Controversy Over Taped Police ‘Sting’

In his column, Rod Bernsen, a former newspaper reporter and currently a Los Angeles Police Department patrol sergeant, jumped on the bandwagon of those presently attempting to defend the indefensible conduct of two Long Beach police officers (Op-Ed Page, Jan. 20). Their “party line” is:

1) Attack the press--portray NBC-TV as the bad guy for “making” rather than simply “reporting” a news event. 2) Ignore what the videotape plainly shows, and hint loudly that there are outtakes other than the “high drama part that was broadcast” which will somehow exonerate the officers. 3) Castigate Don Jackson for “knowing exactly how far to push the officers to evoke a dramatic response.” 4) Portray Officer Mark Dickey and his partner as responding out of fear for their lives and safety. What the public is supposed to forget is:

1) NBC-TV did not “make” the news event. Two Long Beach police officers acted in a most newsworthy fashion and then appear to have lied about the incident to cover up their misconduct. NBC-TV merely followed a car driven legally by two black males on the streets of Long Beach.

Jackson’s drive into Long Beach could have been totally uneventful and un-newsworthy. It became newsworthy, however, not by anything NBC-TV did but by the conduct of Dickey and his partner.

2) The videotape plainly shows lawful driving by the Jackson vehicle and subsequent unlawful conduct by the officers. The original “party line” put out by the LBPD was that the Jackson car had been stopped because it was “straddling lanes.” Embarrassed officials had to retreat from that party line in a hurry when the videotape showed clearly that no such straddling had occurred. Thus, the vehicle stop itself constituted illegal conduct by the officers.

The original “party line”--again presumably based on the officers’ report of the incident--was that Jackson had assumed a “physically hostile posture” and had “challenged the officers to a fight.” Again the department had to back down when the videotape, which was played uncut during the entire confrontation between Jackson and the officers, disclosed not Jackson but Dickey cursing and threatening to use his baton on Jackson.

I have spoken to one of the eyewitnesses to the incident (who also videotaped it) who confirms that there were no outtakes of that confrontation.

Mistreatment was not “implied,” as stated by Bernsen. It was blatant and explicit police brutality.

4) Fear for an officer’s life cannot lawfully be manufactured out of an illegal traffic stop. Bernsen in effect argues that officers who stop and harass blacks (or others) without legitimate probable cause for such stops should thereafter be excused if their own misconduct thereupon makes them fearful of the response from those being harassed. The law, however, doesn’t give the bully the right to manufacture a fight and then claim self-defense. Nor may an officer unlawfully stop a citizen and then cry that he was “in fear of his life” when the irate citizen questions the officer’s motives in stopping him.

GEORGE V. DENNY III

Sherman Oaks

(The writer is the former president of the Los Angeles Criminal Courts Bar Assn. and a member of Police Misconduct Lawyers Referral Service.)