Black Men, LAPD--a Mix of Bitterness and Suspicion : Minorities: Abuse, humiliation are the norm, many say. But police call actions a response to crime.

The war stories often come with photographs.

Sometimes the pictures are inconsequential or blurry--little help in a court case. Still, black men hold onto them, hoping that the images of gashed heads, bruised limbs and battered torsos might someday, like the Rodney King videotape, lend credence to their own tales of police abuse.

Martin Williams brought out his photos the night he and his two brothers gathered in their parents’ old house on West 79th Street to reflect on what they perceive as a poisoned relationship between black men and police in South Los Angeles.

Williams’ pictures showed head wounds he said he suffered during a recent scuffle with police. “When I show these to my friends, it’s like, ‘So what?’ ” he said. “It’s happened to them, too. Every black man has a story.”

The Rodney King beating has had resonance for any black man ever stopped by a cop--whether justified or not. The fears that King said he experienced as he led police in pursuit that March night could have been their own. And they, in turn, have begun to use his war-story-to-end-all-war-stories to validate their tales.

Some black men are so accustomed to being pulled over by police that they will not ride in a car with three or more of their black friends. Going “four deep,” they say, only invites trouble.

Police insist that their only motivation in stopping and questioning black residents is the simple and immediate need to thwart crime. The fact that such encounters happen with regularity in South Los Angeles, they say, is a reflection of the relentless pace of crime in that part of the city.

“It’s police work, pure and simple,” said Central Division Capt. James Tatreau, previously a ranking officer in the Southwest Division. “When you’re on patrol in a place where you have a lot of crime, you have to watch out for yourself and your partners. Our lives are on the line every time we stop someone. And we’re not going to tell our people to ease up so that some idiot can have a fairer fight and maybe go for our guns or pull out one of their own.”

Sometimes, Tatreau said, police are left with no choice but to use force when confronted by combative or belligerent suspects. “You see,” he said, “we’re not trained to win fair and square. We’re trained to win. Period. That means we sometimes have to take a guy down with everything we’ve got.”

Residents in high crime areas have no argument with police being tough on bad guys. That’s what they say they want and expect. These communities are filled with hard-working people who bear the brunt of criminal conduct. What they say they do mind are policemen who seem to see young blacks in general as potential adversaries in the war on crime.

“Funny, you know that’s how I knew I was getting old,” said Charles Anderson, a 59-year-old retired security guard, “when the police finally stopped hassling me.”

Young blacks who have run-ins with police keep their memories close to the skin. Without much effort, they can recall every search, every drawn gun, every prone-out. Although they are everyday occurrences in the inner city, each new incident unleashes its own small cycle of bitterness and contempt.

As they describe their encounters with police, some black men finish their stories with a passage so similar that it seems machine-stamped. After being freed, they are sent off by arresting officers with a chilly farewell: “Have a nice night.” It is not offered as an apology or cordiality--or taken as one by blacks. It is seen as a warning that the police are always watching and that next time, maybe the results will be different.

At sunset one September day, a black teen-ager burst out of the Southeast Division station’s front doors and vaulted into the air, pumping his fist skyward: “I’m free! Alright!”

He was 17, and had just been released after an hour’s detention in the station’s lockup. He had been picked up with several older men during a drug raid outside a rock house. Although his detention was not surprising given the fact that he was at a crime scene, he was nonetheless unnerved by his first look inside a police station.

“I know those people, that’s all,” he said about the others arrested with him and who were still being detained. “They live on my block. I grew up with them. I told the police that and they still arrested me.”

He had 20 blocks to walk back to his house. He had a war story to tell.

The Williams brothers--Martin, Rodney and Kamal--have all taken different routes in life. But they have a few traits in common.

Martin Williams, 24, is sparse-bearded and witty as a club comic. A part-time construction worker, he spends much of his time these days just hanging out. Rodney Williams, 27, has smoky eyes and an athlete’s build. Taking courses at Southwest College, he works as a teacher’s aide at Manual Arts High. Kamal Hassan, 34, is tall, driven and studious, a veteran sixth-grade teacher at Cienega Elementary.

The three brothers each share similar stories about lying face-down in the street or sitting on their hands on the sidewalk after being stopped by police officers. All three have memorized what they say is the Police Department’s routine for traffic stops.

Rodney, who once considered becoming a cop, has the most tales of being “jacked up.” He once thought he was targeted because he drove a BMW, bought by his mother. He now drives a red Nissan Pulsar NX and still it happens.

“When you see their (officers’) heads swivel as you drive by, it’s not even worth driving further,” he said. “Just pull over and wait for The Routine. They’ll say, ‘Stick your right hand out the window, now your left. Open the door with your left hand. Keep your hands out and exit with your hands out, sir.’ If you get out facing them, they’ll say, ‘Do not face me! Turn around!’ Then they tell you to interlock your hands behind your head, back up three steps and get down on your knees. Then they put you into the ground.

“I know it better than the Lord’s Prayer, man,” Rodney said. “Just about every black man does.”

They can laugh about it, but there is a bitter edge to their amusement--as if they expect to be led through the paces yet again. “As if we’re in a damn war,” Martin scoffed.

Martin has been stopped and detained by other local police departments, but most of his and Rodney’s encounters have been with the Los Angeles Police Department, which patrols their streets. Their house on West 79th, inherited from their parents, is in “Crip-land,” according to Martin, a reference to the Hoover Crips gang. A wrong answer to the question, “Where you from?” or a red “Bloods” hat worn outside, could be a fatal mistake.

Although Kamal has had less contact with cops, he is obsessed by a childhood memory. When he was 11, he skipped school one day. Asked by his mother to pick up some items at a neighborhood market, he was coming out of an alley near Florence when a squad car pulled up. A white policeman stepped out and asked the youth why he was out during school hours. Kamal explained he had his mother’s permission. Not satisfied, the cop took out his service revolver and waved it in the boy’s direction.

“You better go to the store real quick and get off the street, you hear?” the cop told him. Kamal hurried home. He never told his mother.

“I was too scared,” he recalled. “He was in his rights to scold me. But the fool didn’t have to take out his damn gun.”

Martin has the most trouble. He always talks back. He figures he is going to be proned-out by the cops anyway, so he might as well salvage his pride before he goes down.

“Here’s one, just this summer,” he said. “Me and six guys are playing basketball at Loren Miller Elementary playground. Well, these cops come flying down the street, kick their doors open, cock their shotguns on us and put us on the ground. I’m yelling: ‘What did we do?’ And some bald-headed cop claps me upside the head because I asked.”

The players were shackled in plastic manacles, Martin said, and driven to the 77th Division station. After an hour, they were released without charges. He said he filed a brutality complaint, but it went nowhere.

“I got some card from the station saying that if I had any further problems, I should let Internal Affairs know,” Martin said. “How considerate of them, you know? I chucked the card out. They wouldn’t have done a thing. You want something done, you get a lawyer.”

Martin took a long swig from a water bottle, then fell silent. A mechanical rumble, muffled inside a car hood, came from the street, then receded. Martin froze. “Hear that?” he said. “That’s a black-and-white. You live here long enough, you can tell the sound of their engines.”

From their front window, it was visible down the street, the familiar Chevrolet tail lights disappearing into the dark.

Three nights later, the police were back in force on the Williams’ street.

The block had been calm all day. Latino families, many new to the neighborhood, were outside, watering lawns and washing cars. Black teen-agers drifted out into the middle of the street to banter with each other. Three doors down from the Williams house, two youths boxed, whaling away with oversized red sparring gloves.

Around 7:15 p.m., from his front porch, Martin Williams noticed a solitary squad car down the street. It moved slowly, front beams cut off despite the waning light of day. Martin turned and saw a second cruiser, coming in the opposite direction. He shuddered, as if caught doing something wrong, then straightened as the squad car passed him and headed for the house where his neighbors had been boxing minutes earlier.

Four cars converged on the house. Doors blew open like escape hatches. Police officers scrambled into position behind car frames, training their 9-millimeter automatics on four young black men swaying on the lawn to the beat of “Electric Woman” by M. C. Breed. The youths, as if roused from sleep, raised their arms tentatively.

“What did we do?” came a faint high-pitched voice. Five 77th Street Division officers--four of them white, one a Latino--ordered them to their knees.

Down the street, Martin Williams rocked with laughter. “Damn! A live demonstration!” he shouted. “It’s the whole Routine! Now watch! They got their hands up. Now they’re turning them around. Oh man!”

The young men were cuffed as one officer checked his car computer terminal for open warrants. The others huddled around the kneeling youths. Some neighbors drew around, curious. Others didn’t bother. This came with the territory.

For 15 minutes, the cops kept the young men handcuffed. Then, one by one, the officers unlocked the cuffs and, talking one last time with each youth, let them go. The sergeant, whose nametag read “Jackson,” trudged over to a small crowd of onlookers. His eyes were weary. He did not seem in a mood to talk.

“We got a call that there were five black guys out here with a gun,” Jackson explained. “We’ve got to respond to a call like that. We checked them out and they didn’t have any guns or any outstanding warrants that we could find. They’re clean, so we let them go.”

The gun report had been a “phony call,” Jackson figured. “Someone’s using us for a joke, maybe. But people have to understand.

“Whatever’s happened this year,” he continued, referring to the King beating, “we’ve got a job to do.”

Liberated, the four neighborhood men--Rick Jones, 19, Eric Stewart, 19, and brothers Anthony, 18, and Everett Richardson, 21--retreated to Martin Williams’ front porch. A sympathetic chorus of neighbors drifted over and, before long, they were all deep into war stories about cops.

Down the street, engines kicked on. The squad cars began moving down the street in a line, each slowing down as it passed the Williams house.

One by one, the officers in each car flicked high-intensity searchlights at the crowd on the porch. Each flash caught the men in frozen movement. Each illuminated hard faces and cold eyes.

The Rodney King affair might be a big deal to the talking heads on television, the phantoms who write newspaper stories and the political junkies at City Hall, but as you move into inner-city neighborhoods where the controversy really means something, the urgency seems to fade.

Cynics see only futility, convinced that once the department, the City Council and the voters have their say, “the Boys”--a street epithet for the Los Angeles Police Department--will be back in force.

Even blacks who think the King case has put police on the defensive do not expect their new sense of empowerment to last.

A longstanding complaint among some young black men is that the police, locked in their perpetual war with gang members, cannot seem to distinguish between the hard-core hoods and those with no gang ties. Every day, they say, suspicion of gang activity is used as a reason to stop, frisk and question young blacks.

“We’ve all been there,” said Harry Lee Warren, a veteran gang counselor with the Community Youth Gang Services.

A small, wiry black man in his mid-30s, Warren tries to be a neutral presence on the streets of South Los Angeles. Showing up on bloody sidewalks minutes after drive-by shootings, he cools hostilities between rival gangs with a diplomat’s touch--soothing frayed nerves, picking up tips, listening to aggrieved gangsters.

In the months since the King beating, Warren has found his job becoming more difficult. There are days, he says, when the mere presence of police at shooting scenes inflames tensions instead of quelling them.

“We’ll calm down a neighborhood,” Warren said, “and then the cops will show up and we’re back to ground zero again.”

On his left hand, Warren wears a ring topped by a gold-plated wolf’s head. It is his remaining affectation from a failed career as a street hustler. Warren has been out of jail four years, his longest stretch of freedom since he was a teen-ager.

On the bridge of his nose is a bent scar. “This,” Warren explained, “is from a police beating.” Six years ago, he said, two Los Angeles police officers knocked on his door. He answered wearing only a towel. They asked him to step outside. When he protested, one of them slugged him in the face with a flashlight.

Unsightly as it looks, the scar is Harry Lee Warren’s entry into a fraternity.