Video Stirs Brutality Allegations : Violence: TV station airs tape of Compton officer beating youth during July 29 arrest. Police Department will call on D.A.’s office to conduct a ‘concurrent, independent investigation’ of the incident.

A home video aired Tuesday by a local television station stirred allegations of police brutality with footage of a burly Compton police officer beating a 17-year-old youth who had confronted him during an investigation of child neglect at the youth’s home.

Compton police said they already had launched an internal investigation into the July 29 arrest of the 17-year-old youth, who had complained about the arrest. However, said Capt. Steven Roller, the department was unaware the tape had been made until they saw it on KNBC-TV Tuesday night.

Because of the video, Roller said, the department will contact the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office today to request that it conduct a “concurrent, independent investigation of the arrest and surrounding events.”

The tape--apparently made by a neighbor without the officer’s knowledge at the trailer park where the teen-ager lives--shows the officer smacking the youth on the side of the head with his police baton, pummeling him with baton blows after he has collapsed to the ground, jumping on the back of the much smaller teen-ager to handcuff him and then using the baton to drag the youth across the ground by his handcuff chain.

Compton police would not comment on the details of the arrest.

Humberto Guizar, an attorney representing the youth and his mother, Enriqueta de la Cruz, said the boy’s family plans to file a civil rights suit against the police.

“The officer beat this guy, totally contrary to what he says in the (police) report,” Guizar said. “In the report he says my client struck him, fought with him, that he subdued him and arrested him without incident. I think that when this comes out in court, the jury will see that that’s just not true.”

Guizar said the youth argued with the officer because “someone from Children’s Services wanted to take his sisters away. He asked the officer if he had a warrant, and got hit in the face.”

Meanwhile, another lawyer who specializes in police brutality and who viewed the unedited tape said he was “flabbergasted” by the conduct of the policeman, whom he identified as Officer Michael Jackson. Compton police would not confirm that identification nor provide any information about the officer involved except to say that he is still an employee of the department.

The video, the lawyer said, shows numerous violations of the law regarding police use of force, including the illegal blow to the head.

“This was completely out to lunch in terms of what this officer was doing to this kid,” said attorney Thomas E. Beck, who viewed the tape at the request of KNBC, but who has no other interest in the case.

“Especially since the kid was not being arrested--the officer had been called there to back up a social worker who was there to take (the youth and his siblings) from the house as latchkey children,” Beck said.

The claim, he said, was that “the adult who was supposed to be supervising them was at work, and they weren’t being supervised.”

Compton police confirmed that the officer had been called to the house to back up a Department of Children’s Services worker investigating reports of child neglect. The youth, police said, was arrested and is still in custody. However, they would not say whether charges had been filed against him.

Maria Quintana, identified by KNBC as the youth’s godmother, said she was called to the home by her godchildren, and arrived just as the social worker was rounding them up to take them away.

Quintana told the TV station that her godson, had confronted the officer and the social worker, but had not made any physical threat.

“The police officer said on his report that (the youth) had threatened the social worker, which (is) not true, then that he tried to take the gun away from the police officer when he told him to put his hands behind the back,” Quintana said.

Quintana said her godson never went for the officer’s gun.

“Felipe just asked, ‘Why?”’ she said.

Another witness, identified as Carla Gavina, said the youth had argued with the officer, but did not threaten him.

“He did give him attitude, probably a reason for the police officer, not to hit him the way he did, but yet to provoke him a little bit,” Gavina told the television station.

The tape does not capture the discussions that led up to the confrontation but begins with several seconds of quiet before the officer suddenly delivers a barrage of blows to the youth with his baton.

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Times staff writer Nieson Himmel contributed to this story.