2 King Case Officers Regain School Jobs : Law enforcement: A commission concludes that the pair, who did not participate in the beating of the motorist, were unjustly caught up in the public uproar.

Two Los Angeles school police officers who were fired for standing by and not intervening during the beating of Rodney G. King have been ordered reinstated by a school district commission.

The commission rescinded the firings of Marc Diamond and Paul Beauregard after concluding that the officers were unjustly caught up in the community uproar over the King incident, officials said Monday. The commission acted during its meeting last week.

Diamond, a 16-year school officer, was given a two-month unpaid suspension, and Beauregard, a five-year veteran, was suspended without pay for four months because of various school policies they violated in responding to the King incident last March, commission officials said. Because the two officers have been off work since they were fired last May, school district officials said the suspensions will be considered as having been served.

“They will be put back to work,” said Jon Campbell, director of the Personnel Commission, an independent body that settles disputes between school district employees and management. “There is still some paperwork that needs to be processed, but that’s being taken care of as soon as possible. They will be back on the job very shortly.”

Campbell said the three-member commission reached its conclusion after a hearing examiner held several weeks of closed-door testimony in which Diamond and Beauregard argued that the terminations were excessive. He said the commissioners also agreed with the hearing examiner in that the two officers were unduly punished during the intense political and community fallout that polarized the city after the March 3 beating of King.

“There was a feeling that the Rodney King incident had an impact on the entire proceedings” against Diamond and Beauregard, Campbell said. “The commissioners believed the case may have been influenced by the Rodney King affair.

“But what it came down to was that these particular individuals were not participants at all in the incident. They were at the scene, and one of them observed some of the activity. But they were in no way charged with anything relating to that particular incident.”

William J. Hadden, attorney for the two officers, said the pair responded as backup to a California Highway Patrol car that was briefly pursuing King and two passengers. He said the school officers were guarding King’s two traveling companions outside King’s car while the beating took place.

Officers from several police agencies responded to the scene, and four Los Angeles officers have been criminally indicted in the case.

Hadden said he believes school district officials originally voted to fire the officers because of political pressure to deal swiftly with any allegations of police abuse arising out of the King beating.

“They were terminated as part of the hysteria that emerged from the Rodney King incident,” he said. “My clients never denied that they deserved some kind of discipline. They violated some rules.”

Hadden said other school employees have committed far more serious offenses and have not lost their jobs. He added that Diamond and Beauregard have “very, very good past records with the district.” Diamond, he said, has “something like 25 pages of commendations.”

Hadden said he did not know how soon the officers would be reinstated. He said the school district has the option of appealing the decision in court.

Belinda Stith, the attorney who represented the district and defended the job terminations before the hearing examiner and the Personnel Commission, was out of the office Monday and could not be reached for comment.

Hadden declined to discuss specifics about which policy violations were upheld to justify the suspensions, except to say that the officers did not properly report their involvement in the King incident.