Posted on 07/29/2003 2:58:07 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
Los Angeles police go on alert for riots as cop brutality trial ends
Los Angeles police were put on tactical alert as jurors prepared to announce their verdict in a potentially explosive trial of two white cops accused in the beating of a black youth.
"We are on tactical alert now due to the imminent verdict in the trial of the Inglewood police officers," said Los Angeles Police Department spokeswoman Renee Montoya.
The readiness to deploy extra officers to ward off possible violence reminiscent of the 1992 Los Angeles race riots came as jurors early Tuesday reached a verdict on the fate of at least one of the accused officers.
The decision was to be announced at 2:00 pm (2100 GMT), according to court officials.
Jeremy Morse, who has since been sacked from the Los Angeles-area police force of Inglewood and his partner Officer Bijan Darvish have been on trial over an alleged incident of police brutality that outraged the city's black population and raised the spectre of the infamous Rodney King beating.
Morse was captured on amateur video in July last year as he slammed handcuffed black teenager Donovan Jackson onto the boot (trunk) of a patrol car before punching the apparently dazed youth in the face.
The video was repeatedly played on television across the United States, raising ire among minorities communities that said it was an example of daily police violence to which they are exposed.
Morse, 25, is charged with assault under the colour of authority while Darvish 26, is accused of filing a false police report on the incident.
The United States' most widespread and costly urban unrest erupted in Los Angeles in April 1992 in South Central, near Inglewood, after four white policemen were acquitted of beating black motorist King 14 months earlier.
Some 54 people were killed, 2,000 others injured, 1,100 buildings were burned or destroyed and more than one billion dollars of damage was wrought in the violence that has left scars on the second-largest US city.
"We do not know what is going to happen when this decision is announced, but we are here to assist Inglewood police should they need it," Montoya said as police went on alert Tuesday.
Prosecutors in the Inglewood case said Morse was "angry, out-of-control officer," while defence lawyers insist he was defending himself after the then 16-year-old Jackson grabbed his testicles while his hands were cuffed behind his back.
"This case boils down to an angry, out-of-control officer who unnecessarily and unreasonably assaulted an unresisting subject," Deputy District Attorney Michael Pettersen told the court last week.
The prosecutor also said that Darvish was involved in "a transparent effort ... to cover it (the incident) up."
"This is street justice," the prosecutor said. "This was Mr Morse's intent to show his authority and to punish someone who had the audacity to struggle (against) him in his world."
But Morse's attorney, John Barnett, said he was a "police officer simply doing his job" because he punched Jackson only after the teen grabbed the officer's testicles.
"This case is about the use of force, the use of force in the street ... where you don't have the luxury of rewinding the tape," said Barnett.
It probably was. It was a slow newsday. I bet they were disappointed it didn't happen!
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