L.B. Council Cool to Urgings for Police Review Panel : Safety Commission to Meet Wednesday, Make Recommendation

LONG BEACH —  Despite renewed calls for creation of a citizen review board to deal with police brutality complaints, members of the City Council remain cool to the proposal.

A nationally broadcast videotape of a purported brutality incident--in which a white Long Beach police officer appears to ram a black man into a plate glass window--revived demands this week for establishment of a public review board.

Saying that allegations of police abuse of minorities continue to surface year after year in Long Beach, the Rev. Norman Copeland of Grant AME Church urged the council at its Tuesday meeting to form a review board. “I would hope that there would be some steps taken.”

While commending the council for asking the Los Angeles County district attorney to open an independent investigation of the Saturday night shoving incident, community activist Sid Solomon argued that one investigation alone will not solve years of local complaints about police conduct. Solomon, president of Long Beach Area Citizens Involved, advised the council to put the matter of a citizen review board on the next city ballot in 1990, since establishment of such a panel would require a voter-approved change in the city charter.

Groups Advocated Board

In interviews, spokesmen for other groups also advocated a civilian board, an idea that has been previously discussed but never approved.

“I think the time is ripe,” said Frank Berry, president of the Long Beach Chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. “It’s just that the City Council is not in the right frame of mind.”

He said his group has evidence and has produced victims and witnesses of police abuses. But he said it took the videotape to drive the point home.

“I think with this incident, more citizens who have not been victims of police abuse can now have an opportunity to see what happens,” Berry said, adding that in his opinion, such abuse commonly occurs in Long Beach. Berry said the city has turned aside most of the complaints his group has forwarded in recent years on grounds that they lacked adequate substantiation.

The Lambda Democratic Club, a political forum for the city’s gay and lesbian community, also remains firmly committed to the review board idea.

Rick Rosen, chairman of the club’s Police Relations Committee, said his organization has documented numerous incidents of police harassment of gays. A review board with investigatory powers would take pressure off the police chief, he added.

But council members seem unconvinced by such arguments, judging from their remarks at the Tuesday meeting and in separate interviews. Even Clarence Smith, the councilman who made the motion to call in the district attorney, is not yet prepared to say that a civilian panel would eliminate brutality cases in the city. “I don’t know what the answer will be,” he said.

Saw Force Used

Smith, the council’s only black member, was also not ready to say Long Beach has more of a problem with police-minority relations than other cities. Still, he said he had seen local police officers force “a lot of blacks on the ground or over the hood of a car,” but not whites.

Several council members say that as residents of the city, they are the appropriate public representatives to review complaints about police conduct. “We are the civilian review board,” Councilman Jeffrey A. Kellogg said when the matter came up during public comments at the council meeting.

Councilman Tom Clark argued that “I don’t think a police review board is a panacea that is going to solve all the problems. . . . Very few cities have had police review boards because they simply don’t work well.”

Proposals to create a civilian panel have surfaced before, only to be shot down by city officials and council members, who have maintained that such a board would imply distrust in the city manager and police chief and would second-guess the police department.

Mayor Ernie Kell again stated his opposition to a review board, saying, “We have been elected to oversee the Police Department.”

While reluctant to move ahead with a civilian board, council members insisted that brutality was something they will not tolerate on the local police force. “There’s no place in this department for officers using direct force,” Clark said, adding that any officers who engaged in such conduct “need to be weeded out.”

Smith, saying the council had to find a way of maintaining discipline in the Police Department, declared he will not drop the matter until something is done.

Police Chief Lawrence L. Binkley said in remarks to the press that he welcomed the investigation by the district attorney as well as an investigation by the FBI as to whether police had violated the civil rights of the man they arrested Saturday night. But he disagreed with statements that his department has not adequately dealt with brutality complaints.

Procedure Revised

Police procedures have been revised to deal more swiftly and effectively with abuse allegations and an advisory group representing minority groups has been established, Binkley said.

He also said that in the 22 months since he has been with the force, disciplinary action has been more extensive than ever. Under his tenure, about 20 officers have been dismissed for disciplinary reasons including drug use, gambling and statutory rape, Binkley said. Last year an officer was fired for brutality involving a Latino youth, he noted.

The widely telecast videotape of last weekend’s incident was secretly made by an NBC television crew working with two activists intent on demonstrating abuse of minorities by Long Beach police. Don Jackson, a Hawthorne police officer on administrative leave, and Jeff Hill, an off-duty federal corrections officer, set up the sting when they drove into Long Beach in an old car Saturday night with the television crew’s van following discreetly.

The two were pulled over by a police patrol unit. Moments later, Officer Mark Dickey, as seen on the tape, appears to shove Jackson face-first into a plate glass window and throw him onto the police car. City officials have requested unedited tapes from NBC, saying the televised version is an incomplete account of what happened between the officers and the two men they pulled over. NBC is fighting the request on the grounds that releasing unedited footage violates company policy.

An attorney for the policemen said the officers followed proper procedure in handling Jackson, who was simply being pushed up against the side of a building when the window broke.

Councilwoman Jan Hall, agreeing with colleagues that the council was the appropriate body to handle police matters, said she “can’t believe a police review board would be any more concerned than any single member of the City Council.”

Larry Davis, chairman of city’s Public Safety Commission, has long opposed increasing the commission’s power or creating a citizen review board. But Wednesday, Davis said he had changed his mind. He said his reversal came when he viewed the videotape of the Saturday night incident, disliked the officer’s conduct and noted discrepancies in the subsequent police statement describing the altercation.

Davis said he intends to call a special meeting of the commission at 7 p.m. next Wednesday in the auditorium of the main city library, which is in the City Hall complex on Ocean Boulevard in downtown. The session will be open to the public. After that, Davis said the commission will offer a recommendation to the City Council.