The Record Gets Lengthier : Sgt. Koon’s unpublished memoirs contain offensive stereotyping

Race relations between the Los Angeles Police Department and African-Americans won’t be improved by the word that’s out about Sgt. Stacey C. Koon’s unpublished memoirs. Koon, acquitted in the Simi Valley criminal trial of four LAPD officers, was the sergeant in charge during the now-notorious arrest of Rodney G. King.

In excerpts quoted in Times reporter Richard A. Serrano’s recent article about Koon’s manuscript, the officer indulges in some extremely regrettable racial stereotyping. If Koon’s outrageous views are shared to any considerable extent in the LAPD, it looks like Chief-designate Willie L. Williams has his work cut out for him.

The sergeant at one point makes the astonishing comparison between King and one of America’s most offensive and enduring stereotypes--Mandingo, the fictional powerful black slave touted in trashy dime-store novels for his sexual prowess. It is to be recalled that King refused initially to pull over when his auto was pursued by the California Highway Patrol and, according to some testimony, after he stopped his vehicle he engaged in some impromptu dancing near California Highway Patrol Officer Melanie Singer. Writes Koon: “The fear was of a Mandingo sexual encounter.” Whose fear? Singer testified to no such fear. In the Times interview, Koon, though no historian, defended this offensive comparison by saying he was trying to evoke images of “this sexual prowess of blacks on the old plantations of the South.”

Koon also writes of shooting a “light-skinned black” who had confronted police with an assault rifle. Another officer asked: “Do you think he’ll die?” The response was: “No way! You or I, we’d die, but not a Negro. They’re too dumb to go into shock.”

Koon dismisses these remarks as police humor used to relieve the pressure of a tough job. Sorry. “Humor” is no rationalization for racial stereotyping. The Christopher Commission investigation found 703 racial, ethnic and sexual slurs in a review of transmissions between police cars. Now there’s another to be put on the record.