Police, Critics Clash Over Use of Force

The participants in Sunday’s violent confrontation between police and protesters outside Parker Center clashed again Monday, as both sides accused the other of violence and hair-trigger reactions to provocation.

Although the Los Angeles Police Department declined to make official comment pending a complete review of the incident, some officers defended their use of batons and rubber projectiles against demonstrators who, according to the LAPD, taunted, defied and pelted officers with debris.

But, in a reprise of the complaints during and after this summer’s Democratic National Convention, demonstrators said they were engaged in peaceful protest when they were struck by overly aggressive police bent on breaking up the demonstration.

“I’m not going to say that there weren’t any hotheads in the demonstrators,” said John King, 27, who went to the protest with his wife, Therese Garcia. “But we were not doing anything.”

Allegations such as those are not the only ones likely to be reviewed after Sunday’s clash. There appeared to be confusion within the LAPD about the terms of the demonstrators’ parade permit and about how officers were supposed to respond to that. And, unlike similar instances during the Democratic convention, police Sunday never declared the gathering an unlawful assembly--leading some protesters to contend that police charged them without warning.

Cmdr. Sharon Papa, an LAPD spokeswoman, said the incident is being studied by police supervisors, who would deliver a report within days. On Sunday, another department spokesman said officers only fired after being pelted by bottles, a statement confirmed by observers at the scene.

King said he was struck with batons and kicked by an officer on horseback before being arrested on suspicion of resisting a police officer--a misdemeanor. He complained that police gave no warning that they were moving into the crowd and left him and his wife no way to get out of the way. Some of the protesters at Sunday’s rally assailed the police with inflammatory rhetoric, and about a quarter--not most, as incorrectly reported in Monday’s editions of The Times--wore bandannas that hid their faces.

But, King and others say, most people in the crowd were merely marching, chanting and peacefully protesting police abuse--all of which was allowed under a permit granted by the city’s Police Commission.

Once under arrest, King and his wife said they were subject to further abuse and ridicule. Garcia said her wrists were bound so tightly with plastic restraints that her fingers began to turn blue. When they tried to get an officer’s help, he allegedly responded: “Life is tough.”

Carol Sobel, a lawyer who has sued the LAPD, said she expects to file litigation within days challenging the constitutionality of the police response to Sunday’s event, as well as its handling of the Democratic convention protests.

“We think the tactics the LAPD is applying are unjustified,” Sobel said. “I just think they are out of control.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, in a statement, agreed: “Instead of dealing with the handful of individuals engaged in illegal behavior, the LAPD attacked indiscriminately,” said Dan Tokaji, an ACLU staff attorney. “The police--who did not declare an unlawful assembly--intervened with a heavy hand and without warning on horseback and in riot gear, dispersing the crowd by indiscriminately using batons and shooting rubber bullets.” Other observers were less quick to blame police.

Joe Hicks, a longtime critic of the LAPD and now head of the city’s Human Relations Commission, was not at the protest but said he was struck by the relatively light toll--a few arrests, no serious injuries, a smattering of property damage. Police reported three arrests on potential felonies but could not supply an accurate count for misdemeanor arrests.

“I would be concerned if I picked up the paper and read about massive arrests, serious injuries. . . . “ Hicks said. “That’s not what we had here.”

Still, he and others noted the LAPD’s new assertiveness in controlling protests, first displayed during the convention and repeated most recently Sunday. For some, that raised the question of whether the police--newly armed with less lethal crowd control tools, such as rubber projectiles--may have lowered the threshold at which they elect to use force.

Papa, head of the LAPD’s Community Affairs Group, said the threshold for using force was not changed by the introduction of new tools. What changed, she said, is that officers have more options once that point has been reached.

In light of the new tools used by the LAPD, Hicks says it may be a good time to have the Police Commission publicly debate the proper limits of crowd control measures. “What is the happy balance that you need to strike?” Hicks asked.

Police Commission President Gerald L. Chaleff agreed. Although stressing that he had not had a chance yet to review reports or other details about the Sunday incident, Chaleff said he expected that the commission would look at it soon. The Police Department typically produces an “after-action report” after an event such as Sunday’s and forwards it to the commission.

“We should review it,” Chaleff said. “And we will review it.”

The Police Commission will not be the only entity to look closely at the confrontation.

“You can’t have a clash of this sort in the streets of Los Angeles without a public report being made to the governing body of the city,” said City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas. “It’s hard to know, without having more information at this point, if the police acted properly. This business of people throwing . . . things at the police is a problem. In my view, it can’t be tolerated.

“But having said that, I want to be assured that the police govern themselves according to policy,” the councilman added. “Unfortunately we have had too many instances in which the police have not complied with the law. We have to be very concerned about police practices.”

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Times staff writer Tina Daunt contributed to this story.