CRISIS IN THE LAPD / THE...

STACEY CORNELL KOON

Sgt. Stacey Cornell Koon, 41, a 14-year veteran before his suspension without pay last year, charged with assault with a deadly weapon, excessive force by an officer under color of authority, filing a false police report and being an accessory to assault.

The scene is etched into the memories of officers at the LAPD’s 77th Street Division.

A black transvestite prostitute with open sores around his lips was seized by a heart attack and fell to the floor of the police station lockup.

As other officers stood back aghast, Koon dropped to his knees and administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in a futile effort to save the man. An autopsy subsequently revealed what officers had feared--the dying prostitute had AIDS.

Koon, who is white, stands accused of racial bigotry in the King beating, but some officers said the incident shows he can be compassionate.

“I don’t know if I could have done it, to be quite frank,” said Officer Maria Marquez. “It floored us all. . . . It set such a good example. A lot of times we have a tendency to take care of ourselves and not take care of other people.”

“Stacey never talked about it in any detail,” said another officer, who asked not to be named. “He said only that this guy was created in the image and likeness of God, and if he could keep him alive, he was going to do that.”

Koon is a man of striking contradictions. He spent his career as a lower-echelon street cop but possesses two master’s degrees. He is admired by some as a good sergeant who is cool under fire and fair to the officers he supervises. But others regard him as insensitive, arrogantly aloof and so independent that he considers himself above regulations.

“He was an easy supervisor to work for,” Marquez said. “He was the kind of supervisor who was always there, whether it was personal or job-related. (And) he was always respectful of the citizen out there.” But another officer, who asked not to be named, remembered Koon as “an arrogant, self-centered person” who chafed at authority and tried to ingratiate himself with those under his supervision.

“His idea of being a sergeant,” said the policeman, “was being one of the boys, showing he hadn’t changed when he got promoted to sergeant.”

Koon grew up in a working-class family that lived in Lynwood, Baldwin Hills and Glendale.

He graduated with honors from Glendale High School and joined the Police Department in 1976 after a hitch in the Air Force. While on the force he finished college and obtained a master’s degree in criminal justice from Cal State Los Angeles and another in public administration from USC.

Koon’s receding hairline, chiseled features and wide blue eyes have prompted joking comparisons to the lead character in the TV police series “Hunter.” Koon rarely socializes with other police officers, however, and he has few friends either on or off the force, said his wife, Mary, a registered nurse.

The couple have five children and, by all accounts, Koon is devoted to his family and to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Newhall.

But relations with people outside his family and church have not always been smooth.

In Valencia, where the Koons lived before moving to Castaic, his abrupt manner offended some residents. One former neighbor complained that the sergeant threatened to shoot his dog after it leaped into the Koons’ yard. Koon has said that he made the threat because animal control officers failed to take action and because the dog had frightened his children.

Another former neighbor said Koon once drew his police baton when a teen-agers’ party became too noisy. Koon has denied it.

Koon’s career has been marked by controversy and irony. His attempt to save the life of the transvestite prostitute brought praise and criticism and left him questioning whether he had endangered his family by exposing himself to a deadly disease.

Mary Koon recalled with bitterness that the Police Department acknowledged her husband’s valor in the incident and then cited him for lack of common sense. She remembers her husband being deeply troubled 2 1/2 years ago after his wounding of a drive-by shooting suspect who had threatened officers with an AK-47 rifle.

Police had surrounded the house where the man had been drinking. When he emerged from the house and pointed the assault rifle at another officer, Koon fired and wounded the suspect.

The man survived and Koon was commended for saving the life of a fellow officer. But still the sergeant fretted over his action, his wife said.

“He doesn’t get emotional,” she said, “but he rambles and we talk.”

Another ironic chord was struck in Koon’s police career in August, 1990. He now faces prosecution for allegedly directing fellow officers in their abuse of King, but the sergeant was criticized the previous summer for vigorously investigating a police brutality complaint filed by two black transients.

Koon was the desk sergeant when Theresa Carney and her companion, William Gable, came to the Foothill Division’s Pacoima-based police station and said an officer had pushed, kicked and beaten them with his baton without provocation.

He instructed all officers on duty to report to the station so the victims could identify their attacker, who was white. The unusual measure angered some officers and prompted an order within the division barring such lineups, according to Mary Koon and a police source.

In the King case, Koon told investigating officers that he thought the motorist was under the influence of PCP and that he shot him twice with Taser darts in an unsuccessful attempt to subdue him. Koon later told Internal Affairs officers that he was no novice, having used the electric stunning device 200 times during his career. But LAPD records show that Koon reported using Tasers on only two occasions since 1987, the period for which such records were available.

While awaiting trial, Koon has become embittered. He feels betrayed by Chief Daryl F. Gates, who publicly criticized him and the other officers indicted in the case. When Gates fired probationary Officer Timothy E. Wind instead of suspending him with the other three policemen, Koon considered it so unfair that he called for the chief’s resignation in an angry column in The Times.

The King case has made him cynical, a confidant observed, and changed him from the days in 1978 when, as a young officer, he wrote in a master’s thesis:

“It is my hope that this thesis will help alleviate alienation between the public and law enforcement.”

LAURENCE MICHAEL POWELL

Officer Laurence Michael Powell, 29, a 3 1/2-year veteran before his suspension without pay last year, charged with assault with a deadly weapon, excessive force by an officer under color of authority and filing a false police report.

Powell is a puzzling figure.

He is accused of being King’s primary assailant, striking King as many as 45 times with his baton.

Powell, who is white, allegedly sent a racially derogatory message over his police car computer the night of the King beating. He is the target of a civil suit accusing him of unnecessarily beating a Latino suspect during an arrest in another case.

Yet a classmate recalled that in his earlier years, Powell did not have a reputation for violence nor did he show signs of bigotry. Interestingly, Powell was raised by parents who have been praised for providing a nurturing home for black and Latino foster children.

But Powell’s brief police career has been marked by accusations of brutality and racial insensitivity.

When Janine Bouey, a black Los Angeles police officer, arrived for work at the Foothill Division station one day last year, she looked at the assignment board and saw that she was scheduled to ride with Powell.

Bouey quickly and surreptitiously rearranged the names on the board to give herself another partner.

“If I could get out of working with Powell, I would,” said Bouey, who is on medical leave as a result of injuries from an on-duty car accident.

“He treated everybody like crap,” she added. “He always had his hand on his gun. We could be ordering a soda, talking to the lady at the register and he would have his hand on his gun. We call it badge-heavy.

“If things didn’t happen during the course of a normal tour,” Bouey said, “he would be out looking for problems. . . . He was always bragging about altercations he was in and how he kicked butt.”

The King case was not the first incident that raised questions about Powell’s behavior as an officer. One case involved a Salvadoran factory worker who had been chasing a drinking companion with a machete. According to court records, Powell struck 36-year-old Salvador Castaneda one to five times with his baton as he took him into custody, breaking Castaneda’s elbow so severely he needed surgery to pin it back together.

Powell wrote in his report that Castaneda came toward him in a threatening manner, even after dropping the machete. Castaneda’s attorney, James A. Prietto, said his client offered no resistance.

The Police Department would not disclose the results of its investigation into the incident.

Castaneda filed an excessive force suit and was awarded $70,000 in July, 1991, in an out-of-court settlement.

In another instance, Powell once stopped and cursed a black motorist only because the man was driving in a white neighborhood, according to Bouey, who was riding with Powell at the time.

“The guy asked him why he stopped him,” Bouey said. “He (Powell) used profanity and said: ‘Just give me your (expletive) license.’ ”

Powell detained the driver while he checked for warrants and allowed the man to go without citing him or explaining why he had been stopped, Bouey said.

Powell is the son of Edwin M. Powell and Carleen Powell, who raised their children in an affluent area of La Crescenta on a picturesque street of large homes, shady gardens and swimming pools. A bachelor, he has three grown sisters.

Like Koon, Powell attended high school in the Glendale Unified School District within 10 miles of the place where King was beaten. Also like Koon, Powell was an honor student when he graduated from Crescenta Valley High School in 1980.

Powell’s father is a lieutenant with the county marshal’s office and his mother provides care for foster children, including blacks and Latinos, many of whom were born drug addicted or have been abused.

“An excellent family setting,” concluded one county worker in late 1985, when Edwin and Carleen Powell became foster parents. Powell was 22 at the time and living at home.

Asked to describe her own children on a foster-parent application, Carleen wrote of her son: “Larry is a very bright boy who doesn’t like to show his feelings.” That characterization was echoed repeatedly by Crescenta Valley High School alumni.

Rajesh Puri, a computer engineer of Indian descent, remembered Crescenta Valley somewhat bitterly as a predominantly white high school where he had experienced prejudice. But of Powell, Puri said: “He never outwardly showed any signs of emotion or racial prejudice, and he was never violent, never an aggressive-type person. And there were some aggressive people in high school--I had run-ins with them.”

After graduation from high school, Powell took occasional courses at Cal State Northridge, volunteered for the Los Angeles police reserves and worked part time as a clerk for Municipal Court, where he remained for six years. Powell’s knowledge of the court system was viewed as impeccable. He was remembered variously by fellow workers as kind and sensitive or as a pompous and domineering bureaucrat who prompted complaints that he locked the clerk’s office before closing time.

A Municipal Court clerk who worked with Powell, and asked not to be named, remembered him as a sensitive person who once took the time to visit another co-worker in the hospital to see how she was doing and to make sure she had a ride home.

“I see so much in the papers saying how nasty he is and I just didn’t see that at all,” Powell’s former co-worker said. She also recalled that Powell’s sense of humor often propped up morale in the courthouse.

His former Municipal Court supervisor and senior court manager, James S. Switzer, remembered Powell as smart, although immature for his age.

But some other former co-workers remember Powell for his condescending attitude toward women and for telling jokes that belittled females.

“Some of it was a joke, but I felt most of it was serious,” one clerk said. “Every chance he got he made sure everybody knew he was the male species in the office.”

“I don’t see him as an inherently vicious person,” Switzer said, “just someone who was trying to prove he was tough.”

After entering the Police Academy in June, 1987, Powell earned a reputation as a hard-working, eager young officer who caught on quickly and applied for steppingstone positions. At one point, he worked for West Bureau CRASH, a gang-suppression unit.

When he failed to win a CRASH promotion to field-training officer, Powell moved to the Foothill Division in the fall of 1990 for the chance to obtain a higher patrol position.

He got his wish and on March 3, 1991, the day of the King beating, he was acting as a training officer for a rookie cop.

TIMOTHY EDWARD WIND

Probationary Officer Timothy Edward Wind, 31, one year with the department before he was fired last May 7, charged with assault with a deadly weapon and excessive force by an officer under color of authority.

Wind came to Los Angeles in the spring of 1990 looking for adventure and career advancement. At the time of the King incident, he was a rookie police officer on probation and under the supervision of Powell, his partner that night.

Investigators say that Powell began the beating and that Wind--just three months out of the Police Academy--joined in with a vengeance, administering more than a dozen blows with his baton and kicking King about five times. He has since been fired from the force.

Wind is remembered by some people in his home state of Kansas as being a young man with something to prove--a onetime “momma’s boy” who sought acceptance and meaning as a volunteer fireman, a Special Forces paratrooper and, finally, a policeman.

But Wind also is known as a good neighbor, a loyal friend, a loving husband and a highly professional police officer.

Wind grew up in predominantly white Lake of the Forest, a secluded community next to the small country town of Bonner Springs in the rolling hills of east Kansas. Residents here are sometimes considered a bit snooty, but the community--while certainly affluent and privileged--is more rustic than posh.

Wind’s mother was a teacher and his father worked day and night as a heating and air-conditioning technician. The family lived comfortably, but not wealthy.

Angela Wind called her son a “bonus baby” because he came along so late in life. She was nearly 40 when he was born in 1960. Her only other children, twin girls, were already 13 years old.

Friends and neighbors say she doted on her boy and that his workaholic father, who also had a drinking problem, paid him little attention.

“Timmy was never wrong--never,” a close friend of the family said of Angela Wind’s leniency in disciplining her son.

Although she may have been too lenient with her son, she was considered a brilliant, hard-driving teacher who was dedicated to helping difficult students succeed. Angela Wind, who died of cancer in 1983, was noted for her efforts on behalf of black youngsters in a school where today about 11% of the student population is African-American.

Her twin daughters, like their mother, were considered academically brilliant, but Wind did not distinguish himself scholastically or socially at Bonner Springs High.

Wind placed 85th out of 155 students in the graduating class of 1978.

“He was just one of those people you don’t really notice,” said Kelly Leach, class valedictorian and organizer of a 10-year class reunion.

Wind found meaning in his adolescent life when he became a volunteer firefighter for the neighboring town of Edwardsville. From then on, his world revolved around the Fire Department.

“He spent all his time in high school up there,” said his father, Edward Wind.

“He was . . . a go-getter, wanting to gain as much knowledge as he could,” said Peter Chronister, who served with Wind as a volunteer firefighter. “If you wanted to know about a fire station, he knew the address and the kind of firetrucks they had.”

Several people who knew him then were surprised that Wind went on to become a police officer rather than a firefighter.

After graduation from high school, Wind joined the U.S. Army and spent three years in the Special Forces, where he was a paratrooper and came out a sergeant. One of Wind’s neighbors thought that he had matured during his hitch in the military.

“He just seemed to be a lot more squared away,” said John Pettis, a Lake of the Forest resident. “Much more backbone, much more strength of character than I thought he would have. . . . All of a sudden I’m looking at a tall, strong young man as opposed to a snotty-nosed little kid.”

Still, some officers on the 53-member force were not so impressed when Wind, then 22, joined the Police Department of the Kansas City suburb of Shawnee in January, 1983.

Cpl. Mark Ashurst, a 16-year veteran of the Shawnee Police Department, who became well acquainted with Wind during the seven years he was on the force, described the younger officer as insecure and a follower.

“He was like a chicken hawk, buzzing all around,” Ashurst said. “He was . . . not a mean person. He was just Timmy. He was our Timmy. . . . He was just always wanting to know what was going on. Now, when we have someone who butts in on a conversation, we say we’ve got another Timmy.”

Even so, Ashurst thought that Wind had the makings of a good cop.

“I figure he had the potential, if he calmed down,” he said. “(But) I don’t think he ever changed from the first year to the seventh.”

Rick Armstrong, an officer with the Kansas City, Kan., police force who said he became a close friend of Wind’s during the last eight years, disagrees with Ashurst’s characterization.

“He was very sincere and a loyal friend,” Armstrong said. “Very dedicated as a worker. . . . Very methodical, disciplined and he tried to be a perfectionist.”

While in Shawnee, Wind married, had a child and late in 1989, left to join the Kansas City, Kan., Police Department, where he was considered one of the training academy’s top candidates.

Wind had been out of the academy only a few weeks when he received a job offer from the Los Angeles Police Department in May, 1990.

Wind headed West with his wife and child, but when he got as far as New Mexico, he had second thoughts.

“He was driving his pickup,” said his father, “and he thought: ‘Why am I doing this?’ ”

People who know him say Wind’s answers to that question were career, opportunity, challenge, excitement.

Paul Arnold, a former colleague of Wind on the Shawnee Police Department, said Wind “just wanted more action. He just wanted to be in the thick of it. He wanted to be everything that young men think policemen are supposed to be.”

So Wind shook off his second thoughts and continued west toward Los Angeles and the notoriety of the Rodney King case.

THEODORE JOSEPH BRISENO

Officer Theodore Joseph Briseno, 39, a nine-year veteran before his suspension without pay last year, charged with assault with a deadly weapon and excessive force by an officer under color of authority.

Although Briseno is described by friends and family as a popular, fun-loving guy, he appears to have another side.

His ex-wife said Briseno frequently beat her--a charge he has denied in court documents--and a former acquaintance said he exhibited a fearsome temper in high school and during his first marriage. Four years before the King incident, Briseno was suspended from the Police Department for 66 days without pay after allegedly beating and kicking a suspect who was in custody and handcuffed.

Investigators say that of the four officers charged in the King case, Briseno is the least culpable. He is accused of delivering one stomp to the head or neck area of the fallen King.

The videotape also shows Briseno making an ambiguous motion that he says was an attempt to restrain Powell from swinging his baton. Detractors maintain, however, that Briseno is shown simply trying to keep Powell from being shocked by the electric Taser wires that had been used by Sgt. Koon to stun King.

Bouey, who worked with Briseno at the Foothill station for about two years, said her onetime colleague is emotionally volatile but is neither vicious nor bigoted.

“I was really surprised when he was involved in the King incident,” she said. “He could get real upset on one hand and he could be real gentle and calm just like that. I don’t think Ted’s a racist, I really don’t.”

Briseno, like fellow defendant Wind, grew up in a small Midwestern town--a long way from ethnically diverse Los Angeles.

In Mattoon, Ill., where Briseno went to high school, married and spent his early adulthood, there are fewer than 300 blacks in a population of 18,441. There are only 155 Latino residents in the town and Briseno, whose late father was half-Latino and whose mother is of Irish-Greek descent, was teased about his Latino heritage by white friends in high school.

Unlike Wind’s childhood in Lake of the Forest, Briseno and his four brothers and sisters grew up neither pampered nor privileged. While Briseno was still a small child, his father died and his mother married a phone company employee. John and Marjorie Peel raised the children in rented houses. There was not much money and Briseno, who was a vocational student in high school, worked for much of what he wanted.

“We were just making it,” Marjorie Peel said. “Most of the kids worked through high school to have things we weren’t able to provide for them.” Briseno--small, wiry and athletic--also fought for some of the things he got.

John Peel said he was called to school twice because of his stepson’s fighting. But the Peels dismiss the incidents as normal junior high school behavior.

“Any normal boy will have a fight now and then,” Marjorie Peel said. “Teddy was always a fun-loving kid and everyone liked him.”

As for allegations that racial bias played a role in King’s beating, John Peel responded that when Briseno was in school, his best friend was black.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” said Harlan Hopgood, the only black student in Briseno’s 1971 high school graduating class.

Hopgood recalled that he and Briseno were “pretty close” in junior high, but by the time they reached high school they had drifted apart and, while they remained friendly, they did not do things together.

He remembered Briseno as a “popular young man . . . a friendly guy,” who had a temper when he was a boy. But Hopgood said he does not recall Briseno being vicious or racially prejudiced.

“He might be one to join a crowd . . . to have some fun or to be accepted,” he said.

When he was 18, Briseno married Cindy Winings, who was 17. Later, he worked at an unskilled job at the General Electric plant in Mattoon. He and Cindy had two children and little money. They quarreled, separated, reunited and, finally, divorced.

His ex-wife remains bitter, even vitriolic, toward Briseno and paints a picture different from the charming, happy-go-lucky guy recalled by some.

“In high school,” she said, “he always felt like he was macho, that he could get any girl he wanted. . . . I guess I liked the way he was always trying to impress people. He wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

She contends that after they were married, Briseno lost his temper and beat her more than a dozen times.

“One time,” she said, “he hit me and got on top of me and he was hitting me, busted my ear, busted my nose. Blood all over my face.”

Briseno has denied in divorce court papers that he beat her.

A friend of his ex-wife who asked not to be identified described Briseno as a “Jekyll and Hyde” who could be charming until angered.

“When you first met him he was very congenial and nice,” the friend said. “But when you got to know him there were things that made you watch what you would say . . . because he had such a hot temper.

“She (Cindy) had a bruise on her face once,” the friend added, “and I said, ‘What did you do, run into a door?’ and she said, ‘No, Ted’s fist.’ ”

With a high school education, little money and few skills, Briseno took his family to California in 1978 and got a low-paying job as a warehouse clerk in Orange County.

As in Illinois, Briseno generally made a favorable impression in California.

“I got close to Ted--probably closer than anyone who ever worked for me,” said Bob Stanton, Briseno’s boss at the warehouse job.

Stanton described Briseno as having a “positive, pleasant personality” with no indication of a temper problem or racial animosity.

Margie Gibson, Briseno’s former sister-in-law, described him as “a wonderful person,” who is adored by her children.

Gibson said it was Briseno’s admiration for his older brother, Mike--who worked for several police departments in Southern California--that inspired Briseno to go into law enforcement.

After his divorce, Briseno remarried and in 1982 joined the Los Angeles Police Department. He was assigned to the Foothill Division but like other officers he worked in the city jails, where his work received mixed reviews.

Paul Graunke, who worked at a San Fernando Valley jail at the same time as Briseno in 1984, said Briseno “loved to brag about . . . how he worked at the Central Jail in downtown L.A and how tough he was.”

Graunke cited a passage from his own diary at the time: “Briseno brags more than once how he choked out a prisoner.”

“My comment (in the diary) says: ‘I don’t know how much of this is baloney, but he delights in expressing contempt for unmanly, unmacho things such as bans on chokeholds and (allowing) females on the force.”

But David Muraoka, senior civilian station officer at the jail, said he does not recall Briseno making such boasts or abusing prisoners.

“It never seemed to me that Briseno was any different than most officers,” Muraoka said. “They generally use enough force to control the situation.

“When we heard about this thing (the King beating) it was kind of surprising to me,” he added.

Briseno received several commendations from the Police Department during his nine years of service before the King incident. In 1990, he was named officer of the quarter for work in the Foothill Division.

Briseno and another officer were commended in 1985 for using their own money to buy plaques for elementary school students who had helped find a lost 6-year-old.

But 1985 also brought an excessive force accusation from a citizen. The department investigated the charge and dismissed it. The alleged victim repeated the complaint to the Christopher Commission last year. Neither the department nor the commission would reveal details of the allegation.

In 1987, Briseno was suspended without pay for 66 days after an incident that seemed to preview the King beating. On June 14, Los Angeles Officer Gary E. Alvarez and rookie Officer Favian Ospina had handcuffed a belligerent suspect accused of beating a child.

Alvarez later testified at a police Board of Rights inquiry that the man in custody had been upset but was beginning to calm down when Briseno rushed onto the scene, pushed Alvarez off balance, grabbed the suspect, forced him to the floor and hit him on the head with his baton.

Alvarez testified that when the suspect accused Briseno of taking a “punk shot,” Briseno hit him again.

Ospina testified that when the suspect asked for Briseno’s badge number, Briseno waved his baton in the prisoner’s face and said: “I’ll give you my badge number up your nose, buddy.”

Ospina, who testified that Briseno asked him to lie about the incident, told police officials that at one point the handcuffed suspect tried to raise his head from the floor. Briseno, he said, used his foot to “push (the man’s) head onto the ground” so sharply that his head “made a loud thump” on the floor.

According to a transcript of the police inquiry into the beating of the suspect, Briseno testified:

“I got a little too aggressive out there, but I can assure you that it will not happen again ever. I apologize to the board for that.”

Police Capt. Doug Watson, who was in charge of the proceeding, asked: “Ted, how can I believe that you will never do this again?”

“Well, sir,” Briseno replied, “on my word, sir.”

Times staff writers Tracy Wood, Richard A. Serrano and Paul Houston contributed to this story.