officers - The Black Vault

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·FD·3-5o (Rev. 5·8·81)
•
•(Indicate page, name of
newspaper, city and state.)
'Taunts
followed ..
. beating· ...
Grand jury transcript
:details officers' boasts
By Dawn Webber
Daily News Staff Writer
; Police officers who arrested
: Rodney Glen King on March 3
· later taunted him .at the hospital,
boasting that they "played ~ little
. hardball" and "hit quite a few
; home runs" while beating him
:: with their batons, witnesse$ .~91.d .·'
the grand jury. ·· . ·
. Other witnesses said !Gng was
. slow in responding to commands
.and struggled briefly with police,
· . but laid down· passively and ab­
~-· sorbed the blows after officers began
beating him, according to a
.· transcript of the grand jury hearing
reviewed by t.he Daily News.
Witness testimony contained
~ · in the transcript provides new de.:.
r ,.tails of King's .action~ on the
. ; night of his arrest, the extensive
! ' use of force by officers in response,
and their attempts later
to downplay the incident.
As a result of that testimony;
.four officers from the Los Angeles
Police Department were indicted
last week in connection
i •.with the beating of King ..:.._
· which was captured on videotape
by an amateur photographer. ··
, Sgt. Stacey Koon and OfficerS
Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind,
·and Theodore Briseno are sche­
-duled for arraignment today on·
·felony charges that include as­
: sault, excessive force and filing ~
false police report. . ·
. Grand jury testimony about
the officers contains an incident
that occurred about 15 minutes
l b-efore the beating, in which
" Powell made a reference to the
· film "Gorillas in the Mist" that
'LAPD officials later said was a
racial slur.
(Mount Clipping in Space Below)
. .......,
I
LAPD Officer Corina G.
Smith testified that Powell made
the comment to her on the com­
·puterized messaging system dur-.
·irlg a car-to-car conversation. She
said she did not know what
Powell meant when he likened an
earlier call to a scene "right out of
'Gorillas in the Mist.' .,, ·
"I don't know. what 'Gorillas in
the Mist' is,'' she told the·grand .
jury. "I have been to1d since then .
~ .. it was a movie." ., ·0
She denied that her response .
- "HaHaHaHa ... let me guess
who be the parties" - was itself
·.a racial slur.
About .15 minutes later - at :
12:47 a.m.- LAPD office.rs got
a call that the California High- .
way Patrol was in pursuit of a
Hytindai that had failed to yield. .
Melanie Singer, a CHP officer :
on patrol with her husband, Offi- .
0
~er T.J. Singer, tol