Officers Hope Their Ordeal Is Over

For three years, the officers of the Foothill Police Division have lingered in a purgatory, in which nearly every mention of the Rodney G. King controversy pointed back to their doorstep in the east San Fernando Valley, where their colleagues subdued King with batons.

No matter the changes they made--all the community-based policing efforts in the face of taunts and barbs from the community they serve, all the promises to do better--the taint of the King scandal has been inescapable.

But if the King case has been like a black cloud hanging low over the time-worn police station on Osborne Street, than perhaps the jury verdict Wednesday was the first glimmer of sunlight.

Perhaps now, some Foothill officers said Wednesday with evident relief, the King case and their links to it can soon be forgotten.

“March 3, 1991, is finally behind us,” Patrol Capt. Bob Gale said. “We won’t have to live it day in and day out.”

For the past three years and three months, Gale said, it has been almost impossible for the 241 sworn officers and 320 civilians of Foothill Division to do their jobs without being reminded of the incident in which several of their colleagues subdued King after a high-speed chase by raining baton blows upon him.

The station’s officers have been stung so many times in the past by questions about the incident that they are bitter, and skittish. Few would discuss it at all Wednesday.

“It’s great. My view is (King) doesn’t deserve anything,” said Officer Jeff Hart, as he maneuvered his patrol car out of the station. “Those police officers did what they had to do to go home safe that night, and the citizens and the media destroyed this department for it. And (King) got his $3.8 million from the city.”

Since the King beating, Hart said, “We’ve caught flak on a daily basis.”

“We were the finest Police Department in the world, and now it seems like we’re second-best.”

Defendant Timothy Wind, fired from Foothill after the beating, was less optimistic when asked Wednesday if he thought the verdicts marked the end of his ordeal.

“It’s the King case. It’s never over with,” he said. “It’s made a wreck of our lives, a wreck of the city and of our profession.”

Since the King beating, the station hard by the barrios and housing projects of the northeast valley has seen 70% of its officers and leaders transferred to make way for newcomers, including many more women and minority officers. New policies have been instituted, new leaders appointed.

Popular Deputy Chief Mark A. Kroeker was dispatched northward to command all San Fernando Valley police divisions immediately after the King incident, to mend fences with an embittered minority community while holding together the police rank and file.

Kroeker’s reforms slowly made Foothill a model of the new community-based policing ethic, so much so that he was recently sent to South-Central Los Angeles to expand on the work.

But despite all the changes in personnel and policies, Kroeker recalled Wednesday night, the ghosts of the King incident made it hard to concentrate on almost anything else.

“I cannot remember in my 30 years (on the force) working harder, putting in longer hours, and just thinking, ‘We need to get past this,’ thinking, ‘Man, how many hurdles are on the track?’ ” Kroeker said.

Foothill officers said that every time someone was ticketed by police or arrested, “the incident” was thrown in their faces.

Like Kroeker, Gale said a lot of good has come from the King incident, including a heightened awareness of the suspicions with which many in the community viewed police.

Whether the case actually has ended, Kroeker suggested the Wednesday jury verdict was at least an important symbolic milestone--the end of the public airing of the actions of the police on that fateful night three summers ago. “I don’t think anyone is gloating about this,” Kroeker said. “I think they are saying this has been the last train station in this whole ugly journey. So much rancor, so much bitterness.”

“It has been a preoccupation that has kept us in a sea of negativity when we desperately need to focus on the future,” Kroeker said. “Now maybe we can move on, hold our head up and create a pretty good future here.”