King Suffered Only Cuts, Paramedic Tells Court : Trial: Assessment is echoed by two bystander officers. They say, however, that motorist was not always combative.

SIMI VALLEY —  Rodney G. King suffered only minor injuries--not more than a cut to his right cheek--when he was beaten by police officers, said a paramedic who was the first defense witness to testify Wednesday in the trial of four Los Angeles policemen charged in the incident.

The paramedic, Kathleen Bosak, was followed on the witness stand by two Los Angeles officers who were bystanders during the assault in Lake View Terrace on March 3, 1991.

One of them, David A. Love, testified that King was “going toward” Officer Laurence M. Powell when Powell hit the motorist across the chest with his baton.

The other, Susan Clemmer, recalled how Powell--breathing hard and pacing after he holstered his baton--told her: “I was scared. The guy threw me off his back. I thought I was going to have to shoot him.”

Darryl Mounger, who represents Sgt. Stacey C. Koon, the ranking police supervisor at the scene, called the three witnesses in an attempt to show that King’s injuries were not as severe as described by a Pacifica Hospital physician, who testified that King suffered numerous face and head cuts.

Mounger also is striving to prove that the officers under Koon’s command struck and kicked King only when the motorist turned violent, or when he refused to obey their orders to lie face down on the ground.

But Clemmer acknowledged during cross-examination by prosecutors that she never saw King acting combative. And Bosak said that King appeared “combative and uncooperative” only when he was hogtied and face down in the back of the ambulance, which she acknowledged appeared to be an uncomfortable position.

Bosak said she and her partner, Victor Cruz, arrived in the ambulance just minutes after the beating and found King lying off to the side of the road.

“Looking at his injuries, it looked like he had been in some kind of ground confrontation,” Bosak testified. “It looked like he had some dirt or gravel in his face. It looked like he had rolled on the ground with someone, but not that he had been struck.

“It just looked like a simple fall to the ground, and he scraped his face.”

She said that she noticed no injuries to his head, that he appeared lucid and coherent and that he seemed to be in little, if any, pain. But while he was being driven to the hospital King started “moving around and struggling,” she said.

“He wasn’t cooperating,” she said. “We were unable to get his pulse or blood pressure.”

King was spitting blood on the inside walls of the ambulance, despite Cruz’s repeated requests for him to stop.

Like Bosak, Officer Clemmer said she and her partner arrived after the beating. “He (King) was laughing,” and he repeatedly uttered an obscene expression to the officers, she said.

After talking briefly with Powell at the scene, Clemmer said she rode with Officer Timothy E. Wind, a defendant in the case, in the back of the ambulance.

“He (King) was spitting blood on my legs and shoes,” Clemmer said. “I asked him to stop. He just laughed and continued.” She said King was still laughing when he was taken into the hospital’s emergency room.

“I was standing by Mr. King, and he said something but I couldn’t hear him,” Clemmer said. “I asked him to repeat it. He looked at Sgt. Koon and he said, ‘I love you.’ And he smiled and started laughing.”

Clemmer also described King’s injuries as minor. “There was, on the side of his cheek, some blood,” she said. “A laceration, maybe. And a cut on the side of the lip.”

Last to testify Wednesday was Officer Love, who on an amateur videotape of the assault can be seen holding King down with his foot while other officers take the motorist into custody.

Love’s testimony was heard out of the jury’s presence, as Mounger attempted to persuade Judge Stanley M. Weisberg to allow questioning of Love about all the baton blows and kicks seen in the videotape.

But Weisberg ruled that Love, when he testifies before he jury today, can only be questioned about what he remembers seeing that night.

After watching the videotape in court Wednesday, Love said he recalled seeing Powell strike King only once in the upper torso at the beginning of the incident. He then saw King struck twice more halfway through the incident, but he did not say which officers delivered those blows. Love said he then put his foot on the motorist.

Love said the blows he witnessed were all appropriate and within Police Department policy. But he said the torrent of blows--more than 50--he later saw on the videotape appeared excessive.

Powell’s initial “power stroke” was justified because King was “going toward” Powell, he said. And he said the two blows in the middle of the incident were reasonable because “I saw Mr. King attempting to get up” off the ground.

Asked to elaborate on why he believed the blows were within police guidelines, Love said: “The next level of force would have been your gun.”

Koon, Powell, Wind and Officer Theodore J. Briseno have all pleaded not guilty in the beating incident.