COLUMN LEFT : Justice in Court Doesn’t Mean Social Justice : The LAPD acquittals don’t change the brutal facts. We, the people, must change.

The verdict in the Rodney King beating case leaves us with one question: Is there justice? The 17-minute tape of a swarm of white Los Angeles police officers beating the African-American motorist left few viewers in doubt that the officers were guilty of criminal assault. Yet, after a week of deliberation, a jury--one without a single African-American--disagreed.

How can this happen? It happened because the criminal-justice system is neither designed to be nor functions as a forum for expressing community will. We have seen John Delorean kiss cocaine and be acquitted, John Hinckley shoot President Reagan and be found not guilty by reason of insanity, Los Angeles grocer Soon Ja Du commit voluntary manslaughter and receive probation. In all of these cases, public sentiment was far different from the verdict.

The criminal-justice system is not a vehicle for social or political change. It is a slow, antiseptic process by which 12 members of society determine whether an individual is guilty of a crime. Every precaution is taken to ensure that the trial environment does not become a street debate on justice. High-profile cases, such as the Rodney King beating, are moved out of the very community they most directly impact. The trial process carefully screens for jurors who will be able to serve the system of justice. The trial is a battle of wits between attorneys, not a public forum for debate. Rules of evidence govern. Assumptions are challenged. “Reasonable force” becomes a term of art, not a matter of common sense. In this environment, a jury can find, as the jury in the King beating case did, that the victim was the perpetrator and the perpetrator the victim.

Given the verdict, community leaders will call for restraint and tolerance--a call that undoubtedly is easier to make from Simi Valley than inner-city Los Angeles. And it is the right call. No reaction, no matter how forceful, will change the verdicts that acquitted the four officers.

But the call for restraint should not be a call that silences us. The most important changes, those in the operation and structure of our city’s police force, still must be made. If anything, the verdict should spark a faster, more deliberate pace. Historic changes have already begun in our city. The Christopher Commission issued its report on police practices, Chief Daryl Gates is on his way out, his successor has been chosen and Charter Amendment F is before the voters. It was the event--the merciless beating of Rodney King--not the verdict, that will change Los Angeles.

The criminal-justice system will also not escape unscathed. A trial is a test of the people among whom it takes place. If, in the eyes of the community, the verdict is colossally wrong, if the criminal-justice system cannot protect those it is often in the position of prosecuting, there will be a call to re-examine the process.

What is this examination likely to show? All who watched the trial would compliment Judge Stanley Weisberg for the job he did as jurist. The prosecution and defense also were proficient.

The outcome turned on three key circumstances. First, the people being charged with criminal conduct were police officers. They are extremely sympathetic defendants. We cloak them in a special aura of respectability. They are our “protectors,” doing tasks that others cannot or will not do. It is scary to think that those who protect us can also hurt us.

Second, the trial was moved out of Los Angeles to Simi Valley, in Ventura County. We pretend that our system of justice is colorblind. It is not. The composition of a jury can make a vast difference in the outcome of a case. In making decisions of “reasonableness,” our criminal-justice system does rely on a community standard. Did a jury drawn from Ventura County accurately reflect what people in Los Angeles consider “reasonable” and just?

Finally, the jury was given an all-or-nothing decision. The lawyers decided not to ask for jury instructions on the lesser included crimes. The jurors were asked to decide who was the criminal--Rodney King or the police officers.

In general, these procedures, as used in this trial, are not bad procedures. But they can lead to skewed results--results based on skewed attitudes and perceptions.

As this verdict shows, the greatest blame does not lie with an institution. It is with us. If we judge people of color differently than we judge people in blue, we “the people” are at fault. If we allow brutal force to be “reasonable” because of the violence our officers face daily, we the people are at fault.

The criminal-justice system will not change those ills in our society that led to the verdict in the Rodney King beating case. We the people must change.