Defense Fund Begun for Powell : Police: His father says the officer and his family have been made to suffer unfairly as a result of the Rodney G. King case.

After repeated viewings of the Rodney G. King beating, Edwin M. Powell is more convinced than ever that the real victim in the world-famous videotape is the Los Angeles police officer seen delivering more than 40 baton blows to a motorist.

In fact, Powell said, he is proud of his son Laurence M. Powell’s role in the King beating, saying he is “a real cop’s cop” who in the course of doing his job has been made to suffer unfairly.

Of King, the black motorist who suffered serious injuries in the beating that stunned most viewers of the videotape, the elder Powell said: “Actually, they did him a favor by using batons and not shooting him.”

Edwin Powell, a lieutenant in the Los Angeles County marshal’s office, is hoping to persuade others to share his point of view as he embarks on a fund-raising campaign to help pay for his son’s legal expenses.

Laurence Powell, 29, faces a second trial on a charge of assault under color of authority in the March 3, 1991, beating of King.

Three other Los Angeles police officers involved in the King beating were acquitted of charges by a jury in April, a decision that sparked three days of riots in Los Angeles. But the jury deadlocked on one of the charges against Powell.

Edwin Powell, 55, who had avoided talking to reporters until last week, is now giving interviews, hoping that the publicity will draw sympathy and donations for his son.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, which paid an estimated $1 million in legal costs for all four defendants during the first trial, has agreed to “fully fund” the cost of the second trial, legal director Cliff Ruff said.

But the elder Powell says the league has only agreed to pay a maximum of $50,000, and he worries that legal costs could climb much higher.

Until the April verdicts, the senior Powell stayed behind the scenes. Now that his son will be retried, Powell is discussing--although guardedly--the impact of the case on his family in an effort to raise the $100,000 or more he says is necessary to pay for his son’s legal defense.

In Edwin Powell’s view, it is his son and his family who have suffered irreparable damage as a result of the incident. His son’s career is ruined and the family has received death threats, much to the ire of the elder Powell, who believes that the Los Angeles Police Department should provide security guards for the family’s home in Valencia.

“It’s incredible. We even get blamed for the riots,” he said.

For more than a year, Edwin Powell has postponed vacations and his retirement. He sat behind Laurence nearly every day in the three-month trial held in Simi Valley. Even now, he wears a beeper in case his son needs him when they are apart and acts as a bodyguard whenever they are together.

The elder Powell said he first watched the videotape of the beating last year without realizing that his son was the officer who struck King more than 40 times.

His reaction?

“Officers have to do what they’re trained to do when a person resists arrest, and that’s all they were doing,” said Powell, who has been in charge of security for several county branch courts for 21 years. “I’ve thought that since the very first, and I’ve never wavered.”

A stocky man with blue-green eyes, the elder Powell said he has raised about $4,000 since he first appealed to the public May 22. Most donations are accompanied by sympathetic letters from as near as Leisure World in Orange County and as far away as Oklahoma City. The letters bolster his view that his son and his family, not King, are the victims in the case.

For instance, a letter from Oklahoma City likened the prosecution of Laurence Powell to a lynching, while a Russian immigrant in Los Angeles wrote that “if we had more police officers like you, we would have less crime, drugs, etc.”

“There’s a silent majority out there supporting Larry,” said Powell, who finds the letters touching. “They’re from people who don’t make a lot of noise.”

He said the case has affected his wife and four other children as well. “Everybody’s life has been on hold,” he said. “We spend a lot of time supporting Larry.”

Powell believes that even Bank of America, where he has had an account for 36 years, has treated him unfairly because of the case. He tried to open a special account at the Newhall branch last week for his son’s defense fund, but the bank turned him down. “They don’t want the publicity,” Powell said.

But Charles Coleman, the bank’s spokesman, said a 1-year-old bank policy prohibits such accounts for all but nonprofit organizations because the bank cannot guarantee contributors that the money will be spent for the stated purpose.

Powell said he is not deterred by critics of the Police Department or by those who want to see his son convicted.

“I want justice too,” he said. “But the only way to have justice is to have money to prove my son’s innocence.”