Tapes Inflict Deep Chill on Heart and Soul of L.A.

Cheryle Bacot sat alone in her small office at the African American Unity Center in South-Central Los Angeles on Tuesday, listening to the hate-filled words of Detective Mark Fuhrman.

Words that chilled her soul, words depriving her of humanity, moved across the screen of her black-and-white television set. How could this happen here, she wondered, in a country where her dad served in World War II, surviving Pearl Harbor? What was the use of the struggles she had witnessed, the effort to desegregate the segregated schools she had attended?

Many men, women and children heard the tapes and watched the transcripts shown on TV Monday morning, most of them undoubtedly feeling the same emotions.

But Bacot, who is African American, was a special viewer. She and people such as her are the heart and soul of working-class African American and Latino South-Central. She’s a bulwark of LAPD support. She’s the kind of person who is needed to make L.A. work.

When you multiply Bacot by thousands, you understand the damage that Mark Fuhrman has inflicted on Los Angeles.

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Bacot is a complicated mixture of experiences and views. Talking to the 47-year-old woman is a reminder of the difficulty of trying to reduce public opinion to polls and charts.

Like many in South-Central, she is highly skeptical of the case against O.J. Simpson. “My heart goes out to the Goldman family and the Brown family, but in my heart, I don’t believe that O.J. Simpson murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman,” Bacot said. “If he is guilty, I don’t want him acquitted because he is a black man. But there are too many unanswered questions.”

She thinks the Police Department is afflicted with racism. A discrimination lawsuit filed by black LAPD officers, she said, “speaks for itself.”

But as a community organizer for an anti-gang program, Bacot has gotten to know many L.A. cops and thinks highly of them. She works closely with the department and was, in fact, about to leave for a 1 p.m. meeting with some officers on community policing.

All these complexities coalesced as Bacot watched her television. Before long, she was too upset to continue watching.

“I can’t believe this is 1995 in America, entering into the 21st Century,” she said. “It is a very frightening experience, and very emotional. To me, we’re back 50 years.”

It hurt, she said, to hear the tapes. “It hurt very, very badly.”

Bacot was able to hear at least a portion of the Fuhrman tapes because of a gutsy ruling by Judge Lance A. Ito.

The judge has labored hard to keep this explosive trial within the walls of his courtroom. He tried to treat the case as if it were merely the People vs. O.J. Simpson, a murder trial as opposed to a cause celebre .

He sought to control the flow of news he felt was erroneous and possibly inflammatory. He decried leaks and courtroom speechmaking by lawyers on both sides. He threatened to yank the plug on the live television coverage.

But the Fuhrman tapes changed all that.

The rantings of the now-retired officer have revived the bitterness and hostility of the 1992 riots and the police beating that preceded it. In a sense, Mark Fuhrman’s name has become as synonymous with racism in the ranks as that of Rodney G. King.

Fuhrman’s words provided context to the assault on King. They raised questions that could only be answered by the city, not the court.

Tuesday, Judge Ito took note of these broad concerns and, over the objections of the prosecution, permitted Simpson’s lawyers to play the tapes.

“I don’t want this court to ever be in a position where there is any indication that [the court] would participate in suppressing information that is of vital public interest,” Ito said.

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The prosecution was not alone in being angered by the decision. Ron Goldman’s father, Fred Goldman, told reporters there is “no reason it [the tapes] had to go out on the public airwaves.”

Ito, he said, “gave in” to the defense. Because of that, Goldman said, “the world listened to the tapes. . . . It was not good for the families, whites, blacks or race relations of any kind.”

His feelings are understandable, but Goldman’s concerns are not those of L.A. as a whole.

The city’s residents will have to live here--and with the LAPD--long after Simpson’s fate is settled.

It will take more than the trial to answer the questions raised by the Fuhrman tapes. Only the Police Commission, or maybe a prestigious citizens group like the Christopher Commission, can root out the answers.

How many other Mark Fuhrmans are hidden away in the department’s dark recesses? We know such cops were members of the Men Against Women Club in the West L.A. station. Do they have other such groups? Do they chat away in cyberspace with right-wing buddies across the country? Are they one of the reasons that it has been so hard for the department to adopt the Christopher Commission reforms?

There are a lot of good Angelenos out there--Cheryle Bacot and many more--who want the answers.