HUNTINGTON BEACH: A THIRD UGLY FOURTH : Huntington Officers May Face Charges in ’94 Arrests : Probe: FBI report on alleged rights abuses in last July’s disturbance goes to Justice Department. Police chief has defended actions.

As this city cleaned up Wednesday after a deadly Fourth of July celebration, federal authorities were reviewing a FBI report to decide whether they will file civil-rights charges against some city police officers who allegedly used excessive force to quell last year’s Independence Day disturbance, officials said.

John Hoos, an FBI spokesman in Los Angeles, confirmed that the bureau recently submitted a report on alleged misconduct involving Huntington Beach police officers to the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles and the Department of Justice in Washington.

Myron Marlin, a Department of Justice spokesman, said federal lawyers were reviewing the matter but declined to elaborate.

The FBI investigation, which was spearheaded by Donald Kelly, supervising agent for civil rights in the bureau’s Santa Ana office, began last September following complaints about police conduct in the arrests of 150 people during an unruly Fourth of July celebration.

Revelers were detained on a variety of offenses, including public drunkenness, resisting arrest and failure to disperse. Police declined to pursue charges against many of them, although an exact number of how many people were actually prosecuted could not be obtained Wednesday.

Allison Jill Gonsowski, who was a 17-year-old Edison High School student when she claimed that she suffered a broken jaw and five loose teeth in an unprovoked attack by a baton-wielding police officer, said Wednesday that she was interviewed by an FBI agent several weeks after the incident.

Gonsowski said the agent showed her photographs of each officer who was on duty that night and asked her to identify the one who allegedly assaulted her. She said she was not able to “because it happened in a split second. But I want the FBI to do something about this so the police will have to be restrained in how they approach innocent citizens.”

She and nine others involved in last year’s trouble filed claims with the city. All but one sought damages for alleged police brutality. The city rejected the brutality claims.

Five people whose claims were rejected by the city have since filed state and federal lawsuits alleging civil-rights violations. Among them is Jim King, a 20-year-old Midway City man who alleged in his lawsuit that a baton-wielding police officer clubbed him on the left side of the face, opening a gash that required 15 stitches.

Huntington Beach Police Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg was not available for comment, but Lt. Dan Johnson said Wednesday the department had conducted internal investigations in eight complaints of police brutality arising from last year’s incident.

Johnson said he was prohibited by law from divulging the outcome of the department’s investigations.

By all accounts, last year’s was the rowdiest Fourth celebration in the city’s history.

Officers swept through downtown in riot gear and used a water truck and high-pressure water hoses to disperse the crowds. Many people who came out to celebrate the event complained that officers were overzealous in handling the crowds and that law enforcement officers triggered the melee.

Lowenberg has said that officers were simply trying to control revelers burning furniture in the streets and throwing firecrackers, bottles and rocks at officers and cars.

Michael W. Thayer, a 21-year-old Huntington Beach resident whose video camera was seized by police last year, said Wednesday he recently received a letter from the department stating that an internal affairs investigation into allegations of police misconduct had been completed, but the department declined to give any details of the findings.

Thayer said he deliberately stayed away from this year’s festivities.

“Last year, the police took it to an extreme, they went over the edge,” Thayer said. “This year, I didn’t want to risk it.”