Beating on Videotape Is Investigated : Violence: The FBI and the D.A.’s office are checking into the incident. Officer who is seen striking a 17-year-old has been placed on administrative leave.

The FBI and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office launched separate investigations Wednesday of possible civil rights violations and police brutality arising from the videotaped beating of a 17-year-old youth by a Compton police officer.

The videotape, shot secretly by a neighbor, shows Officer Michael Jackson lunging at Felipe Soltero and knocking him to the ground with a sudden blow from the butt of his baton to the youth’s cheek.

Bystanders can be heard screaming in the background. The 180-pound officer is then seen rearing back and striking Soltero at least four more times before he drops his knee into the back of the youth’s neck to hold him down while placing him in handcuffs. Finally, the tape shows Jackson yanking Soltero to his feet, using the baton stuck under the youth’s arm as a hoist.

In a report Jackson wrote about the Friday incident, however, he said he hit Soltero only in the torso and legs and only after Soltero hit him first.

Wednesday, Soltero was arraigned in Juvenile Court in Compton on a charge of interfering with a law enforcement officer and released pending a hearing.

He was examined by a doctor at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center before being jailed Friday at Los Padrinos Juvenile Detention Center in Downey over the weekend but has not seen a doctor since, police said.

While he was being held at Los Padrinos, jail officials discovered that Soltero had an outstanding warrant for fighting in public in Lynwood several years ago.

“He has a big bump on his forehead and headaches and a lot of psychological trauma” from the “astonishingly brutal” attack, said Soltero’s attorney, Humberto Guizar.

Guizar said he plans to file a federal lawsuit against Jackson and the city of Compton to recover damages for Soltero’s injuries and the violation of the youth’s civil rights.

Compton police said they began investigating the incident on Monday, after Soltero had complained over the weekend to a children’s social worker. Jackson was off over the weekend and was placed on paid administrative leave by the department Wednesday, after the broadcast of the videotape on KNBC-TV Channel 4, which paid Soltero’s godmother $125 for the rights to the tape.

Compton Police Chief Hourie Taylor said Jackson, 33, has had “a minimal disciplinary record” during his six years on the force. He was suspended for one day in 1991 for an off-duty incident of conduct unbecoming an officer but has no other violations in his personnel record, police said. Police would not reveal further details about the violation.

Jackson has received four written commendations during his career. In March, 1991, he was commended for showing restraint in use of force during an arrest.

Guizar attributed the brutality of the beating to the fact that his client is “Hispanic and Hispanic in appearance” and to what he said was a statewide climate of racism against Latinos and immigrants.

Guizar also invoked the memory of the beating of motorist Rodney G. King by Los Angeles police. King was beaten after a car chase in 1991. On Wednesday, the City Council authorized payment of the $3.8-million civil judgment he won in the case. “Rodney King was supposed to teach these officers a lesson,” Guizar said. “I guess some people never learn.”

Others rejected the idea that the incident was racially motivated. Jackson is black.

Compton Mayor Omar Bradley acknowledged that there are tensions between the area’s African Americans and Latinos. But, he said, the beating was not related to those tensions. “Any suggestion this was racial is nefarious,” he said.

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Allen Field, the deputy district attorney who heads the office’s Special Investigations Division, said his office has begun checking the circumstances of the incident. He said he has seen nothing “that makes me believe this was racial in nature.”

FBI spokesman John Hoos said the results of his agency’s preliminary investigation will be forwarded to the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division in Washington and to the U.S. attorney’s office here “for a prosecutable opinion.”

A source familiar with the case said Beth Rodriguez, a county children’s social worker, went to the trailer in the 1900 block of West 156th Street in Compton on Friday after an abuse complaint against Manuel Shigala, 41. Shigala lives there with Soltero’s mother, Enriqueta de la Cruz, and at least three children.

Shigala was arrested Saturday in connection with the complaint, but charges were not pursued and he was released Wednesday, sheriff’s officials said.

After the beating incident, five children ages 22 months to 14 years were taken into protective custody.

When Rodriguez arrived at the mobile home on Friday, Soltero was uncooperative, according to Jackson’s report, and tried to keep her from questioning at least three other children who lived there. Witnesses and police said she called for assistance, fearing for her life because he threatened her.

Jackson, who was sent to the scene, wrote in his report that after he arrived he told Soltero to calm down or face arrest and that the youth, who is 5 feet, 3 inches tall and weighs 130 pounds, began swearing and threatening to kill him and Rodriguez. A fight began when Jackson tried to arrest the youth, and it was at that point that he removed his baton and hit Soltero twice in the torso and twice in the legs, the report said.

Once Soltero was down, the report continued, Jackson struck him twice more in the legs, after which the youth stopped resisting and was placed in the police car.

One witness said he saw Soltero hit Jackson when he tried to put the youth in handcuffs. “Felipe struck the cop, then it was all over,” said Jim Murillo, 31, who lives next door.

But others said Soltero only defended himself. “He didn’t want to get arrested . . . and that’s when the police officer jumped on him and started fighting,” a 14-year-old neighbor said.

Although it is unclear at what point the video camera was turned on, the tape shows Soltero and his 14-year-old sister standing and talking to Jackson when Jackson suddenly shoves past the girl and strikes Soltero in the face. The tape then shows him striking Soltero several times after Soltero appears to have given up resistance.

“When he was hitting him with the baton I thought he was going to kill him,” said the young neighbor, who witnessed the beating.

The Compton Police Department, like many urban departments, has faced other brutality allegations in recent years.

Three years ago, two unarmed brothers were shot to death in their driveway by a Compton police officer answering a domestic dispute call.

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Pouvi Tualaulelei, 34, and his brother, Italia, 22, together were shot 19 times by Officer Alfred Skiles Jr., who contended that he acted in self-defense after the men attacked him Feb. 12, 1991. A jury deadlocked 9-3 in favor of acquitting Skiles of voluntary manslaughter.

A judge later blocked an attempt by prosecutors to have Skiles retried, but the victims’ families eventually won a $2.1-million settlement from the city, which agreed to the payout one day before a civil trial was scheduled.

In 1992, a Los Angeles jury awarded $2.3 million to the family of a 16-year-old boy who was shot three times--including once in the back of the head--by Compton police after a car chase 11 years before.

The district attorney’s office later concluded that the officers had acted in self-defense, but the civil jury disagreed.

Community correspondents Emily Adams and Psyche Pascual, and Times staff writers Ed Boyer and Bob Pool contributed to this story.