that went wrong” with the way police handled the demonstration, he said.

But Torie Osborn, executive director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, criticized the reports as “another example of police disinformation.”

“What we have heard and seen is that the police were randomly beating people,” she said. “They bore down on a peaceful demonstration. It was massive overreaction by the police.”

The documents show that almost all of the 28 gay and lesbian demonstrations between Sept. 30 and Oct. 11 were staged peacefully and with few arrests, despite heightened tensions over the governor’s veto.

“It was apparent at the beginning that this was a grass-roots movement, and many of the participants stated that they were suffering from AIDS,” the reports said. “To these demonstrators, this was not only a civil rights issue, but a matter of life and death.”

Nevertheless, there was little police force used during the first 28 rallies. “The result,” the reports said, “was an example of law enforcement professionalism at its finest in dealing with an extremely boisterous and indignant group that had the potential for violent confrontation at any moment.”

But in mid-October, under a directive from Gates, police began advising demonstration organizers that their groups would no longer be allowed to gather and march on city streets if traffic would be disrupted.

The reports show that some police officials believed “this would be an abrupt change of tactics to suddenly start arresting demonstrators for violations that were not previously enforced.”

In addition, as police found it increasingly difficult to learn where future rallies would be held, uniformed officers were sent into West Hollywood to retrieve flyers of upcoming rallies, sources said. This created an atmosphere where many gay leaders believed police were spying on their activities.

With the lines of communication breaking down, and distrust growing, police officials at the scene of the Century City rally told the marchers that they could not collect in the street. When they amassed on a center median and refused to budge, police moved in.

As officers pushed forward, seven arrests were made for offenses ranging from failing to disperse to striking a police horse. Cans, rocks and gravel from a planter were thrown at officers, the reports said, and one police officer was struck by a bottle tossed from the crowd.

At one point, the reports said, a small group of demonstrators surrounded a driver and her RTD bus on Santa Monica Boulevard. “The crowd ripped the driver’s personal radio out of the bus and destroyed it,” the reports said. “The driver was also struck in the face with a bottle thrown by one of the demonstrators.”

In contrast, the reports listed only one injury to any of the demonstrators, and it was described as a wrist abrasion a woman suffered from plastic handcuffs.