2 White Policemen Fired in Beating of Black Colleague : Race relations: The clash continues to heat up tensions in Nashville. Some say such incidents are the norm.

As police brutality cases go, this one would seem to be of less than major proportions. The victim did not die. No cameraman was on hand to record the scene. And the beating--if it can be called that--lasted for only a few fleeting seconds.

But what happened to Reggie Miller last Monday night on a sleazy strip in one of Nashville’s toughest neighborhoods has exacerbated racial tensions here like few other events and exposed deep racial fissures within the police department.

Miller is a cop, a black one at that, who was working undercover on his first prostitution detail when he was pulled over for driving a department vehicle with expired tags. From that simple beginning events swirled wildly out of control.

The 31-year-old officer had a gun pressed to his head. A fellow policeman threw him to the ground. Another planted a knee in his back and gouged at his eyes. Yet another kicked him, Miller says, repeatedly in the groin.

While the swift firing Friday of two white officers involved in the incident and open communications between police officials and black leaders has done much to cool tempers in this city’s African-American community, the department’s handling of the controversy threatens to widen the gulf that already exists between white and black officers.

The five officers who attacked Miller all were white. All six men worked in the same precinct, on the same shift. They saw each other daily at roll call and one of the fired officers said he had worked side-by-side with Miller on cases. On Monday night, however, they did not recognize him.

“All they saw was something black,” said Lt. Luther Hunter, who was in charge of the prostitution sting operation.

Although Police Chief Robert Kirchner says there was no indication of a racial motive in the incident, black police officers contend that what happened to Miller, like the shooting of a black undercover police officer in New York by white colleagues a month ago, exposed the danger black officers face while working undercover--that they may be mistaken by their colleagues as criminals, simply because of their race. It also has brought angry charges from black citizens that the assault on Miller was not out of the ordinary.

“It was not shocking at all that they jerked the man out of the truck with a gun to his head, threw him to the ground, kneed him in the back, gouged him in the eyes and kicked him in the groin,” said Neil Darby, executive secretary of the local NAACP. He said he hears complaints from blacks about such things happening all the time. What’s different in this case, Darby said, is “he just happened to have been an officer.”

But some white officers have expressed concern that their fired colleagues are being offered up as “sacrificial lambs” for political purposes.

Nashville Mayor Philip Bredesen acknowledged tension between the black community and the police department, caused in part by several controversial police shootings in recent years. “This is a potentially very inflammatory tinderbox type of situation,” he said in an interview. “I think we got through this crisis pretty well, with reasonable positions being taken on all sides, certainly not the kind of rhetoric you could expect under the circumstances.”

While he agreed with Kirchner that the white police officers were not racially motivated, he added: “It would certainly have happened differently if I had been the one to be pulled over in a nice part of town in my Jeep Cherokee.”

Not far from the minds of everyone, it seems, is the rioting that erupted in Los Angeles and other cities earlier this year. Both Kirchner and Bredesen apologized Thursday to Miller, and Kirchner met with black ministers and National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People officials in a previously scheduled session to discuss ways to improve relations.

Police officials are quick to point out that this incident lasted no more than 40 seconds from start to finish, and that other undercover officers stepped in to stop it. “This was not a sustained beating type situation,” Kirchner said.

Kirchner Friday said he moved with unusual speed to fire two of the officers, David Geary and Jeffrey Blewett, because they clearly had used unnecessary force after Miller had been placed on the ground and was being handcuffed. Both men deny using excessive force and said they would appeal the firings. Tensions in the city are so high, they said, that they plan to leave town for a while.

About a dozen white police officers engaged in heated arguments with blacks outside the chief’s office Friday morning while disciplinary hearings were going on for the two officers. The officers had come to show support for the white officers.

“We’re here to say we have no problem with black equality,” said one of the officers, Eric Fitzgerald. “I agree that black people have been beaten and abused in the past. But that was before my time. I was not a part of that. The department is changing and we want to help make the changes.”

Racial polarization on the force has become more evident in recent years as blacks have left the Fraternal Order of Police in large numbers, with most joining a separate nearly all-black patrolman’s association.

Kirchner acknowledged that this week’s events likely would increase the polarization, although he said he hopes that sensitivity training the department is about to begin will help solve problems on the force, which is 11% black. Nashville’s population is 23% black.

The behavior of the other three officers involved in the incident is still being investigated. Kirchner said it was less clear whether their behavior was improper, although he said the decision of officer Jeb Johnston to point his gun at Miller’s head was questionable.

“This department is not going to tolerate (brutality) even the least bit,” Kirchner said in an interview. “If an officer’s wrong, that officer’s gone.”

The seemingly routine traffic stop escalated when Miller, not wanting to blow his cover in front of the prostitutes he was trying to arrest, kept driving after patrolman Jeb Johnston turned on his siren. Miller drove an additional three to five blocks, at speeds of 25-35 miles per hour, before pulling over. By then Johnston already had called for backup.

“I wanted to make sure that I didn’t do anything to spook him,” Miller said. “That’s why I put both hands on the steering wheel and kept them there” while waiting for Johnston to approach the vehicle. He said he expected his fellow officer to recognize him. In the swirl of events that followed when Johnston reached the truck, Miller said he did not have time to identify himself.

The district attorney is investigating whether to file criminal charges and the FBI has been trying to determine if the black officer’s civil rights were violated.

After the firings were announced Friday, Miller said, “I’m two-fifths satisfied.” He and his supporters have called for the dismissal of all five officers.

“I felt like I was a piece of meat thrown to a pack of dogs,” he said.