Police Culture of Silence Meets the Roar of an Angry Crowd

At last count, we had several investigations in the works, including one by Inglewood police and one by the L.A. County Sheriff. But I saw the videotape, and I can save everyone some time.

There is nothing to investigate.

Yes, I know. We aren’t sure what, if anything, 16-year-old Donovan Jackson might have done to provoke officers during a traffic stop Saturday. But it doesn’t matter.

You do not take a juvenile, cuff his hands behind him, slam his head onto the hood of a car, and then sucker punch him in the face. Not unless you’re trying out for the World Wrestling Federation.

My feelings were shared by 100-plus demonstrators who showed up at Inglewood City Hall Tuesday morning to demand that the mayor, the chief of police--anybody--stand up and say that Officer Jeremy Morse should not just be fired, but prosecuted.

As it is, Morse has merely been suspended, with pay. The guy establishes himself as one of the great sissies of all time, roughing up a handcuffed kid, and he’s getting paid to sit at home.

For the record, police say Jackson became combative after they followed his father’s car into a gas station to ask about a lapsed registration. The story from the other side is that Jackson is developmentally disabled and became confused after returning to the car with a bag of potato chips. His father and attorney say he was punched by police and then dragged by a silver chain he wore around his neck.

Morse, by the way, is white, and Jackson is black. But one of the cops at the scene was black and one brown, and Najee Ali, a black man who organized the demonstration, told me the issue isn’t race. The issue is a police culture in which it’s OK to beat the living daylights out of people in primarily minority neighborhoods.

I asked a Los Angeles secretary named Sherri Mayes what specifically motivated her to take a day off work and join the demonstration on a blazing hot day, and the answer came up into her eyes and smoldered there.

“Anger.”

Mayes watched the video in horror, then told her 6-year-old son it isn’t supposed to be like that. But this was no isolated incident, she claimed. What makes it different was that it was caught on videotape.

Look, the truth is that most cops don’t go around beating people up. The problem is that you can’t find any cops who’ll report the ones who do.

Before we congratulate Inglewood police for calling the incident disturbing and immediately suspending the officer, do you think we would have heard about this case if not for the videotape? Would any of the officers at the scene have blown the whistle on one of their own?

My money says no. Why else would Morse have had no qualms about brazenly clocking a restrained juvenile in the presence of fellow officers?

During the demonstration, I wandered up to two Inglewood detectives and asked if they could imagine any circumstances under which Morse acted appropriately.

“There’s two sides to every story,” said one.

I rest my case.

I slipped away from the demonstration for a scheduled meeting with Inglewood Mayor Roosevelt Dorn in his ninth-floor office. But before we could sit down, the demonstrators poured out of the elevators behind me and pressed toward Dorn’s office, demanding a meeting. Someone called police, who drew scowls, and one demonstrator chided, “Here come the beaters.”

“No justice, no peace!” the crowd chanted as Najee Ali told city officials that nobody was leaving until the mayor appeared.

(Ali, by the way, told me that New York Rev. Al Sharpton had called to say he’ll be here for a Friday demonstration. Good for Reverend Al, but if you ask me, it’s a sad commentary on the void in leadership in Southern California. We shouldn’t need an outsider showing us how to shake a stick.)

In his moment of truth, Mayor Dorn appeared before a restless mob and got off to a terrible start by saying he would recommend suspension without pay. One man in the crowd shouted down the mayor and began jawing with a guy who implored him to let the mayor continue.

And then Dorn, a former prosecutor and judge, hit his stride. He had already watched the video enough times to conclude that whatever happened before the camera began rolling, it did not justify the assault on Jackson. And so the mayor said the investigation of Morse will proceed, “but it is my opinion that he should be fired.”

There was more, too. Dorn wanted him brought up on charges.

“No. 1, for felony assault. No. 2, assault with a deadly weapon--the car. And No. 3, battery. In my city, this type of conduct will not be tolerated.”

The mayor and I then came face-to-face in a crowded elevator, and he told me he’s looking into whether he can cut off the suspended officer’s pay. Perspiration beaded on his face, and there’s more of that to come, but he’d made a cool recovery on a day when the heat closed in around him early.

*

Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at [email protected].