Youth in Video Beating Sues for $10 Million : Courts: Felipe Soltero, 17, of Compton files a federal civil rights lawsuit. The officer’s attorney says his client was attacked and had to use force.

A teen-ager who was beaten by a Compton police officer filed a $10-million federal civil rights suit Wednesday, while the policeman’s attorney countered that the officer had to use force because the youth had attacked him first.

The exchange of charges, at a pair of news conferences, marked the latest round in the controversy that erupted after a videotape showing part of the July 29 confrontation was aired on television.

The tape, shot by a neighbor who witnessed the confrontation from inside his nearby trailer, depicted 17-year-old Felipe Soltero speaking with Officer Michael Jackson before Jackson smacked him with his police baton, jumped on his back, handcuffed him and then dragged him to the squad car by his handcuff chains.

The youth’s lawyer later said Soltero had become angry after a social worker from the Department of Children’s Services showed up at his home to investigate a complaint of child neglect, and to round up Soltero’s siblings. When the youth told the social worker to go away, she called the police, the lawyer said. When the teen-ager confronted Jackson as well, he said, the officer beat and arrested him.

But Wednesday, lawyer George Franscell, who is representing the police officer and Compton, said the videotape did not tell the whole story.

As proof, Franscell produced a tape of a 911 call from another neighbor of Soltero’s family. In that tape, James Murillo reports that “there’s an officer out there fighting with somebody . . . and the sister walked up to him and hit him too.”

The lawyer said Murillo later explained to an investigator that “the police officer was overcome and could not control (the youth).”

Franscell also held up the uniform he said Jackson was wearing at the time of the encounter, which had a ripped breast pocket and a tear in the knee that he said occurred in the scuffle. He said the dirt on the uniform showed that the officer had been on the ground during the incident.

“There was a fight and the officer was on the ground and the officer was losing the fight,” Franscell said. “The officer had to use these types of force.”

Additionally, the lawyer presented a man he identified as a videotape expert, who questioned the validity of the tape, which was initially aired by KNBC-TV. Norman Perle--who appeared on another videotape being interviewed by Compton police--said the beginning of the amateur video may have been erased, and that some audio alterations may have been made.

He also said, contrary to claims made by the youth, that the tape showed no blows to Soltero’s head, and that it appeared Soltero tried at one point to fight back by aiming a “karate kick” at Jackson.

Perle, whose operation--National Audio/Video Forensic Laboratory--is run out of an office in his Northridge home, has testified in several high-profile cases. His credentials, however, have been repeatedly attacked in court.

For example, when Perle testified in the defense of Damian Monroe Williams, convicted in the beating Reginald O. Denny during the riots, it was revealed on cross-examination that Perle had made false claims on his resume and had lied about his academic credentials. Franscell--who is himself well-known for his work defending police officers against charges of misconduct--said he was presenting Perle’s analysis because “I was enraged by what I saw on Channel 4 and how distorted it was.”

The youth’s lawyer, Humberto Guizar, said the authenticity of the videotape will be proven when the case goes to trial.

Soltero’s suit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court, alleges that “in a scene reminiscent of the events now referred to as the ‘Rodney King beating,’ ” Soltero was “brutally attacked and terrorized “ by Jackson.

The officer, the suit says, beat the teen-ager “repeatedly . . . about his head and body with a police baton” and stomped on him with his knee after Soltero “refused to permit” a social worker to take his siblings into custody.

Meanwhile, Compton city officials continued to cope with the fallout from the incident, which--because it was between a black officer and a Latino immigrant--struck a nerve in the racially mixed community. Although the city’s power structure is dominated by African Americans, the Latino population has increased to about 51% of the city’s residents, officials say.

Mayor Omar Bradley, who greeted the press with a group of black city officials and Latino community leaders at his side, said the city attorney had been forced to cancel a town hall meeting that had been scheduled on the topic this week because officials had “received information that there could be violence.”

Bradley said he hoped to set a date for the discussions today, and the city’s lone Latino elected official, school board trustee Gorgonio Sanchez, said he will help put together a Latino affairs commission.

Times staff writer Shawn Hubler and community correspondent Emily Adams contributed to this report.