Controversial Statements Made in Early Draft Cut From Koon’s Book : LAPD: The sergeant has added strong criticism of the media and retitled the work ‘Presumed Guilty: The Tragedy of the Rodney King Affair.’

Renamed and reworked, Sgt. Stacey C. Koon’s book on the Rodney G. King incident will be published next week with many of the controversial statements from an earlier draft cut and strong criticism of the media’s handling of the affair added.

“Presumed Guilty: The Tragedy of the Rodney King Affair” is the veteran officer’s account of the March 3, 1991, beating of King and Koon’s insider’s view of the subsequent trial in Simi Valley that ended with not guilty verdicts that triggered rioting in Los Angeles.

In assigning blame for the riots, nowhere does Koon’s book mention him or the three other officers involved in the trial--all of whom currently face federal charges of violating King’s civil rights.

“The public revulsion and bloody, costly Los Angeles riots that followed the verdict were a tragic, avoidable reaction,” Koon wrote. “They were the response of a misguided public that had been deceived by the Los Angeles police, municipal officials, and community leaders. They were the reaction of an ill-informed public denied information by news media that had an agenda in which truth and full disclosure were not factors.”

Not in the book--once titled “The Ides of March” by Koon--are statements contained in an early manuscript that swept him up in controversy when they were published by The Times in May. In the earlier version, Koon wrote of King as a “Mandingo”--a reference to a West African people and a pejorative term for black men--and called George Holliday, the amateur cameraman who videotaped the King incident, “George of the Jungle.”

Also edited out of the manuscript or abbreviated are Koon’s descriptions of racial references made by fellow officers after he shot a black man several years ago and his kicking of a Latino drug suspect in the testicles.

In an interview this week, Koon said the changes were made as part of a routine rewriting and editing of the book, not to avoid controversy.

“That was a part of the editing process,” Koon said of the changes. “Those were just raw notes.”

He also denied that the edited references had a “racial slant.” He declined to specifically discuss the Mandingo reference because he said the early manuscript was seized by federal investigators, and it may become an issue during the U.S. District Court trial scheduled to begin in February.

Koon declined to disclose how much he will be paid for the book being published Monday by Regnery Gateway, a Washington, D.C., publisher that specializes in books dealing with conservative politics.

In the book Koon goes to great lengths to show he harbors no racial animosity and that racism played no part in the King incident.

The book rarely varies from the defense Koon employed during the trial: that the beating of King was within LAPD policies and that it was King who controlled what happened by refusing to submit to the officers and threatening them with his actions.

Koon aims most of his criticism at the media--particularly broadcast media--which he said mishandled the incident from the start by immediately assuming the officers had acted improperly, casting King as an innocent and not reporting that the beating was within LAPD use-of-force guidelines.

“By ignoring one side of the story, the media misled the public,” Koon wrote. “Then, when the jury delivered its opinion, everyone was surprised. The question must be asked: If the facts had been reported from the beginning, would people have been outraged by the decision? The obvious answer is no. But the media failed in their responsibility, and the city of Los Angeles, and the nation, paid the price.”

Koon said in the interview that he hopes the book will give its readers a thorough understanding of the case. He said 25,000 copies are being printed initially.

“I think the book brings a perspective to the case the media never covered,” he said. “The title came from the media trial. We were tried in the media and found guilty. . . .

“The reporting was reprehensible. It was no different from someone coming into a theater and yelling fire.”

Aside from the media, Koon bitterly criticizes the actions of former Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and the Police Commission, as well as King himself.

He wrote: “As this book is being written, Rodney King lives the life of a virtual prisoner, under twenty-four-hour protection and reportedly tranquilized to an almost zombie-like state as his attorney seeks to extract a multimillion-dollar ransom from the city of Los Angeles for suffering King only brought upon himself through his own uncontrolled actions. . . . He leaves his home only to run errands and get arrested. . . .”

On Gates and the Police Commission, Koon wrote that if they “had made even a cursory investigation of the Rodney King affair before judging the street cops guilty, they would have found, as the Simi Valley jurors found, no improper actions under existing LAPD policies and procedures. Which means, of course, that they would have had to take the heat for the department’s use-of-force policies. . . . Heat’s uncomfortable, but it’s what politicians get paid for. Not only that, heat’s better than a riot.”