Hot Questions : Students Grill Key Figures About Police Policies, King Case

Quiva Stafford, a junior at Jordan High School, stood at a microphone set up in the school’s crowded gymnasium Wednesday and asked a straightforward question of the guest sitting on the dais.

“Do you believe in peace and justice?” she asked, as Deputy Police Chief Bernard Parks wriggled a bit in the small wooden classroom chair. “How can blacks and Hispanics believe in peace and justice when the police don’t seem to believe in it?”

The question provoked ringing applause among the 400 students who had gathered to confront Parks and Deputy Dist. Atty. Terry White with pointed questions about police-community relations and the prosecution’s handling of the Rodney G. King beating trial.

The occasion was a forum designed to give students at the Watts high school a chance to address some of the public officials who have played a prominent role in events of the past month.

Parks, a member of the Los Angeles Police Department for 28 years, is the highest ranking black officer on the force. White was the lead prosecutor who failed to win a conviction against four white police officers accused of beating King.

Many of the students took the opportunity to vent strong emotions about the King verdict, the riots and their frustrations at living in a community that is often portrayed as a focal point of violence and other social ills.

Perhaps the most heated exchange came during a discussion of police brutality, when Carlos Arvisu, a member of the Jordan debate team, asked those students who had experienced harassment or police abuse to raise their hands. When nearly half the arms in the gym flew up, Parks quickly asked, to moans and groans, how many had reported the incidents to authorities.

“The cops don’t listen,” shouted one youth from the audience.

“Why is it that someone like yourself, who’s in a position of power, hasn’t changed any of this,” persisted Arvisu.

“You’re making a judgment and a blanket statement without knowing the facts,” said Parks, with a touch of anger. “You’re talking to someone who’s spent a great deal of his life trying to make things better. If you’re really interested in what happens, I invite you to come out to my office and see what I do.”

Students weren’t satisfied with White’s explanation as to why prosecutors did not have King testify.

Based on statements King made after the beating, White said prosecutors concluded that King would not have made a very good witness. They were also reluctant to leave King open to questions about past criminal conduct, White said.

“Why put someone on the stand who says immediately after the beating ‘I wasn’t speeding, I pulled right over’, (when) even his friend who was in the car with him said that wasn’t true? Why give a jury a chance to say ‘We don’t like Rodney King.’ In hindsight there may be a lot of things we would have done differently, but we don’t make decisions on hindsight. It was a correct decision at the time,” White told the group.

Student Donald Jackson wanted to know at what point in the trial did White know that he had “lost the jury.”

“I had a feeling they made up their minds fairly early and that they weren’t really listening to the evidence presented,” said White. “It was a difficult case because you had an individual who was speeding and wouldn’t stop. But a lot of people all over the nation followed this case very closely and saw the evidence that the jury saw . . . and they believe that he should not have been beaten the way he was.”

Despite the grilling, both men remained composed during the hour-and-a-half forum. One student asked Parks who is in charge of police policy. “What kind of policy?” asked the bewildered deputy chief.

“The way you train police to beat people,” replied the student, to roars of laughter from the gym.

After the forum, Parks agreed that the students have serious questions that must be addressed if the community’s relations with police are to improve.

“But I don’t think the tensions are necessarily only with police,” added Parks. “For these kids, there are issues that affect their broader lives. They are talking about growing up, about fairness and whether it exists, about role models. They’re questioning a lot of things.”

White also concluded he was no worse for the ordeal.

“It was no worse than getting it from Ted Koppel,” he said, referring to his interview with the television news personality. “They had some very good questions but I think that, like a lot of the general public, they came with some misinformation about the facts and how the process works.”

Despite the tough questioning, many students praised Parks and White for coming to their neighborhood to listen to them.

“I think it was brave of them to come down here,” said 15-year-old Christy Johnson. “Even though I don’t agree with a lot they had to say, I learned from it. There needs to be more opportunities for us to talk to people like this.”