THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Fuhrman Named in ’78 Request for Probe of LAPD

As long ago as 1978, a civil rights lawyer asked state and federal prosecutors to investigate allegations that Los Angeles police officers, including Mark Fuhrman, had brutalized suspects in the aftermath of a Boyle Heights police shooting, according to documents obtained by The Times under the California Public Records Act.

On Dec. 5, 1978, East Los Angeles attorney Antonio H. Rodriguez asked then-U.S. Atty. Andrea S. Ordin to probe beatings that he said occurred in the wake of a Nov. 18, 1978, shooting--an incident that Fuhrman appears to have alluded to in his interviews with aspiring screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny. Rodriguez also wrote to then-Los Angeles Dist. Atty. John K. Van de Kamp on Dec. 6, 1978, asking him to investigate too.

On the tapes with McKinny, Fuhrman said he and other officers went on a bloody beating rampage and “basically tortured” suspects after two police officers were shot at the Pico Gardens Housing Project. Fuhrman told McKinny that he lied to Internal Affairs investigators about the incident. On Aug. 18, LAPD Chief Willie L. Williams acknowledged that there had been an internal investigation of the incident and confirmed that Fuhrman had been one of the officers whose conduct was reviewed.

Two officers, Dean Brinker and Alf R. Andersen, were shot after they pursued two Latino men who had thrown beer bottles at their squad car just after midnight.

Rodriguez’s letter to Ordin, obtained by The Times Tuesday, describes “a confused mass of beatings and unjustified false arrests” on Nov. 18 and Nov. 20, 1978, after the shootings.

“Individuals were beaten up by officers, doors were forcefully broken down, homes were entered without permission and against the will of their occupants without any probable cause,” Rodriguez wrote in a highly detailed account that included the names of more than a dozen people who said they were abused by police officers. “Numerous individuals, men, women and children were placed under arrest and taken to the Hollenbeck Division without any reason or probable cause whatsoever,” he wrote.

In particular, Rodriguez wrote that one man, Albert Morales, “already asleep,” was pulled out of his house and pushed down stairs by officers, “while viciously beating him about the head and body with flashlights, batons and fists. . . . As a result of the beating, he needed seven stitches on his right eyelid and several stitches on two places on the back of his head.” Morales was arrested and charged by officers with criminal conspiracy and posted $10,000 bail, but no formal criminal charges were ever lodged against him, according to Rodriguez’s letter.

The letter describes a series of actions by mostly unnamed police officers. However, one officer was identified by his last name in Rodriguez’s description of the events of Nov. 20, 1978.

“Constant harassment and heavy patrolling of the area continued for several days,” Rodriguez wrote, adding that on Nov. 20 several officers arrested two men, Michael Morales and Raul Estrada, for no apparent reason. “While the officers arrested Morales and Estrada, someone had broken a window of the patrol car. Morales and Estrada were forced to sit on the broken glass on the way to the station. As they exited the police car in back of the station, without any reason or provocation on their part, they were assaulted and battered by several officers, including one by the name of Furman (sic). Morales was detained and released next day without charges.”

The ultimate outcome of Rodriguez’s request for an investigation was not clear from the documents obtained Tuesday. The last item contained in the material turned over to The Times by the district attorney’s office is a Feb. 20, 1979, letter from a deputy district attorney to Rodriguez, on Van de Kamp’s behalf, asking for more information. Rodriguez said he called the D.A.’s office after he got that letter and said he had already provided adequate information.

On Tuesday, after being provided with a copy of the letter, Van de Kamp said he had no recollection of the incident, though he said that Rodriguez’s letter clearly raised serious matters.

Ordin, now an attorney in private practice in Los Angeles, said: “I remember an incident with a group of complaints from Pico Gardens Housing Project in the late 1970s. I believe that there was no action filed by the federal government. I don’t have [my old] files immediately available to me. I don’t remember Fuhrman’s name from this incident.”

Rodriguez said he does not remember either county or federal authorities ever conducting any detailed probe. “I was surprised when I heard Chief Williams say on Aug. 18 that the 16 officers who had been investigated were exonerated. That was the first I heard of it.”

A separate probe was conducted by the district attorney’s office of officers Brinker and Andersen firing their guns during the incident. In November, 1979, a report was sent to the Police Commission saying that their use of their weapons was justified.

One of the documents obtained Tuesday contains a notation initialed by then-Deputy Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti apparently asking a member of his staff to check with the LAPD and FBI about Rodriguez’s charges. The same document indicates that Rodriguez’s letter also was to be sent to Garcetti’s then-boss, Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., then the third-ranking official in the office.