Former GM Workers Say Police Beatings Unprovoked : Lawsuits: Responding to a civil action by 17 plaintiffs, officials say force was needed to disperse 600 employees outside the Van Nuys plant in 1985 incident.

Testifying in a civil suit against the Los Angeles Police Department, several former General Motors workers said Wednesday that they were beaten without provocation or warning by police seven years ago outside the now-closed Van Nuys plant.

Club-wielding police wordlessly approached a crowd on the Van Nuys Boulevard sidewalk Oct. 3, 1985, then abruptly began beating and spraying Mace on workers, said Tomas Armendariz of Norwalk.

Armendariz, then an eight-year veteran at the plant, said he was among a large crowd that came under police attack while trying to return to work at the end of the 9 p.m. dinner break.

Armendariz said a police officer sprayed Mace into his left eye at short range and 10 minutes later another officer broke his arm with a baton blow as he tried to leave the area.

In the Van Nuys Superior Court trial, Armendariz and 16 other plaintiffs are seeking unspecified damages from the city, contending that police used excessive force in breaking up crowds milling around outside the plant.

Most of the plaintiffs are middle-aged, veteran plant workers who on the witness stand and in interviews expressed outrage at being treated like criminals by police.

Police officials said at the time that they went to the plant in response to persistent complaints from nearby merchants and residents that workers spilled into the street during breaks, sometimes blocking traffic on Van Nuys Boulevard.

During plant breaks, many workers also drank beer openly and some people bought and used drugs, police said.

Police used force to disperse the crowd of about 600 workers after beer cans and rocks were thrown at them, said Deputy City Atty. Eskel H. Solomon, who is representing the city in the case.

“We don’t deny that force was used,” Solomon said in an interview, “but in every case it was necessary force.”

The deputy city attorney said that brutality claims made by the plaintiffs “don’t add up with the facts as we know them about where police were and how things occurred.”

But Hermez Moreno, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said that the recollections of his clients, who are an ethnic and racial cross-section of the plant’s work force, “are remarkably similar. Police attacked them without provocation. They were doing nothing, and they ended up injured and humiliated and scared.”

Linda Smith of Hawthorne, another plaintiff, said she was “scared to death” when police unexpectedly attacked the crowd she was in.

One officer hit her in the eye, which required medical attention, Smith said, and two women standing beside her were struck with batons and driven to the ground.

Armida Penaloza, another former auto worker, said that a police officer took a swing at her with a baton, but missed, after she asked to see her husband, also a plant worker who had been detained for drinking alcohol in public.

“They were just pushing and swinging,” she said.

“They didn’t care who they hit.”