Briseno Alters Testimony : Lawsuit: Officer now believes that Rodney King was struck on an arm instead of the head. New account is based on an enhanced videotape.

Theodore J. Briseno, the suspended Los Angeles police officer whose testimony helped convict two fellow officers of beating Rodney G. King, changed his story on the witness stand Monday, saying he now believes that baton blows directed at King missed his head.

Briseno said he altered his testimony after viewing an enhanced videotape of the March 3, 1991, beating. The tape was prepared by prosecutors for last year’s federal trial in which two officers, Laurence M. Powell and Stacey C. Koon, were convicted of violating King’s civil rights.

Briseno did not take the stand in the federal trial, but a videotape of his testimony during an earlier state trial was considered crucial to the civil rights case.

During his testimony Monday, Briseno said he now believes that many of the baton blows struck King in the arm, rather than above the shoulder, as he originally believed. Blows to the head are forbidden by the Police Department because they can be fatal.

Attorney Michael Stone, who represents Powell, one of the officers being sued by King, asked Briseno to explain the change in his testimony.

“In looking at the enhancement, does it appear you were wrong?” Stone asked.

“Yes,” Briseno said. “The video clearly shows where the blows landed.”

“And where was that?”

“The arms,” Briseno replied. “The right arm.”

Briseno said he first saw the enhanced video at a lawyer’s office during the federal civil rights trial last spring.

John Burris, one of King’s attorneys, challenged Briseno’s memory, asking why he stuck with his original story during a police administrative hearing in September, even though he already had seen the enhanced tape.

“Are you trying to tell us your perceptions may have been changed, but you gave testimony contrary to those perceptions?” Burris asked.

“That is correct,” Briseno said, adding that he has not finished his testimony before the continuing Board of Rights hearing.

The board hearing is being conducted under oath by an administrative panel to determine if Briseno should keep his job. Briseno, 40, was acquitted of criminal charges of assault and civil rights violations in the state and federal trials.

Outside the court Monday, Burris charged that Briseno changed his testimony because he is being sued and because he is trying to make amends to Powell and Koon.

“He has a self-motive to minimize Mr. King’s damages,” Burris said. “And Mr. Briseno has been held in disfavor with other officers. This was a way to bridge that gap.”

King’s attorneys have asked for $9.5 million to settle the lawsuit that names the city and 15 present and former officers, including Briseno, Powell, Koon and Timothy E. Wind, who was acquitted in the state and federal trials. The city has conceded liability in the case, offering to settle for $1.25 million.

The civil trial is being held in two phases, the first to determine how much King will be compensated for his injuries and the second to determine whether punitive damages will be levied against those named in the suit.

The acquittal of the four accused officers in the 1992 state trial sparked three days of rioting. As a result of their later civil rights convictions, Powell and Koon are serving 30-month sentences in federal prison.

In other testimony Monday, King’s mother, Odessa King, testified that she saw her son in a hospital after the beating and asked what had happened.

“He said . . . ‘Those white boys really beat me, Ma,’ ” she recalled. “I told Rodney, ‘Look, just leave race out of this. I’m getting you out of here.’ ”

King’s attorneys claim that their client initially refused to say the beating was racially motivated because his mother advised him not to. Last week, King testified that the police who beat him used racial epithets.

John Kelley, one of King’s bodyguards, testified that King is afraid to venture out in public and that he suffers from flashbacks and nightmares because of the beating.