Officers’ Detour With Injured King Defended : Trial: A sergeant says the action probably speeded up the paperwork in the booking. But he also admits that it may have delayed medical treatment.

Two Los Angeles police officers who detoured to their station with an injured Rodney G. King in their car may have expedited his booking into a jail hospital ward, a Los Angeles police sergeant testified Thursday in the trial of four officers accused of violating King’s civil rights.

But Sgt. Robert L. Ontiveros conceded under cross-examination that although stopping at the Foothill Division probably speeded up the paperwork in King’s booking, it did not get him to a doctor more quickly and may have delayed medical treatment.

Ontiveros was called by lawyers for the four officers, and he was the first witness they have produced to respond to a potentially damaging allegation raised by prosecutors in the federal trial: that Officers Laurence M. Powell and Timothy E. Wind made an unscheduled, 90-minute stop at the Foothill Division when they were supposed to be transporting King from one hospital to another.

Powell, Wind and the two other defendants, Stacey C. Koon and Theodore J. Briseno, are charged with violating King’s rights on March 3, 1991.

Ira Salzman, Koon’s lawyer, began presenting his case Tuesday and has called a number of witnesses to dispute the prosecution’s argument that the officers should have stopped using their batons on King and instead pinned his arms and legs using a technique known as a “swarm.”

A number of police witnesses, including several Thursday, testified that the swarm would not have been appropriate because officers had not searched King and he could have posed a threat to their safety.

That argument also was at the core of last year’s state trial of the officers, but evidence of the detour by Powell and Wind with King in the back seat never surfaced during that proceeding. Defense lawyers were stunned when Assistant U.S. Atty. Steven D. Clymer raised the issue in his opening statement three weeks ago.

In response, the defense attorneys have argued that Powell and Wind had no way of knowing that King needed medical treatment because a doctor at Pacifica Hospital sent him to Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center for observation, not further treatment.

“These cops did not find themselves in a position to know that he needed medical treatment,” said Paul R. DePasquale, the lawyer for Wind. “These guys are police officers, not doctors.”

A log kept by Powell and Wind did not mention the stop at Foothill, but DePasquale challenged the suggestion the officers deliberately omitted any mention of the stop.

Under questioning by DePasquale, Ontiveros reviewed several reports that Wind prepared and found a number of mistakes. But Wind was a rookie Los Angeles police officer at the time, and Ontiveros said such mistakes are commonly made by young officers.

Asked whether the omission of the detour to the police station was “typical or atypical,” Ontiveros responded: “It reflects a typical way” of completing such a log.

Ontiveros, like most of the police officer witnesses called by the defense, was subjected to aggressive cross-examination, and he conceded several points under questioning from Clymer. Ontiveros admitted that he did not know why Powell and Wind omitted the stop from their log and that he did not know that Powell told “war stories” to fellow officers at the station while King and Wind waited outside in the police car.

Clymer grew increasingly pointed with his questions, and pounced on one comment by Ontiveros. The sergeant testified that he believed it would take 16 to 20 minutes to drive from Pacifica Hospital to the Foothill Division, which is less than two miles away.

Clymer’s eyebrows arched in disbelief. “Is your testimony that it takes 16 to 20 minutes to drive to Foothill Station as truthful as the other testimony that you have given here today?” he asked.

The time is important because prosecutors have suggested that the officers wasted about 90 minutes at the station when they should have been taking King to the hospital jail ward. That estimate would change if the officers and King in fact spent that time en route.

Ontiveros at first defended his estimate, but then amended it under gentle prodding from DePasquale. Ontiveros then said that when he drove the route between the hospital and the station, he usually drove slowly “to look around” for criminal activity.

Clymer was not convinced.

“We learned in the cross-examination of Sgt. Ontiveros that he was dishonest,” Clymer said with the jury outside of the room. “He was willing to say that a 1.3-mile trip takes 20 minutes to help the defendants.”

Ontiveros was followed by Sgt. Richard S. Di Stefano, who repeated testimony that he gave during last year’s state trial.

Di Stefano said he was at the police station when Koon returned from King’s arrest, and he said he overheard Koon tell his superior officer that it had taken “a lot of baton blows to knock the suspect down,” a comment that backs up Koon’s contention that he never tried to misrepresent the force used during the incident.

Koon also said that Powell’s use of his baton had been “weak and ineffective,” said Di Stefano, who added that Powell also had performed poorly with the baton during an earlier demonstration.

Testimony resumes this morning with a key defense witness, Sgt. Charles L. Duke, a supervisor with the Police Department’s special weapons and tactics unit. Duke took the stand late Thursday, but unlike many of the police witnesses in the federal trial, he appeared in civilian clothes.

“I was given a direct order by my department not to” wear a uniform, he said as he left court. Asked why, he answered: “They don’t have to give a reason.”