A CITY IN CRISIS : Police Chiefs Study Training Policy : Community relations: Many say King verdicts stunned them. They promise to implement outreach programs spurred by the beating.

Many Southern California police chiefs, expressing disbelief at the Rodney G. King verdicts, say they will diligently move forward with sensitivity training and community outreach programs that have been cornerstones of reform since the case erupted 14 months ago.

Reverberations from the not guilty verdicts echoed throughout a number of counties beyond riot-torn Los Angeles as law enforcement officials elsewhere girded themselves against the possibility of spreading violence and publicly empathized with those angered by the case’s outcome.

“As a citizen more than as a professional police officer, I am shocked that some criminal charges weren’t found,” said Fullerton Police Chief Philip Goehring, who is also president of the Chiefs of Police and Sheriff’s Assn. in Orange County.

But as authorities in San Diego, Orange and Ventura counties viewed the King episode as a catalyst for improvements in procedures, those in the Inland Empire said they saw in its effects only a re-examination of the way citizens regard police.

“It’s obviously had a ripple effect out there,” said Detective Henry Sawicki of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. “It’s something that’s in the mind of the public, and therefore on the minds of the officers who are in daily contact with the public.”

From Santa Paula to San Diego, peace officers have been stung by criticism and low morale sparked by widespread anti-police sentiment in the wake of the King beating and, in some cases, by their own notorious local controversies.

As a result, many organizations have turned to new training techniques, scrutinized policies for reviewing brutality complaints and encouraged officers to loosen up and build stronger bridges to neighborhoods.

One department installed video cameras in patrol cars--meant to protect both the officers and the people they pull over. Another launched roll-call demonstrations to re-educate officers on how to handcuff suspects and how to deal more delicately with belligerent motorists.

A majority expanded their community-oriented policing programs, with one jurisdiction sending police to visit schools to help make the officers less mystifying to young people.

In a scramble to halt sliding morale and shore up community relations, top officials in many areas introduced their officers to “Verbal Judo,” the latest in police lexicon for non-confrontational ways of handling escalating situations.

And in the King case aftermath, ranking officers and police association spokesmen say that the usually hard-shelled cop’s attitude and stony public face has actually softened.

Sgt. Don Blankenship, president of the Santa Ana Police Benevolent Assn., said that even before the King incident, top officials were becoming alarmed that officers were being named as defendants in federal court actions and that complaints were running high.

“You can only get sued so many times before you stop and think, ‘Maybe I’m doing something wrong,’ ” Blankenship said.

Eager to maintain the peace and to avoid initiating confrontations, arrests declined--especially because a growing number of citizens began to carry cameras.

Riverside Police Chief Linford L. Richardson said, for example, that he believes the current climate serves to discourage officers from using excessive force.

“I do not see them doing anything (wrong), especially when there’s talk of cameras and videos,” he said. “I just find that impossible to believe that these officers would do anything, knowing this kind of environment, knowing that they’re constantly being scrutinized.”

In a highly charged Riverside incident in February that provoked allegations of brutality, the mother of George Manuel Ahumada called hysterically for neighbors to get out their cameras as her son scuffled with arresting officers.

“I told them to bring their videos, to take pictures of the police killing my son,” Mary Ahumada recalled. “This was worse than what happened to Rodney King.”

Riverside authorities say Ahumada, a convicted felon, died of heart failure, apparently as a result of years of drug abuse, after the altercation. Witnesses said officers beat Ahumada and that one officer choked him with a nightstick, but police officials deny that.

A world away from the dusty, working-class neighborhood of the Ahumadas, in the coastal resort city of Laguna Beach, Police Chief Neil Purcell Jr. said the King beating greatly undermined citizens’ respect for his department.

“I think it took its toll on officers. There was a kind of backing off,” Purcell said, adding that arrests in the city were down 39% last year, although crime did not decline.

Of the controversial verdict, Purcell said, “The jury found them not guilty but no one could convince me that the officers’ use of force was appropriate, necessary or warranted.

“What they did was totally wrong.”

Laguna Beach has had its own problems with images of brutality captured on film. Early in 1991, a police officer was videotaped kicking a 24-year-old homeless man who was lying on a sidewalk. The videotape, recorded by a resident, was eventually turned over to an attorney who filed a complaint against the officer.

“We had the kicking incident . . . then the Rodney King thing occurred, which compounded our problem,” Purcell said. “And the next thing I know we’re reading about the Rodney King thing and our thing in Time magazine.”

In Oxnard, Police Chief Robert Owens said he enacted a program to raise the officers’ “consciousness level” in dealing with temper control. Colton Police Chief Jack Stratton said he has a bicycle patrol program under consideration as an enforcement and community relations tool.

The two-wheeler patrol--with officers wearing leisure shirts, department insignia patches and Bermuda shorts--would have the effect of “helping improve our relationship with the community,” Stratton said.

San Diego Police Chief Bob Burgreen, who spoke out strongly against the King verdicts, now requires academy cadets to work in various social agencies assisting minorities. Burgreen has also expanded “community-based” policing programs to high-crime areas, and encouraged officers to familiarize themselves with different ethnic neighborhoods.

The department, which is still reeling from the Sagon Penn case, in which a black man was acquitted for the March 31, 1985, slaying of a patrol officer, does not use the King video in training.

The Penn case, regarded as one of the most difficult in the history of the San Diego Police Department, left many black community leaders dissatisfied, especially in view of complaints that police were quick to use profanity, racial slurs and physical force in their dealings with the black community.

“I think it’s insulting to even offer (the tape) as an example on how not to use force,” said Norman Stamper, executive assistant San Diego police chief. “A police officer in this city or in Los Angeles knows that’s not the way to treat people. It’s totally unacceptable.”

In Ventura and many other California police departments, chiefs hired George J. Thompson, president of the Verbal Judo Institute in Tijeras, N.M., who teaches that talking things out--before any force is taken--can defuse hot situations.

“I like to say I teach a martial arts of the mind and mouth to help officers contend with situations and prevent violent confrontations like the Rodney King case,” said Thompson, a former small-town Kansas police officer and college English teacher.

Since the King beating, Thompson said, he has spoken to more than 60 law enforcement organizations, including the sheriff’s departments in Los Angeles and the San Bernardino counties, nationwide since the Rodney King beating.

During his courses, Thompson stresses establishing a professional presence but a different face for different people.

“Not that Mt. Rushmore face, not that Jack Webb face. Not for America in 1990s,” he said, advocating that police officers, “try being Columbo, and not Jack Webb.”

Purcell said he finds the tactic useful in his coastal community, adding that his city is a destination for outsiders, some of whom are antagonistic when they come into contact with officers.

“Many of them are trying to intimidate, actually taunt our officers by saying, ‘What are you going to do? Beat me like they did Rodney King, and kick me?” Purcell said.

In Colton, Chief Stratton said, “Crooks still say, ‘C’mon, hit me. Hit me! Make me another Rodney King.’ ”

In February, shortly after Colton police shot and killed the hijacker of a Greyhound bus, relatives of the man said they believed the shooting was unjustified, and added: “If Rodney King had lived in Colton, he’d be dead right now.”

“With the taunting, our officers are somewhat paranoid, especially with people who are running around with video cameras. The officers are not doing anything wrong, but these things make them apprehensive,” Stratton said.

Before the King beating, a proposal to install small video cameras inside every patrol car of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department had already been presented, said Robert MacLeod, general manager of the 1,200-member Assn. of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs.

MacLeod said the King incident and videotape helped push the proposal over budgetary hurdles that might have otherwise stalled it. MacLeod said the cameras will remain on most of the time deputies are on patrol.

“If someone runs a red light they can look right on the tape and see themselves on the monitor in our patrol cars. It will save court time and overtime,” MacLeod said.

“We are very confident that we’ll have many more circumstances where a videotape will clear a police officer rather than convict him,” he said.

Contributing to this article were Times staff writers Patrick McDonnell in Riverside, Leslie Berkman in Costa Mesa, Mark Platte in San Diego and Mack Reed in Ventura.