All 56 Blows to King Justified, Expert on Use of Force Testifies : Trial: Sergeant says LAPD policy allows officers to keep hitting until suspect ceases to resist arrest.

A use-of-force expert for the Los Angeles Police Department testified Monday that each of 56 baton blows to Rodney G. King’s body were appropriate because the motorist repeatedly attempted to rise off the pavement and attack officers.

Sgt. Charles L. Duke Jr., a 21-year LAPD veteran, told the jury deciding the fate of four Los Angeles officers charged in the beating that an amateur videotape of the incident makes it clear that King posed a threat after he was stopped at the end of a high-speed car chase.

LAPD policy allows officers to repeatedly hit a potentially violent suspect with their batons until he voluntarily submits to arrest or ceases to resist being handcuffed, he said.

“This sounds cruel,” Duke said, “but it may come to the point that you have to break a bone or so incapacitate a suspect to where he can no longer rise and pose a threat to the officers.”

Asked by Darryl Mounger, attorney for Sgt. Stacey C. Koon, whether the officers striking King should have stopped when it appeared that the blows were having little or no effect on getting King to lie down, Duke said: “No. You have to stay at that level until it does work.”

Mounger was attempting to show, through Duke’s testimony, that the officers were following LAPD policy when they beat and kicked King in Lake View Terrace on March 3, 1991. Mounger was trying to blunt an argument by prosecutors that with more than two-dozen officers at the scene that night, King could have been safely taken into custody without the degree of violence seen on the videotape.

But earlier in the day, Officer Joseph Napolitano, one of the LAPD bystanders at the scene, said under cross-examination that if a suspect is not hitting, grabbing or kicking police officers, he should not be struck so many times with batons just because he will not lie still.

The defense attorney slowly led Duke through the videotape, beginning when Officer Laurence M. Powell can be seen delivering the initial blow to King in the upper part of the body as the motorist advances toward the officer.

Two California Highway Patrol officers have testified that Powell first struck King in the head half a dozen times with his baton, which would violate LAPD policy because such blows can be fatal.

But Duke said King was not hit in the head that night. He said his analysis of the videotape is that Powell initially struck King in the chest after the motorist “appeared to run or charge at an officer.”

However, other defense witnesses, including Officer David A. Love, who was present that night, remembered the first blow as to the shoulder.

After analyzing that first blow, Duke said the baton strikes that followed--by Powell and Officer Timothy E. Wind--were justified. He said it appeared to him on the tape that King was never struck while flat on the ground, but only when he was attempting to rise.

“Once an officer is attacked,” Duke said, “to allow the suspect to rise to his feet, you also allow the potential for the escalation of force to rise to a deadly situation.”

Duke praised Koon for ordering CHP Officer Melanie Singer not to approach King with her gun drawn. To permit her to do so, Duke said, would have “invited disaster” because the suspect might have been able to get her gun.

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