THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Now Jurors Get to Discover Real Fuhrman

Finally, after weeks of media anticipation, the most hyped event of the O.J. Simpson trial began Thursday: Detective Mark Fuhrman took the witness stand.

Nobody in this trial, except O.J. himself, has gotten such bad press or had his character and behavior so relentlessly subjected to leaks and reportorial examination as the sandy-haired homicide investigator. It was Fuhrman who said he found a bloody glove at the defendant’s mansion the morning after the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman.

With the exception of the defendant, Fuhrman has been the trial’s greatest example of spin, the process of shaping public opinion. Whatever Fuhrman is really like, his character has been spun into the national consciousness as an evidence-planting, racist, sexist man who symbolizes what many people think is the Los Angeles Police Department at its worst.

Attacks on Fuhrman’s character have continued without respite since “leading members of Simpson’s defense team” were quoted in the New Yorker last August as saying that rather than finding the glove, Fuhrman planted it in an effort to frame Simpson.

The definition of Mark Fuhrman as a

rogue cop has become part of the language of journalism, repeated in innumerable stories, picked up by commentators, a dominant portion of the mass of words and pictures that make up the media record of the Simpson case.

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Fuhrman sat down in the witness chair late in the morning, shortly after homicide Detective Tom Lange was set free after eight days of questioning by prosecutors and defense attorneys. The two cops were a contrast; Lange in plain utilitarian suit, Fuhrman in a perfectly cut conservative model. “He looks like Orel Hershiser,” said one of the reporters watching on the pressroom television set. And, indeed, Fuhrman did resemble the Dodgers’ clean-cut, earnest star pitcher.

Like the overwhelming number of reporters, I have never met Fuhrman.

But a couple of weeks ago, I talked to a cop who had known Fuhrman for several years and had been in contact with him recently. He acknowledged that Fuhrman’s record is replete with incidents that raise questions about him.

But he said he thought Fuhrman had matured in recent years and had become an excellent detective.

Fuhrman’s past seems to bear out that mixed record assessment.

For example, sources told The Times last July that Fuhrman was being investigated for alleged affiliation with an informal group of officers at the West Los Angeles police station known as MAW, short for Men Against Women. But another investigation of the West L.A. affair last year didn’t mention Fuhrman as a participant. And he got a vote of confidence from his bosses.

It’s been well-reported that Fuhrman, in unsuccessfully seeking a stress disability pension in 1981, was quoted as using racial epithets and expressing hostility toward minorities in conversations with doctors examining him for the city.

And his name has cropped up in the files of Police Watch, a grass-roots organization that receives people’s complaints about police brutality.

Outreach coordinator Michael Salcido said he found five in Police Watch’s files, including complaints in recent years of brutality, harassment and unethical behavior toward African Americans. Another came from a man identifying himself as a rabbi for Jews for Jesus who said Fuhrman had prevented him from distributing literature in Westwood.

But the Police Watch information isn’t conclusive. Salcido said Police Watch merely refers complaints to lawyers without investigating them and doesn’t know the outcome of any of the accusations against Fuhrman.

A different picture of Fuhrman emerged last October in a report by CNN correspondent Art Harris, who interviewed two African American women crime victims whose cases were handled by the detective.

Connie Law met Fuhrman when he investigated the still-unsolved murder of her uncle.

“As far as O.J. Simpson goes, I think he’s innocent,” Law told the reporter then. “As far as Mark Fuhrman goes, I think he’s a great detective. He was great with us. . . . He didn’t show any signs of racism toward me and my family.”

Fuhrman also investigated the case of Patricia Foy, who was attacked by a purse snatcher and fought back. Correspondent Harris asked Foy what Fuhrman said when she told him she had chased the purse snatcher.

“He told me I was incredibly brave but I was also incredibly foolish and that I should not do that again because I could end up dead,” she said. “He’s not a racist. They’re just trying to hang something on him so they can cover up for the defense. That’s all they’re doing.”

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On Thursday, the hype receded in importance as the detective met the jury.

For the next few days, the jurors will examine him, ponder his answers, the tone of his voice, his facial expressions.

It doesn’t matter what’s printed now, or broadcast on television and radio. The sequestered Simpson jurors are walled off from the news.

After the media and attorneys have spent months characterizing him, it is now up to the jurors to discover the real Mark Fuhrman and whether his views on race--whatever they are--have any relevance to the case and its evidence.

Times researcher Cecilia Rasmussen contributed to this column.