Youth Was Punched by a Second Officer

The partner of Inglewood Police Officer Jeremy Morse twice punched 16-year-old Donovan Jackson before the suspect was handcuffed and a bystander shot the now-infamous videotape of Morse hitting him, according to a report signed by both officers.

The report, obtained Friday by The Times, describes the moments before Jackson, who is black, was slammed into the trunk of a police car and then punched in the face by Morse, who is white. Images of that incident, aired repeatedly on local and national television, have helped generate investigations by the Inglewood police, Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials, the district attorney’s office and the U.S. Justice Department.

“I yelled at Jackson to let go of my uniform; however, he refused,” Inglewood Officer Bijan Darvish, who is white, states in the report also signed by Morse. “Fearing that Jackson would pull me into him and strike me with his other hand, I punched him two times in the face, using my right hand.”

Those additional details emerged as a coalition of ministers and activists called for an overhaul of the Inglewood Police Department to give civilians more control over the force, and hundreds of protesters marched on Inglewood City Hall, demanding that the officers be fired immediately.

“If you don’t get rid of these rogue officers,” said Najee Ali of Project Islamic HOPE, “we’ll get rid of you.”

The encounter occurred last Saturday evening when Jackson and his father, Coby Chavis, were at an Inglewood gas station and two sheriff’s deputies stopped to investigate Chavis’ expired vehicle registration tags. Jackson was leaving the station’s market, holding a bag of potato chips, when he saw the deputies talking to his father.

Jackson tried to get into his father’s car, ignoring deputies’ commands to wait while they questioned Chavis, according to the officers and deputies. Deputy Carlos Lopez tried to get Jackson to sit in the patrol car, Lopez said in his report, adding that the youth then lunged at him.

The Inglewood report echoes those observations and says Morse and Darvish arrived at the gas station as backup and immediately assisted Lopez after Jackson cried, “I’m not getting in the car! I’m not getting in the car!” and lunged at the deputy. The Inglewood officers wrote that they saw Jackson hit the deputy, so they grabbed his arms and pulled him to the ground.

Jackson struggled and flipped onto his back, the report says. He grabbed at Morse’s shirt and scratched him once above his ear, then on the neck, the document says. Next, the report states that the boy grabbed Darvish by the shirt and started pulling him down. Darvish could not “get a wristlock” on Jackson, who reportedly continued to swing at the officer.

It was at that point that Darvish punched Jackson, according to the officer’s account. Still, the officers said that did not subdue the boy.

At that point, Inglewood Officer Mariano Salcedo grabbed the boy’s legs, along with Officer Antoine Crook. All four officers then helped handcuff Jackson, the report says.

Morse then grabbed the boy and lifted him off the ground, the point at which the videotape begins.

On the tape, Morse is seen slamming Jackson onto the car. The report describes that event only by saying Morse “assisted Jackson to his feet and had him stand facing the police vehicle.”

As The Times reported Thursday, Morse says the handcuffed Jackson then grabbed the officer’s testicles. Because of Morse’s “extreme pain,” the officer says, he hit Jackson in the face, and the youth let go.

Joe Hopkins, an attorney for Jackson’s family, said Friday that he was skeptical of the police version of the incident and charged that all four Inglewood officers “took turns” beating Jackson before the tape rolled.

“He sees the four officers running towards him,” Hopkins said. “He stands up. He is grabbed by the throat to hold him back, and the other four officers take turns hitting him.”

When the officers threw him to the ground, Hopkins said, they continued to beat him, pulling him by a necklace he wore and kneeing him.

“What we see on the tape is the second beating,” he said.

On Friday, the lawyer said, he received a letter from attorney Milton Grimes stating that he had been retained to represent the Jackson family. Grimes took over Rodney G. King’s civil case against the city of Los Angeles after King’s beating by police in 1991. Grimes did not return calls seeking comment Friday.

Neither Darvish nor his representatives could be reached for comment Friday. John Barnett, a lawyer representing Morse, said the account by his client and Darvish “puts into context some of the subsequent action. It is significant ... but more in terms of context.”

For the demonstrators at City Hall, their anger was focused on what they saw on the videotape, particularly the images of officers roughly handling a boy who already was in handcuffs.

“We want to know precisely, exactly, what kind of threat a 16-year-old teenager, eating a bag of chips, poses to armed and trained police officers,” said Thandi Chimurensa, who said she represented Jackson’s family.

Kim Mitchem, 42, said she had “always been proud to be an Inglewood resident. I always thought [Inglewood police] were a cut above. [Now] I have to take them off the pedestal.”

A steady stream of activists--including comedian Dick Gregory and Martin Luther King III--inched through a thick crowd to speak before a battery of cameras and reporters.

Speakers vented their rage at authorities over both the Jackson beating and the fate of the man who recorded it, 27-year-old Mitchell Crooks, who was arrested Thursday outside CNN studios in Hollywood on outstanding warrants for burglary and a 5-year-old hit-and-run accident.

On Friday, Crooks was transferred from Los Angeles to Placer County, where the warrants originated.

Chimurensa said she holds Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley responsible for Crooks’ well-being. And Gregory quipped: “If you want Bin Laden arrested, we’ve got a formula: Let him take some pictures of a cop beating up black people, and they’ll put him in jail.”

The demonstrators made a circuit of Inglewood’s government plaza. A sprinkling of officials from the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division and the county’s Human Relations Commission monitored the protest. Observers estimated the crowd at 400 to 500. Several drivers passing by honked in support of the protesters. When the crowd arrived at City Hall, it found a locked door. A sign posted there said that the city offices were closed for the day.

A few protesters banged on the windows before the group turned and assembled in a courtyard near City Hall and police headquarters.

Demonstrators said they were impatient with the speed of the investigations. They shouted down a representative from county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke’s office who assured them that authorities would probe the incident. “We don’t trust them!” the crowd cried. “Arrest them!”

Cooley said Friday that the county grand jury will continue to hear evidence on the case next week. He said his prosecutors are using that panel because it gives them a powerful tool with which to obtain sworn accounts of the incident.

“We believe this is important for a variety of communities: the community of Inglewood, the law enforcement community and the community at large,” Cooley said. “Everyone benefits when the system works accurately and as quickly as possible.”

He added that Inglewood police, in conversations Monday, told prosecutors that they believed one of their own may have broken the law. Police Chief Ronald Banks has asked city officials and others to withhold judgment, but Mayor Roosevelt Dorn has called for Morse to be fired and prosecuted.

The Justice Department is also investigating the incident, having dispatched its top civil rights official, Assistant Atty. Gen. Ralph Boyd, to Inglewood on Thursday.

Boyd, who has returned to Washington, said in an interview Friday that the district attorney’s office would take the lead in the initial criminal investigation and that federal civil rights charges could follow. He also said he was encouraged to find Inglewood relatively calm, unlike Cincinnati, where riots followed the shooting of an unarmed black man by police last year.

“My impression from afar, and now up close a little bit, is that people feel very comfortable with their leadership, although there’s obviously appropriate concern about this incident,” Boyd said. “To the extent there were people who were impatient with the legal process, they seemed to be outsiders. The local folks seem to have confidence in the process.”

At Inglewood’s First Church of God, a group of ministers led by the Rev. Norman Johnson of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of L.A. called on the city to establish a civilian panel to oversee police actions, review the current civilian complaint process and remove police from the street when complaints are filed.

Bishop Kenneth Ulmer, pastor of Faithful Central Bible Church, said the Jackson incident “is an issue beyond politics, race and color. It involves justice.”

Mayor Dorn said he would consider the recommendations and added that “one or two other cases” involving Officer Morse “have been ordered reopened.” Dorn said those cases of alleged use of excessive force, including one in 2001, “had not reached the level of the city administrator,” and that “one was not actually closed.” He refused to elaborate.

Times staff writers Daren Briscoe, Anna Gorman, Peter Y. Hong and Richard Winton in Los Angeles and Eric Lichtblau in Washington contributed to this report.