100 Supporters, 50 Protesters at Laurence Powell Fund-Raiser

While conservatives attended a fund-raising dinner Thursday evening for former Los Angeles Police Officer Laurence M. Powell, convicted of beating Rodney G. King, civil rights activists protested outside.

The dinner for Powell, who delivered most of the blows to King during the 1991 videotaped incident, drew about 100 supporters, who touted Powell as a good-hearted officer victimized by overzealous federal prosecutors and unfair news media.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who protested along with about 50 others, said Powell was anything but a victim.

“Police brutality is beneath the dignity of the American promise,” Jackson said, labeling Powell “somewhere between mean-spirited and sick.”

Powell was insulated from the protesters as he signed autographs, posed for photographs and told supporters that it was backers like they who helped him endure his 30-month federal prison sentence for violating King’s civil rights.

“I’ve served my time in prison and the government wants to send me back,” Powell said in brief remarks. “I don’t understand why I’ve been sacrificed.”

The fete was organized to help pay Powell’s legal bills, which continue to mount as he fights a challenge of his sentence in the U.S. Supreme Court that could return him to prison later this year.

A handful of politicians, from Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich to Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), served on the organizing committee for the dinner but none of them attended. Instead, videotapes of support from such conservatives as former U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese and talk show host and former Watergate co-conspirator G. Gordon Liddy were played.

While the supporters watched the videotapes, the crowd outside shouted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, racists in blue have got to go!”

Dinner organizer Richard A. Delgaudio, president of the conservative Legal Affairs Council, denounced the protesters as “radicals marching in the streets and hounding Larry.”

The case, which led to the deadly 1992 riots in Los Angeles, is being revived as a cause celebre among some conservatives. In the video, Liddy compared the government’s handling of former LAPD Sgt. Stacey C. Koon and Powell to its actions at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas. Meese called the officers’ jail terms “a travesty of justice.”

“I feel sorry for him and all the other officers under attack,” said Valerie Flaherty, a saleswoman from Sacramento. Like many of the others honoring Powell, Flaherty was attending the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Omni Shoreham Hotel and stopped by the Powell toast out of curiosity.

The event originally had been scheduled for December at the Los Angeles Police Academy but was canceled after city officials objected.

“I don’t think that he’s a hero, but I also don’t think what happened to him was fair,” said Jamie Hogan, a broker from Arlington, Va.