Police Organizations Block Reforms at the State Level : Government: Measures spawned by King beating have been stymied. Unions say new laws are unnecessary.

While other states rushed to pass laws in reaction to the Rodney G. King beating, California has yet to enact any legislation in response to America’s most publicized case of police brutality.

Los Angeles-area lawmakers, angered by the videotaped incident, introduced a spate of bills last year aimed at breaking the police “code of silence” and providing civil and criminal penalties against those who watch and do nothing while fellow officers assault suspects.

But none of the bills have made it into the lawbooks. Three were vetoed by Gov. Pete Wilson, one has lost steam in the Legislature and another was held up and remains to be debated in the Assembly. Even a bill to only study police brutality has stalled in a conference committee.

Now, as four Los Angeles police officers involved in the King assault go on trial, law enforcement associations in Sacramento are advancing a countermeasure that some say would protect, rather than expose, police officers who use undue force.

Backers of the would-be laws say the reason for their failure is simple: The large police organizations want it that way. The police unions have become a deeply entrenched special interest, able to bend public policy their way and wear down even the most formidable opponent.

“You’ve got the realtors, you’ve got the insurance companies, the oil companies, the trial lawyers--and then you’ve got the police organizations,” said Margaret Pena, lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union, which supports law enforcement reform. “They’re right up there with other special interest groups.

“Nothing gets through, or signed into law, without their stamp of approval,” she said.

The lack of action in California’s Capitol stands in sharp contrast to what happened in some other Western states in the months after a home video on March 3 captured Los Angeles police officers kicking, clubbing and shooting electricity into King.

As many as two dozen officers stood by and watched while King suffered a broken leg and disfigurement of his face.

A Nevada legislator said that because of the public furor over the King beating, he was able to get into law new controls on the use of chokeholds by Las Vegas police. In Colorado, legislators said the videotape was responsible for a statute making it a misdemeanor for officers to stay mum about brutality.

“It seems hard to believe that a progressive state like California would not have adopted at least one bill that approaches the subject like mine does,” said Regis Groff, the Denver Democrat who wrote the bill.

Soon after the King beating became public, an array of groups--mostly unions representing nearly 90,000 California prison guards, highway patrol officers, sheriffs’ deputies, city police and other peace officers--closed ranks for an anticipated legislative fight.

At one point, rank-and-file police opposition was so fierce that a prominent senator, who agreed to co-sponsor one of the measures, withdrew his name and started voting against it. The legislation, he said later, had become politically “radioactive.”

“You wouldn’t believe the anger that bubbled up from my own district with police officers that I’ve known most of my life,” said Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), who changed his vote. “They were resentful of the suggestion, the implication that they were not professional enough to handle these problems within existing law.”

California law makes it a felony for any police officer to beat a suspect “without lawful necessity.” But in investigating the King case, Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner said there was no law he could use to charge the officers who watched but did nothing as King was beaten and kicked.

“However morally wrong their failure to intercede, in California law there is no criminal statute under which these officers can be indicted,” Reiner announced in May. “On this point California law is absolutely clear: no statute, no crime.”

By then legislators from the Los Angeles area were seeking to change the law to break the “code of silence,” the unwritten pledge that many in police work say encourages officers not to report the misdeeds of comrades.

On March 5, two days after King was beaten, Assemblywoman Marguerite Archie-Hudson (D-Los Angeles) introduced a bill allowing citizens to sue backup officers who do not report--or intervene to stop--unlawful force by a colleague.

Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) offered legislation in April that added a misdemeanor penalty. And in June, Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles) broadened the measure to cover coroners, doctors and other health professionals who don’t report police brutality.

In August, Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) sought legislation requiring that law enforcement officers receive “cultural sensitivity training” governing conduct in dealing with minority suspects.

The toughest measure was introduced in May by Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita), the former Los Angeles police chief. Davis’ bill would make it a felony for backup officers to look the other way or stay mum about acts of brutality.

The measures were an “overreaction” by lawmakers, said Jeffrey D. Thompson, lobbyist for the 23,000-member California Correctional Peace Officers Assn.

“It brought to the forefront a lot of emotion and a lot of reaction that was not thought out,” Thompson said.

Police groups counterattacked with a milder alternative of their own, calling for a 17-member commission to study excessive force. In a two-pronged strategy, they began advancing their rival bill while attacking the anti-brutality measures.

They argued that the bills would put backup officers in the difficult position of second-guessing a colleague’s use of force. How can an officer coming late to a scene, they asked, know if the officer had just been threatened?

Those arguments were not strong enough to kill the bills, but helped stall some and modify others. At the request of police groups, lawmakers removed all provisions permitting civilian lawsuits and those requiring bystander officers to intervene in an incident similar to the King beating.

In the Senate, Roberti and others held up the Davis bill until the former LAPD chief agreed to reduce the penalty to a misdemeanor--with a lifetime suspension from law enforcement for any convicted officer.

Police organizations say they will continue to fight the Davis bill, which passed the Senate and, nine months since its introduction, awaits its first hearing in the Assembly. Moore’s bill passed the Assembly, but her aides say they are unsure if it will be pursued in the Senate. Even the police-backed bill to create a commission has remained in a legislative conference committee because of questions about how to pay for it.

Three measures survived the Legislature and were sent to Wilson for his signature: Roberti’s “sensitivity training” measure and the bills by Archie-Hudson and Watson, imposing misdemeanors against officers failing to report brutality within 24 or 48 hours.

But Wilson vetoed the Roberti measure as too costly. And, at the urging of the prison guards--and taking the opposite view of Reiner--he vetoed the two reporting bills, describing them as duplicating existing law.

In his October veto message, Wilson also said he did not want to “exacerbate” the furor over the King beating and that the best way to ensure police accountability was through the administrative procedures of “dismissal, demotion or other disciplinary actions.”

Meanwhile, police groups have begun moving a bill that critics claim would make it tough--if not impossible--for police departments to use the administrative remedies cited by Wilson.

The measure by Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Carson) would allow officers accused of misconduct--or officers who witnessed it--to refuse to talk to Internal Affairs investigators. Under the law, officers can be demoted or fired for refusing to cooperate. Floyd’s measure was introduced five days after the Los Angeles officers beat King, but remained idle until he put it through two committees and the full Assembly last month.

Dubbed an expansion of the Peace Officers’ Bill of Rights, the proposal is intended to safeguard front-line officers from being harassed by “overzealous” superiors, said Thompson of the guards union.

Critics--police chiefs, the ACLU, county officials and the League of California Cities--say it would virtually legalize the “code of silence.”

Los Angeles Sheriff Sherman Block, one of the outspoken critics of the bill, warned that its passage would hamper law enforcement agencies from weeding out rogue officers by making it more difficult to investigate complaints, particularly those lodged by individuals who have no witnesses other than cops.

“It would make it virtually impossible to inquire into the circumstances of an incident,” Block said.

Critics also say the bill would prevent law enforcement agencies from maintaining records of allegations against officers to discern “a pattern of conduct” that could signal the need for more training, supervision or scrutiny.

The League of California Cities, in a statement on the bill, said:

“The Legislature has to take some of the blame for the Rodney King incident and other incidents. As an institution, the Legislature has a clear and unwavering track record for at least 20 years of being unable to say no to the demand by police unions to construct greater barriers to the proper discipline of police officers.”

The reason police groups--especially the unions representing rank-and-file officers--are so persuasive, say lawmakers, is that they capture political loyalties through generous campaign donations and law-and-order endorsements.

Endorsements have become a powerful political tool at a time when rising concern about crime has officeholders scrambling to impress voters with law-and-order credentials, they say.

“Quite frankly, it is nice to have a cop standing there on a campaign poster with you saying: ‘Hey, this guy’s a good guy. He’s good for cops. Vote for him,’ ” said Dean Rewerts, legislative chairman for the 5,500-member California Union of Safety Employees, which represents game wardens, park rangers and alcohol control investigators.

Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) believes that most of the endorsements flow to moderate or liberal Democrats who may be soft on crime bills but are pro-labor and support collective bargaining rights for police, a group they do not wish to alienate.

“No matter what the police unions recommend or suggest, if you’re in opposition to them, it could appear on their next mailer that goes out that you’re not a law-and-order guy,” Ferguson said.

Besides the value of their endorsements, some police groups are among the largest donors in Sacramento to political campaigns.

The most generous is the prison guards’ union, which poured nearly $1.8 million into 1990 political races and ballot initiatives, records show.

More than $760,000 went to support Wilson through an independent media and direct-mail campaign run by the guards union itself. The group ended up being Wilson’s second-biggest donor, behind only the national Republican Party, records show.

Thompson, the lobbyist for the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., said hefty donations have been part of a conscious effort to improve the political image of the group.

The hefty donation to Wilson’s campaign, he said, was designed to make a general “impression.”

“He returns our calls,” he said.

Among the other police unions donating money in the 1990 races were the California Assn. of Highway Patrolmen, which gave $150,000 to gubernatorial candidate Dianne Feinstein and another $100,000 to legislative races; the Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, which gave $117,000 to legislative races, and the California Union of Safety Employees, which gave nearly $100,000 to political campaigns.