Officer at Scene of King Beating Cleared : Law enforcement: Board of Rights determines he was unjustly caught up in public furor over the case. He is the first of seven bystanders during the incident to face panel.

A Los Angeles police officer, accused of standing by during the beating of Rodney G. King and failing to report police misconduct, was cleared of those allegations Friday by an internal administrative hearing.

Officer Timothy Blake, 28, with four years on the force, was the first of seven officers to face a Board of Rights hearing for their roles as bystanders during the March 3 beating. Four others accused in the beating are to stand trial in February.

The chairman of the three-member board said he believes Blake was unjustly caught up in the public furor over the King incident. And Blake’s police defense representative, Sgt. Harry Ryon, said the verdict shows it is unfair to paint each of the officers present at the King beating “with the same broad brush.”

“This shows that our disciplinary system works,” Ryon said. “There’s not a damn thing wrong with our disciplinary system, and in this particular case it worked in Officer Blake’s favor.”

After two days of arguing his case in a closed hearing at Parker Center, Blake will be allowed to return to field duty, possibly as early as Monday, in the Foothill Division, the site of the beating.

Blake, who went into the hearing facing a possible job termination, had spent the last nine months working light duty and restricted from public contact.

Cmdr. Robert Taylor, who chaired the Board of Rights panel, said in an interview after the verdict that the evidence revealed that Blake was at the scene a mere 23 seconds before the beating ended.

Taylor also noted that the videotape of the beating shows that Blake saw only a “few baton strikes and a few kicks” before he and several other officers ended the beating by handcuffing King’s hands and feet.

Blake testified during the hearing that he never reported the beating as misconduct because he noticed that Sgt. Stacey C. Koon--one of the four officers later indicted in the incident--appeared to be in charge. Because of that, Taylor said, Blake “did not feel it necessary to report the incident.”

While he declined to speculate on the impact Blake’s exoneration may have on the upcoming criminal trial of the four officers and the administrative hearings for six others, Taylor said he believes Blake was a “pretty good officer” who was unfairly targeted at a time when the department was under intense public pressure to discipline the officers.

“I think this whole incident has placed a heavy burden on a lot of people that are involved in evaluating it,” he said. “As a part of that evaluation process, there are people who perhaps should not have been swept up into this investigation. And Blake may be one of those.

Taylor added: “He’s a military-type guy with a lot of decorations. And he has a very positive attitude about the department. He’s not bitter about this. He’s eager to get back to work.”

Blake could not be reached for comment. But Ryon, his defense representative, said “those 23 seconds cost Officer Blake nine months of misery.”

“Right now he just wants to be left alone,” Ryon said. “He’s exhausted. He’s mentally and physically exhausted. He’s just trying to get himself back into shape so he can get back on his beat on Monday.”

Ryon also strongly cautioned against the public interpreting the verdict to mean that the Police Department “takes take care of its own.”

“It’s a shame we had to close the board hearing because I would have loved to have all the naysayers sitting in the gallery and seeing what our disciplinary system is all about,” he said.

The hearing was closed because a judge in the criminal case of the four officers issued a protective order earlier this year sealing all evidence gathered by the police Internal Affairs Division investigating the beating.

Sgt. Harold Clifton, acting head of the division’s advocate section, declined to comment on the Blake ruling. He also was unsure whether Blake’s exoneration will prompt his office to change the way it presents evidence at the other administrative hearings.

“It could have a major impact,” he said, “because the department’s position was that Officer Blake was guilty of misconduct.”

According to board chairman Taylor, evidence in the Blake hearing showed that the officer’s involvement on the night of the beating was minimal. He also said that when Blake realized what was happening, he “moved swiftly” to end the incident with King’s arrest.

Taylor said Blake arrived about a block away from where other officers had stopped King in Lake View Terrace. Blake, he said, was helping to direct traffic and about two to four minutes later he began walking toward the site where King was surrounded by a large group of officers.

Blake first paused to look at a bus full of people who had stopped and were watching the incident, Taylor said.

“He then continued to walk down and that’s when he observed two officers around a suspect; one officer striking the suspect once or twice, and the other officer striking him once or twice, and the suspect appearing to be on all fours,” Taylor said.

“He stopped for a moment and looked at that and then at a time he felt was appropriate he grabbed ahold of the suspect, and with the help of some other officers, turned him over and secured him.”

Taylor said a lieutenant from the Police Department’s training division testified during the hearing that from the short amount of time Blake spent at the scene, it would be difficult to “conclusively” determine that excessive force was used on King.

In addition, Taylor said, Blake testified that only after seeing the full videotape did he begin to realize excessive force was used.

“He indicated he was very uncomfortable with the tape,” Taylor said. “And he said there were things on the tape that he believed to be misconduct. But even after playing this thing over and over in his head, there was nothing that he saw at the time that drew him to that conclusion.”

The verdict marks the third case in which a peace officer present at the King beating has kept his job. Last month, two Los Angeles school police officers who had been fired for standing by and not intervening in the King incident were ordered reinstated.