Man Says He Was Clubbed by Officer

A North Hollywood man filed a complaint Monday with the Los Angeles Police Department against an unidentified officer he said clubbed him to the ground at a gay-rights demonstration in Woodland Hills because he asked for the officer’s badge number.

“I saw the anger in the officer’s eyes when he hit me, a look of hatred I have not seen since I was beat up in grade school by the school bully,” Peter Mackler, 34, said Monday. Sgt. Steve Zipperman of the department’s internal affairs division said Mackler’s allegation would be investigated, but declined to comment further.

Mackler said he suffered a black eye, “a major bump” on the head and broken glasses when an officer struck him at the end of Friday night’s demonstration in front of the Warner Center Marriott hotel, where Gov. Pete Wilson was the guest of honor at a fund-raising dinner for state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita).

Mackler and other protesters said the alleged attack occurred while police were trying to disperse the remaining crowd in a parking lot across the street from the hotel. Mackler said he sought the officer’s badge number after deciding he had been prodded too roughly and too many times.

No other injuries or charges of police misconduct stemming from the demonstration were reported as of Monday, said Tay Aston of the gay-rights organization ACT UP/Los Angeles, who coordinated legal support for the protesters.

“By and large, during the demonstration, the police were on really good behavior,” Aston said. “They didn’t react to provocation and there were people that were really taunting.”

An estimated 250 to 500 activists protested Wilson’s veto of a gay-rights measure and a Davis bill that would make it a crime for HIV-infected people to engage in unprotected sex. There were 36 arrests.