U. S. Probe of Police Brutality Fading Within Bureaucracy

Nine months after top federal officials promised a sweeping and unprecedented nationwide review of police brutality in the wake of the Rodney G. King beating, examinations by Congress and the Justice Department appear to have vanished within the bureaucracy.

The congressional probe, announced with much fanfare by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Government Operations Committee, has not even started, and officials acknowledge that they are not certain when, if ever, it will.

A separate assessment of 15,000 police brutality complaints over the last six years by the Justice Department’s civil rights division has been completed, but not released. The review was ordered by Dick Thornburgh, then the attorney general, 11 days after the March 3 King beating.

Assistant Atty. Gen. John R. Dunne, who heads the division, said the review has been referred to the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Justice Department, in connection with studies it is pursuing.

But Charles B. DeWitt, director of the institute, said he has not seen the brutality assessment and considers it irrelevant to the work already under way within his jurisdiction.

Federal officials contend that there are good reasons for the meager results.

DeWitt said use of excessive force by police is “an area about which we know very little.” As a result, he said, “base line, first step” research efforts must be completed before tackling the questions that Thornburgh asked the institute to answer, including whether a relationship exists between brutality and police training and procedures.

However, the scant effort undertaken so far raises questions about whether the high-profile federal initiative has fallen victim to a frequent Washington phenomenon--relegating an issue to the back burner after public attention has turned elsewhere.

To be sure, the federal government has taken some action in the King case, including a criminal investigation by the FBI. The bureau described the inquiry as “pending.” But other sources said the results already have been forwarded to the civil rights division, where they have been put on hold until action by California authorities is completed.

The trial of four Los Angeles police officers accused in the King beating is scheduled to begin in Ventura County on Feb. 3. If that trial should end in acquittal or a hung jury, the Justice Department could decide to seek federal civil rights charges--if the evidence would support such action, one source said.

In addition to the criminal probe, the FBI held a one-day conference in April on the use of excessive force, which some key law enforcement leaders attended. FBI Director William S. Sessions asked the special agents in charge of the bureau’s 56 field offices to conduct similar conferences.

But the efforts announced by Thornburgh and Conyers on March 14 represented the most visible federal response to the outcry that followed repeated broadcasts of the videotape showing King being beaten by Los Angeles police officers.

Conyers, a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said he was asking the investigative arm of Congress, the General Accounting Office, to examine not only the phenomenon of police brutality, but also the federal response.

Before it can initiate the probe, the GAO must receive a letter from Conyers officially requesting it. Although Conyers’ spokesman on the House Government Operations Committee, Robert S. Weiner, insisted that the investigation already is under way, GAO officials said that no such letter has been received and no investigation has been undertaken.

In requesting the Justice Department review in March, Thornburgh declared that “responsible law enforcement officers condemn acts of police brutality by anyone in law enforcement.” He directed the civil rights division to review all official complaints it had received over the last six years “to discern whether any pattern of misconduct is apparent.”

Despite the rhetoric, some lawyers in the civil rights division dismissed the assessment privately as a “make work” activity.

Assistant Atty. Gen. Dunne said recently that the assessment ranked police departments by the number of brutality incidents relative to the size of each department and the population of its jurisdiction.

On several occasions, Dunne has said the review had been sent to the National Institute of Justice, which was ordered by Thornburgh “to determine the correlation, if any, between the incidence of police brutality and the presence or absence of police department training programs and internal procedures to deter police brutality.”

But DeWitt, the institute’s director, said he had not received the division’s review and that even if it had, it would be “not relevant to the research under way.”

He said the institute soon will announce two research grants totaling $400,000 for the first step in what he hopes will be a three- to five-year effort to study police officers’ use of excessive force.

In one study, the Police Executive Research Forum in Washington will attempt to “frame the key issues facing the nation on police use of excessive force” by examining published and unpublished work on police brutality, said William Geller, the project’s director.

In the other, the Police Foundation, working with the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police, will conduct a survey to determine the nature and extent of excessive force and the best means of controlling it.

These studies are far less sweeping than the “research solicitation” that the national institute issued last July, because “virtually nothing has been done in this area,” DeWitt said in an interview.

DeWitt said he hopes to sell Atty. Gen. William P. Barr on the merits of conducting a longer-range research effort. The study would cover recruitment, examination and testing of officers and how they relate to brutality; training and use of police.