Koon Pens Blunt Book About Life in LAPD : Police: The sergeant describes the King beating in detail and of the ‘high’ he experienced after using force in another case. He also repeats racial references.

Los Angeles Police Sgt. Stacey C. Koon, who was acquitted in the Rodney G. King beating, has written a book about the case and his years in the LAPD in which he repeats racial references and speaks candidly about the “high” he has experienced after using force.

In a copy of the 275-page manuscript obtained by The Times, Koon refers to King as “Mandingo”--a reference to a West African people used by some Westerners to denigrate black male slaves. In describing a separate incident in which he repeatedly shot a black man, he said his fellow officers joked that the man would survive because blacks “are too dumb to go into shock.”

Furthermore, Koon says he became a “legend” in the LAPD for viciously kicking a Latino drug suspect in the groin. And he said officers who receive the most dangerous assignments are called “s--- magnets.”

Turning to the King incident, he called the arrest a “group beat.” He nicknamed George Holliday, the man who shot the King videotape, “George of the Jungle.” And he gives a lengthy description of how his officers reacted when King was finally handcuffed after the beating March 3, 1991, in Lake View Terrace.

“They began to joke and laugh,” he said. “It was not a laugh of a party atmosphere. It was a laugh of relief. It was a laugh to release the pressure of the incident. It was the gallows humor. The officers had faced a very stressful situation and they had prevailed. They were on a high.”

Koon, who has titled his unsold manuscript “The Ides of March,” said in an interview Friday that although he stands by his words, he is not a racist and he does not condone police brutality. Rather, he said, his words are a reflection of the way police officers think and feel after having to daily confront dangerous situations. It is written in the language of a tough-talking street cop.

“Ever work in a hospital?” he asked. “Ever been around a coroner? Ever been around a fireman? There are certain professions where it’s normal, acceptable behavior for them to talk this way. It’s the way they maintain their sanity. You can’t continually see this stuff every day, day in and day out, and not relieve yourself with this kind of gallows humor.”

Koon also reiterated in his book that he harbors no racial animosity.

“The critics argued LAPD was racist, the officers involved beat King because they were racist and I allowed it to happen because I was racist,” wrote Koon, who is white. “I found this to be destructive and personally offensive. I am not a racist and I do not condone or tolerate racism.”

Koon is trying to sell his manuscript as either a book or television movie. He insisted that he is not seeking financial gain out of the King tragedy and the riots.

“My intention was not to make a bazillion dollars off this book. You can donate the proceeds of this book to rebuilding South-Central Los Angeles, because this is not blood money for me and I am not in this for my own good.”

Koon’s efforts to sell the project come at a time when he and other officers involved in the King incident are being investigated by a federal grand jury for possible civil rights violations.

Among the manuscript’s more notable passages:

* Desk assignments at the LAPD are for “sick, lazy, lame, pregnant and problem officers. . . . This is probably the number one reason for negative public contacts with the LAPD.”

* The Police Department for years has tolerated and been “stupid about sexual discrimination” and has “blundered along in its own world and felt it could do whatever, to whomever, it pleased.”

* The code of silence among police officers was formed by “a tightknit group bound by a silent brotherhood. To break it would mark one as an outcast forever.”

* “His highness” Police Chief Daryl F. Gates made the “wrong choice” by not supporting the four officers accused in the beating and, instead, is attempting to punish Koon not for what happened in Lake View Terrace but because “I had committed the most egregious and heinous of all violations: I had embarrassed the LAPD.”

* Koon was initially delighted that the King arrest was captured on video. “Great!” he wrote. “I was to star in an actual in-field incident, a classic use of force. . . . I had become a celebrity.”

* The King videotape, which a local TV station bought from Holliday for $500, was probably one of the best deals ever made in America “next to the purchase of Manhattan Island from the Indians.”

In one section of his manuscript, Koon uses a little descriptive geography to tell how he once kicked a Latino man who he said was under the influence of PCP.

“My boot came from the area of lower California and connected with the suspect’s scrotum about lower Missouri,” he wrote. “My boot stopped about Ohio, but the suspect’s testicles continued into upper Maine. The suspect was literally lifted off the ground. The suspect tried to speak, but it appeared he had something in this throat--probably his balls.”

A film crew happened to capture the kick for posterity, and it became a popular training tool for young officers--long before anyone knew the name Rodney King. “The tape was to become a legend in its own time,” Koon wrote.

One of the book’s most graphic sections is his recollection of the King arrest, particularly Koon’s descriptive recollection of how he watched King dance and shake his buttocks at California Highway Patrol Officer Melanie Singer who, worried for her safety, approached King with a gun.

“He grabbed his butt with both hands and began to shake and gyrate his fanny in a sexually suggestive fashion,” Koon wrote. “As King sexually gyrated, a mixture of fear and offense overcame Melanie. The fear was of a Mandingo sexual encounter.”

Koon, in the interview Friday, defended his choice of words, saying he was merely trying to draw out the antebellum image of a large black man and a defenseless white woman.

“In society,” he said, “there’s this sexual prowess of blacks on the old plantations of the South and intercourse between blacks and whites on the plantation. And that’s where the fear comes in, because he’s black.”

Another section of the book describes an incident in which Koon shot a black man in the arms, legs and torso after the suspect confronted police with an assault rifle.

“Although he was a light-skinned black, his skin began to take on the gray pallor of death,” Koon wrote.

A group of officers gathered around. One asked: “Did you see that guy?” Another chipped in: “Yeah, he was one pale black man.” Another asked: “Do you think he’ll die?” and the response was: “No way! You or I, we’d die, but not a Negro. They’re too dumb to go into shock.”

Koon, describing his feelings about the shooting, wrote: “I had confronted certain death and survived. It was a high.”

In the interview, he said that such conversation is only police jargon, a defense mechanism used to help officers deal with stress. “That’s something that’s said all the time on the street,” he said. “It’s what keeps policemen sane.”

On other issues, Koon defended Officer Laurence M. Powell, who shortly before the King beating sent a computer message describing a black family as “right out of ‘Gorillas in the Mist.’ ”

“No racial overtones were intended,” Koon wrote.

The sergeant also defended as “a form of accepted police humor” a series of other police computer messages that the Christopher Commission last year said were racist, such as one in which an officer said, “it’s monkey-slapping time.” The commission and angry minority community leaders said the message was a slur about police beating blacks. But Koon said it was a police reference to something else.

“Literally, it means an officer is going to go masturbate,” he wrote. “However, in context it means an officer is going to kick back and relax.”

Koon said he began writing the book as a way to ease the frustrations and stress brought on by the public uproar over the beating for which he and three other officers faced criminal charges and were found not guilty.

His attorney, Richard K. Rosenberg, said that Koon’s intentions are good and that his client did not mean to offend any one. The lawyer also noted that because Koon is not a professional writer, the manuscript will have to be reworked.

“It’s going to be edited,” Rosenberg said. “What you see is raw and I think it might be toned down a little.

“But he calls it as he sees it,” the attorney added. “He is a very straight shooter and this is his perception of things. These are his own sincere beliefs about some of what has gone on.”

Koon intended the title of his manuscript to serve as a double-entendre, noting that he was indicted on a March 15 and that, like in Caesar’s day, there has been a palace coup by the Police Commission of the Police Department since the King beating.