From: L-Bueno@cup.portal.com (Louis Alberto Bueno)
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: OFFICERS BEAT KING OUT OF ANGER, TRANSCRIPT SUGGESTS
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 93 20:18:34 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world

	Copied w/o permission from:
	The Los Angeles Times, January 23, 1993

	OFFICERS BEAT KING OUT OF ANGER, TRANSCRIPT SUGGESTS

	By Richard Serrano
	   
	LOS ANGELES - In a previously undisclosed radio transcript, a Los
Angeles police dispatcher suggests that Rodney G. King was beaten because
he angered officers who pursued him on a high-speed chase - not because he
was combative, as the four officers accused in the beating have maintained.
	The transcript, a copy of which was obtained by the Los Angeles
Times, could be used in the upcoming federal trial of the officers, in
which prosecutors hope to prove that the policemen worked together to
violate King's civil rights.
	The recorded conversation provides fresh insight into the working
atmosphere that night among public safety employees who did not yet realize
that the beating had been captured on videotape.
	The document shows that police and fire dispatchers joked and
laughed about the incident before sending an ambulance to the scene, and
indicates that the officers were angry at King because he "should know
better than to run."
	"He pissed us off, so I guess he needs an ambulance," the police
dispatcher tells the fire dispatcher.
	"Little attitude adjustment?" the fire dispatcher answers.
	The police dispatcher then says that King "kind of irritated us a
little," and that when someone does that, "they are going to pay a price."
	The Los Angeles Police Department has never publicly released the
transcript, and the document was not used as evidence by state prosecutors
in their unsuccessful attempt last year to convict the officers during a
three-month trial in Ventura County.
	A lead federal prosecutor in the second trial, which opens in about
a week in U.S. District Court here, confirmed Friday that he has obtained a
copy of the transmission. But Department of Justice attorney Barry F.
Kowalski declined to comment on whether the document would be used against
the officers in the federal civil rights trial, or whether the dispatchers
would be called to testify.
	   
	Like the federal officials, state prosecutors said that because of
the pending second trial they will not discuss any King-related material.
They also declined to explain why the transcript was not used in the first
trial.
	Police Lt. John Dunkin also declined to discuss the transcript,
saying only that there was a police administrative investigation into the
conduct of the dispatcher, whom Dunkin declined to identify.
	He would not reveal the findings of that investigation.
	At the Fire Department, Capt. Steve Ruda declined to identify the
dispatcher or say whether his agency has investigated the matter or imposed
discipline.
	Testimony in the state trial revealed that after the March 3, 1991,
beating and while King was being handcuffed, Officer Laurence M. Powell,
one of the accused officers, used his walkie-talkie to ask a police
dispatcher to request an ambulance at the scene at Foothill Boulevard and
Osborne Street in the San Fernando Valley.
	The jury in the first trial heard a tape of that brief
conversation, in which a man - identified by prosecutors as Powell - was
heard laughing while describing King's "numerous head wounds."
	   
	The dispatchers' transcript records a conversation that occurred 57
minutes after midnight on March 4. It begins with the police dispatcher
laughing and struggling to communicate a request for an ambulance.
	The fire dispatcher asks: "What's the joke?"
	"I'm just really swamped," the police dispatcher responds. He then
begins to talk casually about the incident. "Foothill and Osborne," he
says. "In the Valley dude and like he got beat up."
	The fire dispatcher laughs, says "Wait," and laughs some more
before requesting the address again.
	"Foothill and Osborne," the police dispatcher repeats. "He pissed
us off, so I guess he needs an ambulance."
	"Little attitude adjustment?" the fire dispatcher asks.
	"Yeah, we had to chase him ... CHP and us. I think he kind of
irritated us a little."
	The fire dispatcher asks: "Why would you want to do that for?"
	The police dispatcher, laughing, answers: "They should know better
than to run. They are going to pay a price when they do that."
	What follows next is a series of questions in which the fire
dispatcher attempts to learn information about the incident. The police
dispatcher, however, is vague.
	"What type of incident would you say this is?" the fire dispatcher
asks.
	"It's a ... it's a ... battery. He got beat up."
	"OK, by assailants unknown?"
	"Ah, well ... sort of."