Detroit Police Beat Black Motorist to Death : Attack: Two white officers are said to have delivered blows while other lawmen watched. All have been suspended, with arrests possible.

In a case that ominously resembled the 1991 attack on Rodney G. King, Detroit police said Friday that a 35-year-old black motorist was beaten to death by two white Detroit officers while five other officers looked on.

Police Chief Stanley Knox angrily announced the suspension of all seven officers without pay and called the attack a “disgrace.” He said arrest warrants were being sought against the officers.

The dead man was identified as Malice Wayne Green of Detroit. According to Knox, Green was beaten repeatedly in the head as he sat in his car at an intersection on Detroit’s west side about 10:30 p.m. Thursday.

He was taken to Detroit Receiving Hospital where he died in the emergency room. The Wayne County coroner’s office listed the cause of death as multiple blunt traumas to the head.

Knox said a police review board has been impaneled and an investigation launched. It is unclear why Green was approached by the police, he said, and witnesses said the motorist offered no resistance. No weapon was found in the car, Knox told a news conference. Green reportedly had no criminal record.

“I didn’t get a good reason why the vehicle was stopped,” he said. “I’m not aware of any weapon.”

“Whatever he was doing, they had no right to beat him to death on the street,” said Green’s father, Jesse Green.

Mayor Coleman A. Young issued a statement that he was “shocked and sickened” and vowed: “Every officer found to be guilty of any misconduct in connection with this tragic incident will be dealt with in the harshest manner possible.”

Unidentified witnesses interviewed on local television said the first two policemen on the scene, on-duty, white plainclothes officers, approached Green’s 1984 Mercury and almost immediately began beating him as he sat in the car. Knox said Green was struck repeatedly with a police flashlight.

“They beat him down like a dog,” said a witness identified as a man who was talking with Green when police arrived.

Five more officers, some black and some white, including a black sergeant, arrived at the scene. But Knox said they apparently did nothing to intervene. It was unclear how long the episode went on.

“Not everyone actually struck a blow,” Knox told a news conference late Friday. “Indications are he may have been struck prior to his leaving his car.”

Knox said two of the white officers had been the subject of brutality complaints several years ago, but the complaints weren’t sustained. Although police wouldn’t identify the officers, local news reports quoted retired police as saying the two were known as “tough guys” who were as likely to beat whites as blacks.

But the racial overtones were clear. Asked whether he saw parallels with the King beating in Los Angeles, Knox said, “I think we all do.”

Joanne Watson, executive director of the NAACP in Detroit, credited Knox for a “forthright response” to the incident and said, “I’m glad he did not take the tack of (former Los Angeles Police Chief) Darryl Gates in L.A. and immediately defend the officers.”

Asked how the black community would respond to the incident, Watson said, “I don’t think anybody can predict the reaction.”

Detroit’s 4,000-member police force has had its share of corruption in recent years--Knox’s predecessor is in federal prison for mishandling police funds--but the city boasts a relatively good record on brutality complaints and racial evenhandedness.

One reason, local criminal justice experts say, is the roughly 50-50 racial makeup of the police force in the predominantly black city of 1 million. The racial balance has been engineered by five-term mayor Young, who, like Chief Knox, is black.

When the King beating was making headlines across the country, local officials boasted that it would never happen in Detroit because of the relationship between police and the community.

“To receive a blow like this actually brought tears to my eyes,” Knox said.