officers - The Black Vault

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l.not in my shoes. They doh't have
I the slightest idea-not the slight­
. est-about what me and my family
I
. are going through."
\ As in his testimony last spring,
Briseno said he believes that the
I beating was excessive, and he was
particularly criticai of Powell.
On the videotape, Briseno is seen
with his foot on what appears to be
the back of King's head or neck.
Briseno pushes King down hard to
the pavement, but he says he was
trying to get King to stay down so
I that he would not be hit again. In
l another section of t:Qe tape, Briseno
:reaches for Powell's baton, and he
/ testified that he was pleading with
Powell to stop the beating.
· · As he was leaving the federal
courthouse recently, Powell said:
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"Nobody buys that story."
I Powell's lawyer, Michael P.
Stone, agreed: "There are so many
reasons to disbelieve Ted. He
doesn't just want to l?e innocent.
He wants-to be a hero."
Briseno responds by saying he
told the truth about Powell's actions,
but he concedes that there
I
may be· other interpretations of the
same exchange.
"We all saw it different ways,"
Briseno said. "It's my view that the
force was excessive, but I can see
how some people would see it
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differently."
Braun stresses that point and
said he has asked the other defense
lawyers to consider a unified strategy.
Still, there are other issues
that could· pit the defendants
ag~n~t each other. In particular,
Briseno said he is concerned about
statements made by Koon in an
unpublished manuscript .
In that document, Koon referred
to King as Mandingo, a reference to
a West African people that is
sometimes used as a derogatory
term for black male slaves.
"I was totally shocked by that,"
Briseno said. "It was a total embarrassment.
. . . That hurts me, too.
It hurts me because everyone talks
about the 'four white police offi- .
cers.' They- lump us together. . . ·. '
I'm not racist." ·
Although Briseno said he expected
that at least Powell would·
be convicted in state court, he ·
added that he believes all four are :
innocent of the charges brought by
the federal government. To be
guilty of violating King's civil
rights, the officers would need to
have intentionally sought to deprive
King of those rights, and
Briseno said the moment was too
charged, too chaotic, for the officers
to have acted willfully and in
concert.
A federal grand jury meeting in i
Los Angeles disagreed. " ·
To Briseno, the new charges feel ·
more like persecution than prose- .
cution.
"It's like we were the Cinderella
team," Brisenl> said. "We came
from nowhere and we won. Now 1
the federal "government comes in
and says: 'Time out. We're going to •
play the game again, and this time i
we're going to bring in our home 1
run hitters.' " . ~
The coming months loom omi- 1
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nously for Briseno. It could be 1
months before the new trial begins, 1
and Briseno cannot go anywhere
without being recognized. At lunch I
in a busy mall, several people I
stared hard and whispe~ed to each 1
other as he passed.
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He ignored the long looks, but 1
says the notoriety can be oppres-1
sive. Most of all, he worries aboutj'
where this case. will end because,
none of the options iookinviting. .j
lfhejs. !!onvicted, he faces up tot
10 years in .prison and a $250,000 l
• fine. If he is acquitted, he loo"}{s
. toward an uncertain future, know-
• ing he will never return to police
work and the life he enjoyed before 1
March 3, 1991. !
''We were just at that stage I
where everything was going I
·right," Briseno said. "We haY.~ a~·
great family, and we're happy in
, our community. Everything wa~l
wonderful. And then everything!
changed.''
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