King Videotape Shocked Him, Gates Testifies

Former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, testifying Thursday in Rodney G. King’s lawsuit against him and other current and former officers, recalled his shock when he first saw the videotape of King’s beating.

“I realized clearly this was an incident that could be misinterpreted by the public, that this would be a great media event and the department would be in crisis, and these officers would be part of that crisis,” Gates said of the incident that toppled him from power.

Gates, wearing a blue pin-striped suit, seemed to deflect efforts by King’s attorney, Milton Grimes, to make him appear personally liable for the beating.

“You let excessive force get out of hand, didn’t you?” Grimes asked at one point.

“Absolutely not,’ Gates said. “I would not tolerate excessive force by any officer.”

Asked if the department during his tenure had “elements of racism,” Gates said that although there were officers with racist leanings, he did not feel the department was racist as a whole.

“I would be foolish to say there was not racism in the department,” he said. “There’s racism in our country, and in the Los Angeles Police Department. I would say it’s minimal.”

Gates’ testimony in the civil trial was his first about the March 3, 1991, beating. The 10-member jury hearing the case will determine whether Gates and 10 other current and former officers should pay King punitive damages. The same panel awarded King $3.8 million from the city during the first phase of the trial.

The number of defendants in the lawsuit was reduced by four when Grimes, without explanation, asked U.S. District Judge John G. Davies to remove a police captain and three bystander officers from any potential liability.

Gates took the stand Thursday after attorneys argued for more than a day over which parts of the Christopher Commission report on racism, sexism and use of excessive force in the Police Department should be admitted as evidence. The commission, appointed after King’s beating, was headed by attorney Warren Christopher, now U.S. secretary of state.

Although Davies ruled that some parts of the report could be used, very little of its contents wound up in evidence before Gates concluded his testimony Thursday.

On the stand, Gates reiterated his view that the beating was an aberration, and softened his criticism of the officers involved by saying that they should not have been limited to using a baton to subdue King.

“I opposed the use of the baton,” he said. “In this country that is so technically advanced, it’s amazing we couldn’t provide to an officer anything other than a Stone Age weapon--a club.”

Even though he held the title of police chief, Gates said he was accountable to the Police Commission, which had the final word on departmental policy. He also said he relied on commanders under him, some of whom were not doing their jobs.

Under questioning from Grimes, the former chief refused to say that bystander officers were guilty of misconduct for not reporting the beating. And he said it might have been politically correct to fire or chastise the officers involved in the beating, but he felt they deserved due process of the law.

Known for his sarcasm, Gates seemed subdued on the witness stand. He backed away from a series of inflammatory comments that critics had pointed to as examples of his racist beliefs.

When reminded that he had said blacks react differently to chokeholds than “normal people,” Gates responded that he was not being racist. But he acknowledged, “That was probably an inelegant choice of words.” And Gates said he probably was guilty of “a bit of hyperbole” when he said that casual drug users ought to be shot.

Grimes asked Gates about the Jan. 3, 1979, police shooting of Eulia Love, a 39-year-old African American woman who threw a knife at officers and was shot eight times. The shooting, which involved a dispute over an unpaid gas bill, was justified under departmental policy, Gates said, but he added that he felt it could have been handled better.

After testifying, Gates offered other comments about the most famous police beating victim in the city’s history.

“Obviously, he’s not a model citizen,” Gates said of King, who was evading police at the time of his arrest and has had several run-ins with the law. “He’s demonstrated that over and over again.”

Gates described King as an ex-convict and questioned the jury’s decision to award him the damages from the city.

“This has been a terrible tragedy for everyone, the city, the Police Department.” he said, adding that he even has the utmost sympathy for the officers whose involvement in the beating eventually cost him is job.

Asked if he had any sympathy for King, Gates snapped: “I don’t think about Rodney King.”

Of the police officers at the scene of the beating, Laurence M. Powell and Stacey C. Koon were convicted of violating King’s civil rights in a federal trial last year and are serving 30-month prison terms. They and Timothy E. Wind and Theodore J. Briseno, who were acquitted in that trial, are among the defendants in King’s suit.

Dropped as defendants Thursday were Capt. John Mutz, supervisor of the Police Department’s Foothill Division at the time of the beating, and Officers Timothy Blake, Susan Clemmer and Danny Shry.