Priest’s Handcuffing Justified, Chief Says

Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks on Wednesday said his officers did not err last month when they handcuffed a black Episcopal priest in his vestments.

Early in January, police were called after a dispute involving four African American men at a hamburger stand across the street from St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church in Canoga Park. The argument resulted in an armed confrontation. Two of the men fled and climbed a fence around the churchyard. The priest was confronting one of them when police arrived.

A day after the police action, Parks said, the officers’ captain went to the clergyman and his parish board to explain why the officers acted as they did, and to “apologize for any embarrassment or ill-feeling that may have been created by [their] conduct.”

Lee Carter, the captain of the LAPD’s West Valley Division, also offered to “speak to the congregation as a whole” and extended a similar “explanation and apology,” Parks said. That offer, said the chief, “was declined.”

The chief flatly contradicted the suggestion by the Rev. Ronald D. Culmer and others that race played a role in his detention. Among other things, Parks said, the officers involved were not, as Culmer alleged in The Times on Wednesday, three whites and one Asian. Rather, the chief said they were a Latino, a Latina, an Asian American and a Native American.

“This was a police incident, not a racial incident,” Parks said emphatically.

He said he particularly resents what he called “the further stereotyping of our white officers as universally insensitive. Obviously, they are not--anymore than all our minority officers are as sensitive as we would like them to be.”

As Parks described the incident, “Our officers were responding to a 415, which means a dispute involving a firearm. When they arrived, they had no idea of the nature of that dispute. For all they knew, it might have involved someone at the church.”

The officers, Parks said, had every reason to be concerned that men they presumed were armed were in a position to take hostages at the church, its preschool or its elementary school.

“Tactically, when you are chasing a suspect with a gun, you hold people in place and then release them when you have established their identity,” Parks added. “That’s what our officers did. They were pursuing two African American suspects. Lots of people in suits commit dangerous crimes. We hold them too.”

At another point during an interview in Mayor Richard Riordan’s City Hall office, Parks--who was accompanied by members of his command staff--reiterated that “the police did not make a mistake, but their captain did explain and apologize for any embarrassment or misperception that may have been created by their pursuit of their duties. Remember, all this happened in a matter of seconds, within a few feet of a school filled with children.”

Parks said he planned to speak with Culmer on Wednesday evening and to meet with the Rt. Rev. Frederick H. Borsch, Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles today. He also said representatives of the Episcopal Diocese have been invited to participate in the department’s first citywide police-clergy forum, March 10. According to Parks, Culmer’s parish has failed to respond to past invitations to take part in similar Valleywide dialogues.

Church officials this week gave a different version of the captain’s meeting with them, which they said occurred five days after the Jan. 7 incident.