Blacks Assail Koon’s LAPD Manuscript : Reaction: Community activists call police sergeant’s memoir racist and confirmation of ‘major problems’ in the department. Former King case defendant says he is not a bigot.

A bluntly worded manuscript penned by Los Angeles Police Sgt. Stacey C. Koon about his years in the LAPD and his role in the Rodney G. King beating was denounced Saturday by black leaders and activists as offering disturbing insights into racism within the police force.

The unsold work by Koon, which was described and quoted in an article Saturday in The Times, “reveals for all to see what kind of mind-set we had in the officers involved in the Rodney King affair,” said Police Commissioner Jesse A. Brewer.

“It shows us we have major problems to overcome in the Los Angeles police,” said Brewer, formerly the highest ranking black official in the Police Department. “. . . You wonder to what extent that attitude is prevalent in the field. This person was a supervisor, a sergeant. We have some problems to overcome out there.”

Among other things, Koon referred to King as “Mandingo”--a reference to a West African people that has been used by some Westerners to denigrate and stereotype blacks. Koon went on to describe how officers laughed and joked after the beating “to release the pressure of the incident.”

Koon, who was acquitted of criminal charges in the King beating, also described another incident in which, after he repeatedly shot a black suspect, officers joked that the man would survive because blacks “are too dumb to go into shock.” In another apparent attempt at humor, Koon graphically described how he became a “legend” in the Los Angeles Police Department for savagely kicking the groin of a Latino drug suspect he said was under the influence of PCP.

Koon, in an interview Friday, said he is not a racist and characterized parts of his manuscript as a candid reflection of the gallows humor that helps street cops cope with the stress and danger of their job. He said he hopes to either have the manuscript made into a book or a television movie, and that he would be happy to donate the proceeds to the rebuilding of South-Central Los Angeles.

On Saturday, Koon did not return calls to his home for comment on the fallout from the disclosures in his unpublished memoir.

A federal grand jury is investigating Koon and other officers at the King beating for possible civil rights violations.

The Rev. Cecil Murray of First African Methodist Episcopal Church, a center of activism before and after the rioting, deplored the attitudes reflected in Koon’s work, but emphasized that not all police officers “are to be painted with the Stacey Koon brush. The fair and just ones stand tall. They are still our protectors, and we still respect those who wear the blue with fairness and professionalism.”

State Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) said that Koon’s words--a common topic of news reports and conversation Saturday--”are volatile maybe to the point of inciting violence” and reinforce views that the city’s law enforcement is infected with racist attitudes.

“The Police Department here in Los Angeles has not endeared themselves to the people,” she said. “We have to select people differently, train them differently and make sure we have a force that protects and serves, and cannot be driven by myths, hatreds, biases and stereotypes.”

Brewer said he did not accept Koon’s defense that his remarks were grounded in humor and not racism. “That’s a bunch of baloney,” Brewer said. “I’ve heard them make jokes, but they didn’t make racist jokes. Not around me.”

The references to the black suspect shot by Koon, Brewer added, were “a terrible thing to say. Terrible.”

Murray also singled out that anecdote as particularly offensive.

“Stacey Koon has been consistent all the way. . . . We weren’t too dumb to die in the Gulf or other wars for his freedom, but he says we’re too dumb to die from his bullets. . . . Here is proof positive that his heart never was right and the jury was completely wrong,” Murray said.

Murray said Koon, in writing his book, is “not only guilty of racism, he’s guilty of something worse--he’s guilty of poor taste, a lapse of decency. You may forgive ignorance. It is hard to forgive impoliteness. You know when you’re being impolite.”

Kerman Maddox, a public affairs consultant and former candidate for the City Council, dismissed Koon’s explanation as “the defense they’ve always used. Even if that’s locker room banter, that’s inappropriate locker room banter.

“We’ve talked for years about the racist, insensitive attitudes of the LAPD against the African-American communities and the Latino community. And in this article, he openly jokes about how he brutalized this Latino and how they brutalized Rodney King,” Maddox said.

“Can these guys really go in and effectively police a community? Willie Williams has his job cut out for him,” Maddox added, referring to the former Philadelphia police commissioner who will succeed Daryl F. Gates as Los Angeles police chief in June.

Maddox, like Watson, said Koon’s manuscript is inflammatory at a time when the city’s residents and police need to heal wounds created by the King beating, by the not guilty verdicts and the riots.

“People are really trying the best they can to reach out and work together,” Maddox said. “To have this come out at this particular time, it certainly doesn’t help. It doesn’t help police-community relations.”

But Koon’s words, leaders and activists agreed, are instructive in depicting Koon and the attitudes he portrays within the department.

“I think it is important,” Brewer said, “for all of us to know what these officers were thinking.”