‘Scared to Death’ in King Beating, Officer Testifies

Los Angeles Police Officer Laurence M. Powell, seen repeatedly beating and kicking Rodney G. King on an amateur videotape shown around the world, testified Tuesday that he was “scared to death” that King would grab his gun.

Speaking publicly about the beating for the first time, Powell, 29, attempted to distance himself from two of his co-defendants--Theodore J. Briseno and Sgt. Stacey C. Koon, the supervisor at the scene of the beating on a Lake View Terrace street. Briseno’s attorney has used the same tactic during the trial, contending that his client was repulsed by the beating and tried to stop it. Powell testified that he hit and kicked King only on the orders of Koon, whom he described as having “control of the use of force” on the morning of the March 3, 1991, incident.

And although Briseno can be seen on the videotape pushing Powell’s baton away, Powell testified that he felt Briseno was only trying to keep him from being shocked by the wires of an electric stun gun and was not attempting to stop the beating, as Briseno’s attorney has argued.

Powell testified that after viewing the 81-second videotape up to 50 times, he still has difficulty reconciling what he sees with his recollection of the events at the scene.

“It’s confused my memory because it’s not my perception,” the officer said. “It’s not what I saw that night. I was looking at it from a different vantage point.”

Powell is the second defendant--after Koon--to testify in his own defense, and he flatly denied striking King in the head or face, as some earlier witnesses, including one Los Angeles police officer, have testified.

And he said he never struck King to “punish or hurt him,” but to make him comply with orders to lie still on the ground.

“I was completely in fear for my life and scared to death,” Powell testified.

But in cross-examining Powell late Tuesday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Terry White suggested that the white officer’s actions against King, who is black, may have been fueled by racist sentiment.

The prosecutor read a computer message Powell had sent to Officer Corina Smith just minutes before the King beating. In it, Powell described an earlier incident involving a group of African-Americans as a scene “right out of ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ “--a reference to a movie about African wildlife.

Although the officer denied the assertion from the stand, White suggested that the computer message was an inflammatory statement against African-Americans and a “motivating factor” in the amount of force Powell used against King.

Powell wore a gray, double-breasted suit. His apparent nervousness eventually gave way to an air of self-assurance, and he sat through much of the day on the stand with his hands in his lap and his eyes fixed on his attorney, Michael Stone.

In an effort to show that the Police Department encouraged him to use his baton forcefully against suspects, Powell testified that an hour before the beating of King, supervisors at the Foothill Division had officers practice the “power chop”--a blow to the shoulder, wrist or elbow--with their metal police batons.

“The blow is to be with all the force you can muster in an attempt to break the bone,” Powell said.

Koon also has defended his actions by saying that King was arrested under approved Police Department use-of-force techniques.

Powell testified that he and Timothy E. Wind, 31, who was fired after the beating and is the fourth officer on trial, went outside the station with other officers on duty and practiced on a beam covered with rubber tires. Although Wind was a probationary recruit and Powell was his training officer, Wind’s technique was considered superior, Powell said.

“Sgt. (Richard) DiStefano criticized me for not using enough power and had me repeat the practice,” Powell said. “He told me to use all the force I could muster when I hit the tires.”

Afterward, Powell said, he and Wind were assigned to a beat unit in the Mission Hills area. Shortly after midnight, while completing a traffic citation on Van Nuys Boulevard, they heard a California Highway Patrol chase broadcast on their police radio, he testified.

“Come on, Tim, let’s go! There’s a pursuit,” Powell recalled telling his partner.

Powell testified that he and Wind joined the chase of a white Hyundai that was traveling up to 65 m.p.h. on surface streets. At one point, Powell said, he peered into the vehicle and saw three black males inside. Two of the occupants were looking back at the pursuing police vehicles, he said.

Eventually, he said, the chase ended near Foothill Boulevard and Osborne Street. He said he encountered King laughing and waving at a police helicopter overhead.

Powell said he felt King was under the influence of PCP because “he was moving real slow, in a real unnatural manner. Real stiff. He turned his head in all directions as if he was some kind of a robot. Real slow.”

Suspects under the influence of the drug are dangerous, he said, because “they can take your gun. You have to be able to overcome this superhuman strength they display. And you don’t want to get in a wrestling match because they’re going to beat you hands down every time.”

Medical tests just after the beating determined that King had no drugs in his system, although he was legally drunk.

Powell said he and other officers tried to handcuff King when he lay down, but that the Altadena man suddenly pushed up off the ground.

“He knocked me off, and I fell backward and landed on my rear,” Powell testified. “He had great resistance and strength in his arms. This was a very big man.”

Koon then shot King twice with the Taser stun gun, Powell recalled. “I could see little blue sparks from around where the dart was connected,” Powell said. “His body was convulsing. He turned toward me and you could see his cheek muscles convulsing. He was gritting his teeth and groaning.”

Then, describing the start of the action seen on the videotape, Powell said:

“I saw him get up, turn and come right at me. I just remember it was real fast. I had no time to react. It was practically a head-on collision. I was starting to swing my baton but it was more like a check swing, and he collided into me.”

Powell said the blow struck King in the chest, and “I saw Mr. King fall like a rag doll down to the ground and his face smashed into the pavement.”

After that, Powell testified, he was forced to keep hitting King with his baton because King kept trying to get up. Admitting that he also stomped King, Powell said he was so focused on the scene that he was unaware of the large number of police officers who had arrived.

“I thought that if this guy got back up, he was going to take my gun and there was going to be a shooting,” Powell said. “So I was doing everything I could to keep him down.”

But Powell testified that he was also aware of Koon, who several times ordered him and Wind to strike King. “He was controlling the situation by telling us to hit the joints,” Powell said of Koon.

“I can’t tell you how many times I hit him,” Powell said. But he recalled that King was finally handcuffed after he raised his hands and appeared to give up. “I was absolutely exhausted,” Powell testified.

Powell said that Koon then ordered him to call an ambulance. Using his police walkie-talkie, Powell recalled, he described King as a victim of a “beating,” but only because Koon had called it that. He also said he radioed that King had suffered “numerous head wounds” because there were “some cuts and some blood” on the side of King’s face.

But Powell denied laughing during the radio conversation, as prosecutors have contended can be heard on a Police Department dispatcher’s tape of of the call. “My voice was excited. I was out of breath. I was huffing and puffing,” he testified.

Powell, who along with Koon is charged with filing a false police report downplaying King’s injuries, said he “summarized” King’s wounds after discussing them with doctors who treated him that night. At that time, he said, he was told by the doctors that King only suffered “contusions and abrasions,” and he only learned later that there also were broken bones.

Powell denied joking at Pacifica Hospital that police had played “baseball” and “hit some home runs” with their batons during the incident, as emergency room employees have testified.

But he acknowledged sending a computer message to Corina Smith in which he said he had not beaten someone “this bad in a long time.”

“I was just explaining to her how I had just been involved in a big old donnybrook, and I’d never had to use so much force before,” Powell said.

“Was it your intention to say you had done something wrong?” asked Stone, his lawyer.

“No, of course not,” Powell replied. “I hadn’t.”

The four defendants who have pleaded not guilty, are charged with excessive use of force in he incident.

Prosecutors are expected to continue cross-examining Powell when the trial resumes this morning.