Witnesses Testify That King Was Compliant : Trial: Two civilians who say they saw police repeatedly strike the motorist also contend that the officers on the scene were talking and laughing afterward. Neither observer was called in the first trial.

A woman and man testifying in public for the first time said Friday that they saw police beating and kicking a compliant Rodney G. King. The woman said King screamed out, “Please stop!”

Dorothy Gibson broke down in tears after recalling the violent scene she saw from her apartment patio on March 3, 1991.

“He didn’t do anything,” Gibson said of King. “He was just dodging blows. He was on the ground. It seemed I heard him scream out, ‘Please stop!’ ”

“And what else did you see?” Assistant U.S. Atty. Barry Kowalski asked.

“They were kicking him. I saw them kicking him with their feet on both sides of his body,” she said. “On his feet, his shoulders, any way they could get a lick at him.”

“Can you approximate how many times the officers struck the man with their sticks?” Kowalski said after Gibson moved away from the witness stand to demonstrate how the officers stomped and kicked King. “So many times, I couldn’t tell,” Gibson said.

She also said she saw the officers hogtie King and drag him to the side of the road. Then, she said, she heard the police officers talking and laughing.

Defense lawyers suggested in cross-examination that Gibson was too far away to see anything clearly and that she had embellished her account after watching the videotape of the beating.

But she said she has never seen the tape because she did not want to look at the scene again.

“I saw that when I was standing on my patio, not on videotape,” she said.

Gibson lived in the apartment below that of George Holliday, who shot the videotape that has been broadcast around the world.

Sgt. Stacey C. Koon and officers Laurence M. Powell, Theodore J. Briseno and Timothy E. Wind are on trial for allegedly violating King’s civil rights. The four were found not guilty last year on state charges of excessive force, verdicts that sparked deadly riots.

If convicted on federal charges, the officers face a maximum penalty of $250,000 in fines and 10 years in prison.

Gibson was followed to the stand by Albert Harris, who was on his way home to the same apartment building the night of the beating. He said he parked, got out of his car and saw the beating from about 30 yards away.

“They were striking Mr. King. He screamed and yelled,” Harris said. He also said he never saw King attack the officers. He said he recalled seeing King hogtied and taken away in an ambulance, and said he heard the officers standing around “kind of laughing and talking.”

Harris’ memory also was challenged by the defense on cross-examination.

Both witnesses appeared before a grand jury in the case, but they were not called to testify in the state case.

Earlier in the day, the government clashed with the media over making evidence public.

Prosecutors Kowalski and Steven Clymer had proposed playing an audiotape for jurors through individual headsets and denying access to the press and public. They would not say why.

When reporters protested, Kowalski denied trying to keep the government’s case secret, then relented and gave reporters three transcripts. He declined, however, to say which portions were going to be played for the jury.

At a break, reporters wrote to the judge asking to hear the tape in the courtroom. After the judge asked prosecutors about the situation, Clymer offered to distribute a few extra headsets to reporters. The tape was then played.

The Los Angeles Police Department tape is crucial because it contains a radio message from Powell in which he calls for an ambulance for the beaten motorist and speaks of “numerous head wounds.”

Powell maintains that he never hit King in the head.