Police Beating Touches Old Wounds

Larry Moore stood outside the First African Methodist Episcopal Church on Sunday and described what it felt like to watch last week’s videotaped beating of a black man at the hands of a Los Angeles police officer.

“It’s like, here we go again,” he said.

In the pews and entryways of black churches around South Los Angeles on Sunday morning, few who witnessed the tape said they were surprised by the treatment of car-theft suspect Stanley Miller, who was struck 11 times by a flashlight-wielding officer after Miller had appeared to surrender.

The footage carried the disturbing visual echoes of the 1991 beating of Rodney G. King -- an incident that resulted in the city’s most devastating riots, but also unprecedented scrutiny and reform for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Yet in numerous interviews, black Angelenos asserted that the relationship between the LAPD and the city’s African American community remains deeply troubled. Some, like 18-year-old Everett Brumfield, said their own experiences proved the point.

Brumfield, who is employed at First AME as a general laborer, said he is often harassed. “The police is always on the edge, you know? It’s pistols at your head and get on the floor.”

Most blacks interviewed were angered by Wednesday’s beating and wanted to see the officers involved disciplined. But amid the frustration and weariness, they also debated the extent to which Los Angeles has changed -- and possibly improved -- in the area of race relations in the last 13 years.

Some credited LAPD Chief William J. Bratton with bringing a new racial sensitivity to the LAPD, while others said they had seen no change at all. Some put faith in the local and federal investigations that officials have launched after the incident, while others dismissed the investigations as useless, given the history of police abuse.

Few could say for sure if rage would once again turn to looting and mayhem if the officers involved avoided serious punishment. But all agreed that the images were another painful burden for black Los Angeles to bear.

“It’s not exactly Rodney King,” said Los Angeles resident Marva Dobbs as she walked into West Angeles Church of God in Christ on Crenshaw Boulevard. “It’s like an old wound. If there’s a wound there, and something else comes along remotely like it, you relive that history again.”

Los Angeles civic leaders have pledged that the inquiries into the incident would be thorough and fair. Mayor James K. Hahn said that if the officers were found guilty, they should be fired and “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Hahn also established a committee of community leaders to monitor the investigations. Leonard Jackson, associate pastor at First AME, is a member of the committee. On Sunday, Jackson said the panel was one of many indicators that the city’s culture had changed substantially since the King incident.

“I hate to draw a comparison between the two situations,” Jackson said. “The difference between 1992 and the present is we’re looking at a different type of police department, a different mentality and a different attitude.”

Jackson said he joined the LAPD as a reserve officer and chaplain after the King incident, believing he could best change the department’s culture from the inside. From that perspective, he said, he has seen real positive change in the LAPD’s recruitment and training.

Jackson said it was “a little too early” for First AME Church to comment on the incident at length from the pulpit, and Sunday’s early services contained few mentions of the arrest.

The one remark at the 10 a.m. service came from a visiting pastor, the Rev. Charles Lee Johnson, of the Henry McNeil Turner AME Church in Culver City. In his sermon, Johnson described Christians’ relationship with Jesus in terms of marriage, then gave examples of the high cost of “creepin” -- or cheating -- on God when one strays into sin.

“When cops are beating black men on TV, and all they get is administrative duty, the price is too high!” he roared. The congregation shouted and clapped their assent.

Outside, many churchgoers had made up their minds that the officers had used excessive force -- despite reports that one officer believed Miller was armed with a gun. The object in question turned out to be wire cutters in Miller’s pants pocket, police officials said.

“It was unnecessary,” said B.J. Thomas, 73, a retired municipal bus driver. “He’s stretched out on the ground and one guy is on top of him.”

At the Second Baptist Church of Los Angeles, worshippers were equally dismayed.

“It’s obvious that the Police Department has not learned from Rodney King,” said Wiley Sturns, 59, a real estate broker. “I don’t think the training policies are adequate.”

Edwina Dunlap, 57, an outreach director at a family service center, agreed. “Hasn’t the Police Department learned a lesson that this just creates more unrest in our communities?” she said. “It doesn’t seem like it’s getting any better, it seems like it’s getting worse.”

Dunlap, like a number of churchgoers, mentioned her dismay over the July 2002 beating of a black teenager at the hands of Inglewood Police Officer Jeremy Morse and the hung juries that resulted.

After the first hung jury in July 2003, community leaders walked through the streets of Inglewood to dissuade potential rioters, and calm generally prevailed.

But on Sunday, Brumfield, the 18-year-old, said he thought a riot was possible if police were not held accountable for last week’s beating.

Was he saying he felt a riot would be justified in such a case?

“If you ask me, yeah,” he said.

Although she would not give her age, Vickilyn Reynolds of Second Baptist Church was older than Brumfield -- and old enough to remember the 1992 riots following the acquittal of officers in the Rodney King beating.

“Why go and mess up someone’s store in your own neighborhood?” she asked.

Reynolds said she thinks riots could happen again, following other taped episodes of alleged police brutality.

But she also said such footage could eventually help solve the problem. The more often such tapes surface, she said, the more police will have to answer and hopefully change their ways.

“Modern technology is going to be the thing that cures this problem,” she said.