Officer Relieved of Duty in Inglewood Beating

An Inglewood police officer was relieved of duty Monday after television broadcast a videotape of him lifting a limp, handcuffed teenager by his clothes, smashing his head on a car trunk and then punching him in the face.

An attorney for Donovan Jackson, 16, described the slender youth as particularly vulnerable, saying that he is developmentally handicapped, a special education student who has no arrest record and who did not understand what was happening.

While Jackson paid for fuel at an Inglewood gas station, two sheriff’s deputies approached his father Saturday evening about the expired license plates on his 1997 Ford Taurus. Jackson returned to the car, and the two deputies ordered him to drop the potato chips he was eating and to put his hands on the vehicle, said Jackson’s lawyer, Joe Hopkins.

A struggle ensued. Jackson’s family says the boy did not provoke the scuffle. Law enforcement officers say he was combative.

Hopkins and Jackson’s family members say race was a factor in the encounter, that Jackson’s father was questioned because he is African American.

Sheriff’s Deputy Steve Jauch said race was irrelevant: “Race had nothing to do with the stop. We are prohibited from stopping people based on race.”

The videotape aired on television, shot by a bystander, shows a portion of the event. In a rawness reminiscent of the 1991 Rodney King beating, it captures an Inglewood police officer slamming the teen onto the police car and then striking him with a closed fist.

The FBI and Los Angeles County district attorney’s office have opened investigations into the fray. The Inglewood officer, Jeremy Morse, a three-year veteran of the Inglewood Police Department, will continue receiving pay while his department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department also launch separate investigations, said law enforcement officials.

“The incident is being taken very seriously,” said Lt. Eve Irvine, spokeswoman for the Inglewood police.

Images from the gas station’s surveillance camera will be reviewed to determine what happened, Irvine said.

The boy and three law enforcement officers were treated and released Saturday from a local hospital. The boy’s right eye was bloodied and his throat bruised after he was choked with a chain he wore, his attorney said. Morse suffered cuts on his knee, elbow and ear, Irvine said.

Jackson was booked on suspicion of assaulting a police officer, and was later released.

“We want this police officer fired and prosecuted,” said Najee Ali of Project Islamic HOPE, a community activist group. “This is another Rodney King beating; it’s not a matter of race, it’s a matter of police culture.”

Inglewood Mayor Roosevelt Dorn called the footage “very disturbing.”

But “it doesn’t resemble Rodney King,” he said, “because you don’t have four or five officers beating this one young man. What I saw was one officer .... The only concern I have at this point is to see justice is done. One officer’s conduct is not going to destroy this city.”

After viewing the videotape, attorney Thomas E. Beck, many of whose clients claimed to be victims of police abuse, said, “The officer was being physically and unnecessarily abusive to that boy. There’s no amount of fact that would justify what the officer did.”

The videotape was shot by Mitchell Crooks, a 27-year-old DJ staying in a nearby hotel while he waited to switch apartments after returning from vacation. Hearing a woman screaming about someone being beaten, Crooks ran outside with his video camera. He said he was not shocked by what he saw and did not realize what a stir the videotape would cause.

“I just thought it was standard procedure; I thought it was normal in Los Angeles,” said Crooks. “I didn’t think it was any big deal at all.”

On Monday, Neilson Williams, 32, said Morse and other officers handcuffed him and beat him with batons and hands near Ashwood Park on June 23. Williams said the officers gave no explanation for stopping him.

Williams said he filed a formal complaint with the Inglewood Police Department.

Inglewood police, contacted late Monday, said they had not had a chance to confirm that Williams had filed a complaint.

Sheriff’s deputies on Monday offered the following account of Saturday’s incident at the gas station. It began shortly after 5 p.m., said Lt. Carl Deeley, when two deputies, Carlos Lopez and Daniel Leon, noticed that Jackson’s father, Coby Chavis Jr., 41, had expired registration tags, and pulled behind him as he entered the station.

As the deputies began talking to Chavis, who lives in Inglewood, his son went into the mini-mart. He came out and began arguing with them, Deeley said.

The deputies tried to calm the son, telling him that they were just going to talk to his father about the expired registration. The boy kept arguing, Deeley said.

So Lopez, who has been with the department seven years, told him to sit in the back seat of the patrol car while they investigated the vehicle violations, Deeley said.

But the boy protested and lunged at Lopez, Deeley said. Two patrol units from Inglewood Police Department pulled up and intervened. They saw the two struggling and attempted to help handcuff the boy, Deeley said.

Four Inglewood police officers approached. This group included Morse, and three others: Mariano Salcedo, an eight-year veteran and training officer, Antoine Crook, who has been on the force one year, and Bijan Darvish, a veteran of two years.

Asked whether officers used excessive force, Irvine said, “I’m certainly not saying it was justified at this time. It’s too premature to say.”

Jackson, Chavis and another witness recounted the episode differently:

Jackson stood upright when he spotted four Inglewood police officers approaching, said his father.

These officers, said Chavis, “began beating him [Jackson] in the face.”

Chavis said his son was hit repeatedly and slammed into the pavement by an officer.

At one point, Chavis said, an officer knelt with his knee on his son’s back. Chavis said his son was hit by an officer with a closed fist and then dragged by the 18-inch silver chain that he wore around his neck. The officers, said Chavis, lifted the boy by the chain, which broke. The boy then fell to the ground.

“They were choking me,” said Jackson, in a barely audible whisper. Police declined to discuss the incident in detail.

Chavis said he tried to intervene on his son’s behalf but was restrained. Chavis said he heard one officer call him by a racial slur.

Another witness, Andres Mejia, 24, of Inglewood, said, “We didn’t understand why they were doing this.”

Mejia said he also saw police throw the youth on the ground, and an officer kneeling on his back. He said he saw an officer punch Jackson with a closed fist.

Mejia said he watched the incident unfold in broad daylight 20 feet away. Mejia said he never saw the youth offer any resistance.

“It did just seem vengeful and racist,” said Mejia.

Jackson’s attorney, Hopkins, says his client’s “only crime was paying for gas at the wrong time on the wrong day.”

Times staff writers Beth Shuster, Sandra Murillo, Jill Leovy and Steve Berry contributed to this report.