ACLU Suit Accuses Police of Brutality During Gay Protest : Litigation: Group alleges that actions were intended to end demonstrations against governor’s veto of anti-bias bill. LAPD has denied charges.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department Wednesday, alleging that officers harassed and beat gay rights demonstrators last October in a deliberate effort to end the wave of protests set off by Gov. Pete Wilson’s veto of an anti-discrimination bill.

“They brutally attacked the crowd using excessive force and spouting anti-gay and lesbian obscenities,” said ACLU staff attorney Jon Davidson at a news conference. “It was an outrage.”

The Superior Court suit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of 28 protesters, focuses on the night of Oct. 23, when hundreds of demonstrators gathered in front of the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City. Wilson, who was inside the hotel, had vetoed legislation outlawing employment discrimination based on sexual orientation three weeks earlier and was the target of daily protests.

The demonstrations had been noisy but generally peaceful. That changed at the Century Plaza, when more than 100 police officers in riot gear, some on horseback, began to forcibly break up a large crowd of protesters on a median on Avenue of the Stars.

According to the lawsuit, police clubbed and pushed demonstrators without provocation, shouted slurs at them and charged them with their horses.

“They wanted trouble, and they set about to cause it,” Davidson said. “They rampaged through the crowd, hurting as many people as they could, in an attempt to discourage future demonstrations by lesbian and gay rights activists.” Noting that afterward there were only two small protests of Wilson’s veto, Davidson said the police “were mostly successful” in achieving their goal.

Police Department spokesmen declined to comment on the allegations, saying it is against policy to talk about pending litigation. “We don’t talk about that kind of stuff,” Officer Arthur Holmes said.

Immediately after the protest, however, police defended their actions, saying the protesters had refused to move from the median and presented a danger because of traffic in the area. Police also said they feared the crowd would storm the hotel, where Wilson was attending a fund-raising dinner. “We had just a . . . potentially dangerous situation,” Deputy Police Chief Glenn Levant said at the time.

But the lawsuit contends that the protesters did nothing to provoke their treatment and had been told by police officials that they would be allowed to gather on the median, even though they did not have a demonstration permit.

They were “nonviolent and law-abiding at all times,” Davidson said.

Protesters said they were prodded and hit with batons and were the subject of repeated anti-gay slurs.

Lois Appelbaum, a 58-year-old married grandmother from the San Fernando Valley, recalled that when she told a young officer to stop pulling her and help her move, he yelled back, “Why would I want to help an old lesbo like you?”

“I have been in many, many other demonstrations but I have never in my life witnessed anything like this particular one,” said Appelbaum, one of a number of plaintiffs who attended the press conference. Referring to the officer’s comment, she joked, “I really don’t think I minded lesbo, but old really bothered me.”

Gregory Gilbert, a 26-year-old West Hollywood resident, said police laughed as they roughed up the protesters. “They were calling us faggots,” he said. “They were calling us sick people. . . . In my eyes that was a mass gay-bashing.”

Davidson charged that the attack on demonstrators was part of a pattern of police harassment and anti-gay policies carried out under former Chief Daryl F. Gates. As another example, Davidson pointed to allegations in a just-released book that a department unit has spied on several politicians in an effort to determine if they were gay. Gates has denied the charges.

In addition to asking for unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, the lawsuit also seeks an injunction against future acts of brutality and an order requiring better training and procedures for police use of force, batons and horses. The suit names as defendants the city of Los Angeles, the Police Department, Gates, former Assistant Chief Robert L. Vernon and Levant, who oversaw the police operation at the Century Plaza.