officers - The Black Vault

FD·350 (Re~. 5·8·81)
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page, name of
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LOS ANGELES TIMES
in Space Below)
'.f\nger Against Gates Boils E~tlon: Front section, Page 3
~-------- 2 ~~~~~=~~--------~~~ FRI.,~R15, 1991
.Over at Public Hearing Totie:OVER AT PUBLIC HEARING
:By PAIT MORRISON and SHERYL STOLBERG
TIMES STAFF WRITER~
. · On the Fahrenheit scale, tpe audi~orium registered
about 80 degrees. . .
On the political scale, maybe 212. The bollmg
point. When rage and frustration .simmer and
overflow. When momentous things can happen. ..
Inside the Parker Center auditorium, 3lh hours'
c worth of anger and invective and dismay, reaching
, lrom the suburbs to the inner city, from Marc~. of
1;1 1991 back to May of 1958, were parceled out ftve
. minutes at a time, to men and women who sough~
' the two microphones.
flO
;.. In response to the outcry after ~he March 3
-_ rideotaped beating of Rodney G. Kmg, .the L~s
,. A.ngeles Police Commission had .called ~h1s pu?llc
·pearing f~r Thursday; any~ody With. a gnpe aga,1~~
1
f :the LAPD, they said, was welcome to air ~t. ·
. Invitation accepted. Several hundred turl:es.over.
They spoke variously of God, of Martm Luther
:· King Jr. and of Richard Nixon; "he too ~aid he
, wouldn't resign." ·
~- 'Gates must go!" the audience called, chorus-like,
t with almost every speaker. "Get rid of the bum!" , ,
k • Outside, the overflow could listen to the proceea­
:-1ngs on loudspeaker. Mostly, ~~ey unfurled ban?.ers
¥· on the lawn circulated pet1t10ns, massed on .t:he
, traffic media~ aiong Los Angeles Street, their signs
:: ·soliciting drivers, "Honk if you want Gates out."
If that was too complicated, then passersby could .
· deal with this placard, an unsettling reissue from the
!. 1960s: "Off the Pork."
t The object of all this vituperation, .Police Chief
f Daryl F. Gates, sat inside, onstage, second from the
~-righ~ at a gre~n-~kirted co~~erence tq~le. Two blocks
away, the Los Angeles County Grand Jury w~s
taking testimony about the conduct of some of hts
officers. Before him, two long ·aisles of pepple waited
to excoriate him, as another 400 cheered them on.
An anti-abortion demonstrator named Debbie
. Grumbine, introduced by her companion as .",?-
, Republican, with white skin, as white as you~,, ..
would weep into the microphone that she had
miscarried a pregnancy from a beating at the hands
·of LAPD officers making arrests at an Operatio!l
Rescue blockade. · '
Under the· melting lights of television, their
remarks were broadcast live on CNN. The timing
' was not .lost on Gates. A month ago, TV news was
consumed by the Persian Gulf War.
Now, "the war's over, see," Gates said. "If the war
had just lasted a few more days ... .''
ANGER AGAINST GATES BOILS
·· -. -- CIVIL RIGHTS
Character:
or
Classification: 80-3 3 B
Submitting Office:
LOS ANGELES
Indexing:
SEARCHED INOEXEO ____,
SERIALIZED
fiLED·----~
MAR 2 6 ·991
FBI -
LOS ANGELES
But what dozens of men and
women, most of them black, got up
to say were things that spoke of a
war closer to home. Some had
waited years to say these things.
Some had just thought of them the
day they saw King being pounded
before the glass eye of a home
video camera.
In language that was by turns
ornate or Biblical ot crude, it all i • Ron Harmon, an apparatus
. came down to the same thing: r operator for the·city -Fire Depart­
Something is wrong with the .Po- t ment who' took time off to be here,
. ·lice Depart~ent-and let's start with 1 to make the point from 11 years
Gates.
working alongside police, that the
The city's rhetoricians were in , King incident is "not an aberraevidence:
Ted Hayes, the politico- tion," that police are "often rude,
homeless man; anti-war activist . inconsiderate to the public.'' Some
Jerry Rubin, and former cop Don · of his friends told him he ought not
Jackson, due back in Long Beach to :come, that it would betray the
that afternoon to testify in the trial special links between firefighters
-of two officers accused of falsifying and police, but "my loyalty is to the
a police report about him.
, citizens of this community," he said.
·Others were new to the spot- : ·• Francisco Ortega, from the
.light. . : North San Fernando Valley, invit-
• Manuel Brule, now 68, holding ; ed to step to the microphone to
up· in front of ·the commission "tell the folks what they' did to
something he had dug way back you," waved a pair of white pants
into his closet tct find: a 1958 issue of with what looked like bloodstains,
the now-defunct. bla:ck newspaper . and said, "They beat the [exple-
California Eagle. Later, he splayed
tive] o~t of me."
it out on a glass case next .to a 1 To each speaker, the crowd
bronze bust of the late Police Chief .. 'a... ,
· "Yilliam Parker. T~e front-page4A-f~U~·-flqq G1f,.!) .... [ ~
ptcture was Brule, his face swollen,
stitches below his left eye. "Police-
. man's . Handiwork," it was captioned.
A motorcycle officer had
pulled over his 1956 Mercury station
wagon, Brule said, then beat
him when he wouldn't sign the
." speeding ticket.
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