No Justice, No Peace

"In the minority communities, I sense a fire in the systems of the masses, a fire that can only be extinguished by justice."

I spoke these words when I ran for district attorney of Los Angeles County in 1972. Even before I ran, I was aware--it was common knowledge at the D.A.'s office, where I was a prosecutor--that there was a virulent strain of Los Angeles police who were manhandling and mistreating members of the minority communities. But when I went to the ghettos and barrios during my campaign and pledged to enforce the law equally, I heard shocking testimonials about police brutality and examples of how some police were treating members of these communities like second-class citizens. When I sought the support of police officer associations, I told them Iintended to increase the conviction rate in felony jury trials. But I also told them somethingthey had never heard before--or, regrettably, since--from a D.A. candidate.

I candidly warned them that if I became D.A., I was "going to come down hard on you guys" if excessive force continued. My disclosure did not meet with disapproval. One reason is that I was accurately perceived as being pro-police and pro--law enforcement. I had worked closely with the police for several years as a prosecutor at the D.A.'s office. During some complex murder cases they had even asked my superiors to assign me as prosecutor. I've always spoken publicly for increased pay for police. With their daily risk of death, police are the poorest-paid members of our society.

Another reason my bold statement was not met with recrimination was that the police know that only a small percentage of them use excessive force. I'd say it's roughly five percent, though I've heard slightly higher estimates. The vast majority of police officers have respect for people and the law. Rogue cops not only are responsible for creating enormous animosity in the minority communities, they are also harmful to law enforcement in general--just as the small sliver of Italians in the Mafia hurt the reputation of law-abiding Italian Americans. Good cops know this.

For instance, there is no question that the Los Angeles Police Department--along with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, one of the finest, most innovative and least corrupt departments in the country--has suffered immeasurably from the conduct of the officers in the Rodney King case. Following the King beating and verdict, anti-LAPD venom is at an all-time high: Kill the Lapd and Lapd 187 (a reference to the penal code section for murder) are scrawled on the walls in South Central Los Angeles. So a small percentage of police stain the blue uniform and, by the hostility they create, endanger the lives of thousands of innocent officers--the majority of the force. The latter clearly have a vested interest in weeding out the outlaw officers.

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In the wake of the L.A. riots sparked by the verdict in the King trial, most politicians and concerned citizens asked what could be done to avoid another monstrous civil riot. Obviously, the poverty and economic deprivation of the rioters was one cause of the riots. Despite the wacky belief of some on the far right that there is something which inheres in the genes of blacks that predisposes them to crime, the cause of most crime, manifestly, is poverty. How many people of easy circumstances were looting and pillaging during the recent riots? Look at a map of any large American city. It is no coincidence that, without exception, the area with the highest crime rate--whether it's populated by blacks, browns or whites--has the highest poverty and unemployment rates, the worst schools and social conditions. Divest the residents of Bel Air or Grosse Pointe, Michigan of almost all their money and possessions and keep them in that deprived state for a meaningful period of time. See if crimes such as theft and burglary don't rise dramatically.

Two weeks after the Los Angeles riots ended--the costliest in American history--mayors from major American cities led close to 200,000 protesters in a march on the nation's capital demanding billions of federal dollars in urban aid to avert a repeat of the riots. And in a statewide poll conducted in May by the Los Angeles Times, registered voters were asked which action would be "the most important to prevent violence like the Los Angeles riots from occurring again." An improved economy with more jobs led the long list of responses. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that, even given the indigence of the rioters, without the King beating and not-guilty verdicts, the riots would not have happened.

Although blacks have been denied economic justice for centuries in this country, the historical record shows it's when they feel they have been physically brutalized or mistreated by law enforcement that they have engaged in large-scale violence. For example, in the past half century--not including the riots by blacks throughout the nation following the assassination of Martin Luther King--there have been five massive race riots started by blacks. They were spawned not by economic injustice but by what blacks perceived as a physical violation bylaw enforcement. The four before South Central were the Watts riot in L.A. in 1965, the Newark and Detroit riots of 1967 and the riot in the Liberty City and Brownsville ghettos of Miami in1980. (The Detroit race riot of June 20, 1943--which lasted only 24 hours--was a riot started by whites, not blacks. A fight between a black man and a white man exacerbated existing racial tensions and the riot began when mobs of whites invaded a black section of the city.)

The six-day Watts riot in August 1965 was ignited when rumors spread in the black community that two white California Highway Patrol officers had beaten and kicked 21-year-old Marquette Frye into their squad car. (Frye had been suspected of driving under the influence after one of the officers spotted his car weaving recklessly.) The riot that followed his arrest resulted in 34 deaths and more than $40 million in property damage.

The Newark riot in July 1967 started when a black cab driver tried to pass a slow-moving police vehicle. Two white officers allegedly struck and injured the cabbie during a traffic arrest. Within minutes, a crowd of blacks converged on precinct headquarters and hurled rocks and bottles. By the end of the riot four days later, 26 people were dead, with an estimated $15 million in property damage.

The five-day Detroit riot the following week started when police arrested 73 customers of an after-hours club where black-power harangues and antiestablishment curses were regularly served up with the booze. As the paddy wagons ferried the angry arrestees to the police station, a bottle thrown by one of 200 protesters smashed a squad car window. When the riot was over, there were 43 deaths and more than $50 million in property damage.

The three-day Miami riot followed the acquittal of four Dade County policemen indicted in the fatal beating of a black 33-year-old motorcyclist, Arthur Lee McDuffie, a former Marine and associate manager of a life insurance company who, like Rodney King, led the police on a high-speed chase. The riot toll was 15 dead and close to $200 million in property damage. "It's always a shame when someone gets hurt," said one 58-year-old Miami black man after the riot, "but the police are set up to protect white people from their enemy, and that is us."

As far back as 1922, a writer cited by the Chicago Commission on Race Relations wrote: "History proves that nearly all race riots are started by white policemen. East St. Louis, Houston and Washington, D.C. have had terrible cataclysms provoked by white blue-coats who, in nine out of ten cases, carry their prejudices with them whenever they enter black belts [ghettos]."

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Police brutality, obviously, is not confined to Los Angeles. As Hubert Williams, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Police Foundation and former chief of police in Newark, New Jersey, says, "Police use of excessive force is a significant problem in this country, particularly in our inner cities." Steven Hawkins, assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund headquarters in New York, adds that "from rural America to America's big cities, police brutality has been and continues to be pervasive in the black and Latino communities."

Although members of minority communities are by far the most frequent victims of police brutality, the Los Angeles Daily News observed that rogue cops administer street justice to any suspect who angers them. "Often, this curbside punishment takes place after a high-speed chase, when a suspect talks back--'contempt of cop'--or when a person. is slow to obey an order." Attorney Allen Bell, a former police officer, says, "There is a code of the West. If you run from the police you get beat. The only thing different in this one [the King case] was that it was caught on tape."

In the aftermath of the King beating on March 3, 1991, everyone tried to assign blame. Former LAPD chief Daryl Gates received the brunt of it for allegedly fostering a militant climate in the department. Ultimately, after a long and prominent career, he was forced into retirement.

But the moment the media, public officials and nearly everyone else started blaming the chief of police for the beating and unfolding conflagration, I (continued on page 156)No Justice, No Peace(continued from page 68) sat back in utter amazement. To this day, no one has blamed the one branch of the judicial system that, in my opinion, is primarily responsible: the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office. Why do I make this charge? Because if we confine ourselves to conventional logic, the finger of guilt points irresistibly to the D.A.'s office. Let's take it step by step.

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In Los Angeles, as in other metropolitan areas of the country, police are virtually never prosecuted for police brutality. As the West Virginia mountaineer said, "No matter how thin I make my pancakes, they always have two sides." But at the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office--even when there are independent witnesses corroborating the victim's allegation of police brutality, as well as such circumstantial evidence as multiple shots in the back, or other evidence incompatible with the officer's version of the event--there is only one side: the side of the police.

In all fairness to Ira Reiner, D.A. at the time of the King beating and riots, this was not a policy he instituted. Reiner merely perpetuated a policy (prosecutions are so few and far between that they don't essentially alter the policy) that was in place long before he took office.

"There is a single standard of justice," Reiner insisted. "We prosecute police officers and private individuals, anyone we feel has violated the law." But facts are stubborn little devils that speak for themselves.

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The Special Investigations Division of the Los Angeles County D.A.'s office--with 16 deputy D.A.s and 12 D.A. investigators--is responsible for prosecutions of police misconduct. The division conducts probes of both nonshooting (excessive force) and officer-involved shooting cases.

Let's start with nonshooting excessive force cases. In 1990 and 1991, reporters David Parrish and Beth Barrett of the Los Angeles Daily News wrote an impressive series of articles about police brutality in the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. They also wrote one of the few articles ever printed in a Los Angeles newspaper exposing the lack of police brutality prosecutions by the D.A.'s office. Examining Special Investigations Division records, they discovered that from 1986 to 1990 the D.A.'s office investigated accusations of excessive force against only 54 LAPD officers. Most of the 54 cases were referred to the Special Investigations Division by LAPD's Internal Affairs.

Remarkably, the D.A. rejected all but one case, when an officer was accused of assaulting a fellow officer during an off-duty dispute. Naturally, the other 53 victims were private citizens, and the D.A. failed to prosecute even "when LAPD officers were willing to testify they witnessed beatings of prisoners an d citizens by fellow officers."

With approximately 20,000 police officers in Los Angeles County, the LAPD alone logs an average of 500 complaints of excessive force per year. In addition, around 2000 complaints are registered against police officers in the county with a local watchdog group, Police Watch. But the Special Investigations Division prosecutes an average of just two of these cases per year, and then usually against police agencies in the county other than the LAPD or LASD. In fact, to find a significant excessive-force prosecution against the LAPD prior to the King case, one has to go all the way back to the Bloody Christmas beating of seven prisoners on December 25, 1951. (Eight cops were indicted for felonious assault, and five were convicted.)

In officer-involved shooting cases, by agreement with the LAPD, LASD and more than half of the 87 incorporated cities in Los Angeles County, the D.A.'s office is immediately notified. At least one deputy D.A. and D.A. investigator "roll out" to the scene of the shooting, where they conduct an independent probe to determine if a crime was committed by the officer or officers involved. Each year the Special Investigations Division rolls out on approximately 150 such cases throughout the county.

The Daily News found 387 officer-involved shooting cases--including 153 fatalities--at the LAPD between 1985 and mid-1991. In many cases the victims or their survivors received large civil judgments from juries. In none of them, however, did the D.A. file criminal charges.

Over at the sheriff's department, the Daily News reviewed 202 officer-involved shootings between January 1, 1985, and August 27, 1990. It found 56 cases where people were shot under "seriously questionable circumstances"--victim unarmed, shot in the back, etc. In none of the 202 shootings, including the aforementioned questionable incidents, did the D.A.'s office file criminal charges. Again, in many cases large civil judgments were awarded to the victims. In some cases the misconduct was apparently so clear and severe that the city or county settled out of court, as in the $1 million settlement of a 1988 incident described by one Long Beach police officer as a "sheriff's execution."

The situation gets much scarier. When I spoke with one present and two past Special Investigations Division deputy D.A.s, as well as with other people long connected with L.A. law enforcement (including a former prosecutor in the D.A.'s office with decades of experience), they could recall only one instance, in 1973, when an LAPD officer was tried for murder or even manslaughter in an on-duty shooting of a private citizen. And manslaughter can be committed where there's only criminal negligence.

(Apparently,1973 was a bumper year for police prosecutions. In the long history of the Dallas police department, only one officer has been prosecuted for an on-duty killing. It was a 1973 case in which an officer shot a12-year-old burglary suspect while playing Russian roulette with the boy, reportedly to secure a confession.)

In fact, for at least the last decade, though there have been hundreds of officer-involved shootings by the LAPD, no one can remember a single case in which an LAPD officer was prosecuted for even an on-duty nonfatal shooting of a private citizen.

If we're to believe the Los Angeles D.A.'s office, there has been only one case, then, in several decades where an LAPD officer has unlawfully shot someone to death. And for at least the past ten years, no officer has even committed an unlawful act with his gun. To believe this gives logic a bad name. Even the LAPD doesn't believe this. Between 1985 and mid-1991, Chief Gates himself found 35 cases in which he ruled that officers wounded or killed persons in avoidable or unnecessary circumstances.

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It's estimated that during the past half century, on-duty cops in L.A. County shot and killed well in excess of 1000 people. According to the California Department of Justice's Bureau of Criminal Statistics, between 1988 and 1991 alone, there were 223 homicides by police officers in L.A. County. Yet, the indictment in 1992 of a Compton police officer for voluntary manslaughter in the killings of two Samoan brothers is believed to be the first homicide prosecution of any law-enforcement officer in the county for the on-duty killing of a private citizen since the LAPD prosecution almost two decades earlier in 1973. (An LASD deputy sheriff was prosecuted and convicted of second-degree murder in the 1982 shooting death of a pregnant woman's fetus.) The only homicide prosecution anyone can remember before 1973 was of a Los Angeles deputy sheriff in 1969.

Perhaps the most alarming statistic of all is that in the ten years between 1982 and the Compton police officer prosecution, Special Investigations rolled out to the scene of more than 1000 officer-involved shooting cases. Yet not once did they find criminality on the part of any officer in the entire county, not even criminal negligence.

It couldn't be clearer, then, that the Los Angeles D.A.'s office looks the other way at police brutality. Johnnie Coch-rane, a former L.A. assistant district attorney and now a plaintiff's lawyer in many successful civil suits against L.A. County police agencies, says, "There have been a number of police brutality cases throughout the years where the D.A. should definitely have filed charges, but he didn't." A current L.A . County Superior Court judge said a few years ago, "I have a distinct feeling that the district attorney, either intentionally or unintentionally, has a double standard when it comes to filing criminal complaints [against the police]."

"Because of the sweetheart relationship between the Los Angeles D.A.'s office and the LAPD and county sheriff," says Michael Zinzun, chairman of the Coalition Against Police Abuse in L.A., "there have been less than a handful of prosecutions of police officers since I started monitoring the situation in 1976." Lack of prosecution is not, of course, confined to L.A. It's a national phenomenon.

"Police brutality occurs much too often and is much too widespread in the entire state of Florida," says Sevell C. Brown III, chapter president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, "with far, far too few criminal prosecutions of those officers involved." Steven Hawkins puts it succinctly: "It is our experience throughout the country that the D.A. hardly ever prosecutes for police brutality."

Police brutality, as well as the D.A.'s malfeasance in failing to prosecute it, is democratic. Many whites, particularly poor whites, have been the victims of it. On May 8, 1992, while L.A. was still reeling from the aftershocks of the riots, a Massachusetts state judge in a civil suit ruled against 13 Boston police officers accused of using excessive force in severely beating a handcuffed white motorist who had led them on a car chase but offered no resistance when arrested. Not surprisingly, no criminal charges were brought against the officers by the Boston D.A's office, even though there were independent witnesses.

Reiner deserves no credit for prosecuting the police in the King case. Giving credit implie she had a choice. Because of private citizen George Holliday's 81-second home videotape of the beating, he had no choice. If there had been no tape, there would have been no prosecution. No one would have ever heard of Rodney King.

The day after the beating--before the police knew the video existed--King's brother, Paul King, went to the LAPD's Foothill station to file a complaint. Instead, he was told by a sergeant that his brother was in "big trouble" for leading police on a dangerous high-speed chase. He left the station knowing he hadn't started an investigation. In his daily log, the sergeant reported that no further action was necessary.

This type of treatment from police has caused enormous rage in the minority communities for decades. There is no equal justice, blacks and Latinos point out. In the cruel poetry of their lives, the police can violate the law and get by with it, but they sure as hell can't. When blacks finally had the indisputable evidence of police brutality on videotape in the King case, and there still was no justice, the black community erupted in violence. "I knew this would happen," Vernon Leggins, a black resident of South Central, said at the height of the riots. "A lot of anger has been building up during the years. The way we have been beaten and talked to, this should have happened long ago."

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In our society, we try to deter criminal conduct by the threat of punishment. This system is hardly peculiar to modern society. From the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians to the present, it has been the secular way to control the dark impulses of humankind. For the police, however, there is little threat of punishment and, hence, no real deterrent. Most human beings are kept from criminal conduct by the threat of punishment. Police are human beings. If police were prosecuted, most would also be deterred by the threat of punishment. But because police know they are unlikely to be prosecuted by the D.A. for police brutality, there is no deterrent.

During the King beating there were several civilian witnesses. Ask yourself this question: If the officers who beat King knew that there was a D.A. downtown who would prosecute them for police brutality, would they have been as likely to rain 56 blows with their batons to the head, torso and legs of a defenseless person? What I am saying is that if the D.A. and his predecessors had done their job throughout the years, there is a reasonable probability that the Rodney King beating would not have taken place.

Likewise, if the D.A. had been prosecuting police brutality cases through the years, with a fair share of convictions (more on this later), the likelihood of a riot following the Simi Valley verdict would have been substantially diminished. The black community would most likely have viewed the stunning verdict--as most nonblacks have--as being mostly attributable to the conservative venue in which the case was tried: nearly all-white Ventura County. Instead, they viewed it as confirmation of their indictment of the criminal justice system in America.

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Let's examine the findings and recommendations in the 228-page report of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department (the Christopher Commission). A month after the King beating, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley appointed a seven-member commission (later augmented by three members appointed by Chief Gates) chaired' by former Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher to conduct a comprehensive review of the excessive-force problem in the LAPD. With astaff of 130, 101 of whom were lawyers, the commission examined thousands of internal LAPD documents and interviewed hundreds of witnesses--including more than 500 current and retired Los Angeles police officers.

The commission found "a significant number of LAPD officers who repetitively use excessive force against the public." Between 1986 and 1990, 183 officers had four or more excessive-force allegations, 44 had six or more,16 had eight or more and one had 16 allegations. "We know who the bad guys are," testified former LAPD assistant chief Jesse Brewer. "Reputations become well known, especially to the sergeants, and then, of course, to the lieutenants and the captains in the area. But I don't see anyone bringing these people up."

From 1986 through 1990, the city of L.A. paid in excess of $20 million in judgments, settlements and jury verdicts in more than 300 lawsuits against LAPD officers alleging use of excessive force. In 1991 alone, $14.7 million was paid. These figures don't include settlements and verdicts against the LASD ($15.5 million between January 1989 and May 1992) and the many other police agencies in the county. The commission reviewed 83 lawsuits and concluded that "a majority of cases involved clear and often egregious officer misconduct resulting in serious injury or death to the victim. The LAPD's investigation of these 83 cases was deficient in many respects, and discipline against the officers involved was frequently light and often nonexistent."

The Christopher Commission failed to note a critically important point:In not one of these 83 cases was there a criminal prosecution by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office.

In a survey of 650 LAPD officers, 24.5 percent agreed that "racial biason the part of officers toward minority citizens currently exists." And 27.6 percent agreed that prejudice sometimes leads to the use of excessive force.

Among the commission's more shocking findings were computer messages sent between patrol cars over LAPD's mobile digital terminals, statements such as: "I would love to drive down Slauson[a street that runs through South Central] with a flamethrower. We would have a barbecue." "I almost got me a Mexican last night but he dropped the damn gun too quick."

The commission found that a propensity for violence on the part of some officers was also a contributing factor. Although obviously far from the norm, there were such transmissions as: "Capture him, beat him and treat him like dirt." "If I find it, it'll be [officer-involved shooting] time. God, I wanna kill something oh so bad." "Wanna go over to Delano later and hand out some street justice." "It was fun, but no chance to bust heads." Only after a few of these messages were made public by the commission did the LAPD start auditing the system. The LAPD then found, per the commission, "260 patently offensive comments over a one-month period."

Of the 129 recommendations made by the commission, almost all are aimed at reducing the use of excessive force. Although areas such as recruitment and training are covered, the commission concluded that the key to reducing excessive force was to implement a "major overhaul of the disciplinary system" within the LAPD. (The same recommendation--even to the extent of using an independent Inspector General to monitor the discipline--had been urged 27 years earlier by the McCone Commission, which followed the Watts riot and on which Christopher served as vice chairman.)

What's amazing is that after months of highly publicized inquiry and investigation, the celebrated Christopher Commission recommended internal discipline by the LAPD as the principal way of dealing with police brutality. In other words, the police should be relied on to continue to police themselves.

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Unbelievably, there isn't one word in the entire report that refers to the lack of D.A. prosecutions of police brutality. Nor is there one word about how the D.A., whose job it is to prosecute police brutality cases, can play a part in reducing police brutality. It's not as if the commission was unaware of the law. Its report points out that "LAPD policy and the penal code require that force be reasonable." It's just that the Christopher Commission apparently believes that the D.A.'s job is to prosecute all members of the community except the police.

If one were to confront members of the commission with this colossal lack of insight, they would be forced to invoke the anemic argument that they were commissioned only to investigate the LAPD, not the D.A.'s office. However, the commission itself stated that it "sought to examine all aspects of the law-enforcement structure in Los Angeles that might cause or contribute to the problem of excessive force." The D.A.'s office, of course, is an integral part of the law-enforcement structure of Los Angeles, being the agency responsible for prosecuting all felonies in the county. Moreover, the Christopher Commission did make recommendations concerning an entity outside the LAPD. "Community councils are to be created, composed of local residents and community and business leaders, to work with the police ... in matters that affect their neighborhoods," the commission said.

There are few tyrants like blind custom, and I believe that the Christopher Commission never recommended more aggressive D.A. action against police-brutality cases simply because the absence of such prosecutions has been institutionalized in L.A.

At present, the only thing a rogue cop really has to fear is internal discipline by his own department. And with the widely acknowledged code of silence among police officers, only a small percentage of police-brutality allegations result in internal discipline.

For instance, the Christopher Commission found that of 2152 citizen allegations of excessive force from 1986 through 1990, only 42 (two percent) were sustained by LAPD's Internal Affairs Division. (Former assistant chief Jesse Brewer estimates that for every complaint, there are three or four incidents that citizens don't report. A refrain often heard in the black community is, "Who are you going to tell the police on? The police?") The typical punishment is suspension without pay for a week or, in unusual cases, dismissal from the force. As a deterrent, none of this begins to compare with a criminal prosecution and possible incarceration in the state prison.

(An independent investigation of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department headed by retired Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James G. Kolts found "deeply disturbing evidence of excessive force and lax discipline." Unlike the earlier Christopher Commission report, the Kolts report referred to the "apparent disinclination on the part of the D.A.'s office to prosecute excessive-force cases involving the LASD" and the "failure to prosecute more than one questionable shooting incident in the past decade out of 382 referrals of possible prosecutions to it." But, like the Christopher Commission, the Kolts report principally recommended internal discipline as the solution to the problem. It makes no mention of prosecution as a deterrent, nor, among its 180 recommendations, is there one urging increased prosecutions of police brutality.)

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Why don't D.A.s prosecute the police? There are a number of reasons for this dereliction of duty. Police are correctly viewed as "the thin blue line" that protects the public from criminals and lawlessness. D.A.s--most of whom, after all, are politicians, not statesmen--fear that the public might perceive them as antipolice and anti-law enforcement, a significant negative at election time. Apart from the political hazard of prosecuting the police, D.A.s and police work together daily in their efforts against crime. Each is dependent on the other. A fraternity develops between the two that weakens the resolve of the D.A. to go after members of the team.

The standard cop-out of D.A.s everywhere for this failure to prosecute police-brutality cases is that juries won't convict police officers because they nearly always accept their version of what happened. Roger Gunson, head of the L.A. District Attorney's Special Investigations Division, says, "It's difficult to get convictions because there is a respect for police officers." But given the fact that Gunson, under Reiner, rarely prosecuted police, how would he have sufficient experience to develop such a calcified defeatist attitude?

Actually, the contention that juries nearly always side with the officers flies in the face of the evidence. Almost every week in L.A., the morning papers report that another civil jury has awarded the victim of police brutality (or his or her survivors) a $100,000 judgment and sometimes a judgment in excess of $1 million.

Indeed, the only way victims of police brutality around the country get redress for grievances is to hire private lawyers and sue the police. The police in these cases are defended by the city attorney's office. All adverse judgments are paid by the city, not by the individual defendant officer. It must be emphasized that the testimony of the witnesses and the factual issues at these civil trials are virtually identical to what they would be if the D.A. had filed criminal charges. The principal distinction is in the burden of proof. Although in a criminal trial the D.A. must prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt--a higher burden of proof--the plaintiff's lawyer in a civil suit still must prove that the victim's charges are true by a preponderance of the evidence, which in itself is a substantial burden. Civil lawyers--generally members of small law firms with limited resources--routinely convince juries that an officer caused unjustifiable injury or death (frequently with clear evidence of malicious intent or reckless disregard for the consequences, both of which give rise to criminal responsibility). Why can't the D.A.'s office, with its vast resources and power to grant immunity to less culpable officers for their testimony, meet this higher burden? And it's beyond a reasonable doubt, not beyond all doubt.

The conclusive proof that criminal convictions can be secured against police brutality is the record of the U.S. Attorney's office in federal prosecutions against police for violating the civil rights of victims by the use of excessive force. (The four police officers in the King case are presently under federal indictment for the beating. Their trial is set to begin in February.) Of the U.S. Department of Justice's 123 criminal prosecutions involving police brutality since October 1988--cases in which the federal prosecutor was faced with the same burden of proof as his D.A. state counterpart--convictions were obtained in approximately 75 percent of the cases, a respectable conviction rate. (Actually, although the burden of proof is the same--beyond a reasonable doubt--the federal prosecutor's task is even greater. Not only must it be proved that excessive force was used but that the officer did so with the specific intent to deprive the victim of his civil rights.) Why don't these prosecutions serve as an effective deterrent to police brutality? It's estimated that they represent less than one half of one percent of all alleged excessive-force cases in the country.

Would prosecuting the police ultimately hurt society by forcing officers to act tentatively in situations that call for aggressive conduct? I doubt it. Although prosecutions would heighten awareness among all officers in the proper use of force, 95 percent of the police wouldn't feel handcuffed on the job because they simply don't harbor the impulse to mistreat or brutalize those whom they detain or arrest. Knowing that officers on the street are compelled to act spontaneously in highly dangerous, life-threatening situations, the D.A. should continue to give officers considerable latitude and discretion in their use of force, with the benefit of the doubt always going to the officer. But carte blanche authority--essentially the current situation--must cease. When the officer's conduct clearly trespasses beyond permissible margins into blatant, egregious and unnecessary use of force, the officer has to be criminally accountable for his conduct. To hold otherwise is to hold that in the process of enforcing the law, an officer is legally entitled to violate the law himself.

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Law enforcement, in its endless fight against crime, has functioned like a fire department racing from fire to fire, stamping them out. It's time that our society broadened its vision, sharpened its insight, deepened its concern and compassion and made a concerted effort to prevent the fire from starting.

Given the continuing polarization of whites and blacks in our society and the discontent and deprivation of the latter, there is no vaccine within reach against future riots. How to improve economic conditions in the nation's ghettos is for the social engineers and is beyond the ken of this writer. But if we want to help prevent another Watts, another Newark, Detroit, Liberty City or South Central, we must demonstrate to the black community that, in terms of law enforcement, there is equal justice. As posters carried by rioters proclaimed during the L.A. riots: No Justice, No Peace. When there is no equal justice, those who are denied it understandably lose respect for the law. And when people lose respect for the law, there's a greater likelihood that they will violate it.

The only way to show the black community that justice exists is to prosecute police brutality. Empty rhetoric about equal justice will no longer do. Blue-chip commissions that make recommendations for reform, new police chiefs and improved training programs, etc., are essentially only window dressing. All these cosmetic nostrums for a severe problem are implicitly anchored on the erroneous premise that you can change human nature. You can't.

When the last embers from the King case burn out, rogue cops--whether they are five percent of the force or more--will eventually go back to their old ways. The lessons of South Central, as those of other race riots, will be quickly forgotten by a society whose collective memory lasts only as long as a breath upon a mirror. It's immaterial whether rogue police are consciously attracted to police work for its investiture of absolute power on the streets over one's fellow man, or whether the badge, gun and uniform elicit the worst in them. The point is that they are there, and though there will always be some police brutality, the only way to deter a substantial amount of it is to vigorously prosecute flagrant police misconduct.

In the Rodney King case, at that point where the baton blows should have stopped and the officers could have moved in to overcome King (assuming he gave any resistance at that point), the only check they had on their nightsticks was their conscience, and their conscience came up wanting. If there had been the additional check that everyone else in our society faces when contemplating the commission of a criminal act--the threat of prosecution--they may not have continued their brutal onslaught.

Winston Churchill once said that the solution to every problem, no matter how complex, is common sense. If we do just a modicum of thinking, we will see that the solution to this problem is astonishingly simple. No additional money need be spent because a professional staff is already in place. All we have to do is insist that the district attorney (called the state's attorney in cities such as Chicago and Miami) does the job he's elected and paid to do.

How can we ensure this? First, the media must put public pressure on the D.A. to prosecute police brutality and enforce the law equally. Second, the citizens of the community must demand that candidates for district attorney pledge to prosecute police brutality and vote out of office all D.A.s who do not.

Justice is the ligament that holds society together. In a nation that prides itself on the principle that no one is above the law, the police have too often become an extremely costly exception to this fundamental precept. Until D.A.s around the country start doing their job and police are held accountable for criminal behavior, as certain as leaves fall in autumn there will be other Watts, Newarks, Detroits, Miamis and South Centrals. It's just a matter of time.

Out of the ashes and graffiti-scarred rubble of the riots in L.A. will come new buildings, if the Rebuild L.A. program, headed by Peter Ueberroth, is successful. Next time, rioters will burn down the new buildings. There is a fire in the system of the minority communities--one, as I said in 1972, that can be extinguished only by justice.