Police Abuse

The Mexican consul general in Los Angeles charged Tuesday that allegations of police abuse and escalating acts of hostility and violence against immigrants were eroding many Latinos' faith in the U.S. justice system. Jose Angel Pescador Osuna called "excessive use of force and handguns on the police's behalf" one of several factors heightening violence.

When local gang members swept up Tyrone Avenue in Van Nuys one day, scrawling their graffiti on the redwood fence around Vance Wells' yard, a Neighborhood Watch lady up the street called police, who sent out out a civilian volunteer to help paint over the vandalism. The woman living across from Wells knows the desk sergeant by name from the time she saw a burglar and the Van Nuys Division sent out three cars and a helicopter, searching for three hours before they nabbed him.

Police misconduct remains an "incessant" problem in the United States, and the failure to wipe out abuse and brutality requires wholesale changes, such as giving citizens the right to sue renegade departments, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded Friday. The commission, reviewing the progress and setbacks in police reforms of the last two decades, found that better policing often has come "at a terrible price" for minority communities, "which seem to bear the brunt of the abuse."

In the neighborly environs of Altadena, his family and friends know him simply as Glenn. He is a quiet man who sticks close to home. Or he kicks back in a local park with guys he has known since childhood. When he came into a lot of money a year ago, not much changed. Then there is Rodney. His life isn't nearly as tidy. Rodney was beaten within a measure of his life by the police. His broken psyche and shattered bones won him $3.8 million, but no amount of money can seem to end his trouble.

Eddie Harris has lived on a quiet stretch of 11th Avenue in Southwest Los Angeles for nearly three decades, and he can remember only one unpleasant personal encounter with members of the Los Angeles Police Department. It was during a traffic stop years ago as he was driving to work. "They told me I would have run through a stop sign if they hadn't been there," the now-retired department store supervisor said during an interview in his driveway.

The state Assembly on Friday approved four bills, inspired by the videotaped beating of a teenager by Inglewood police last year, that backers hope will reduce officer brutality and make it easier for the public to file complaints. The bills were written by a commission of legal experts and community activists brought together by Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson (D-Culver City).

Prosecutors said Wednesday that they will retry the assault case against former Inglewood Police Officer Jeremy Morse, who was caught on videotape last summer slamming a handcuffed teenager onto a car and striking him in the face. "We will retry this case to bring this matter to some sort of just resolution for the community," said Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley. "Given seven voted guilty here, it was an easy decision to make."

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Activist Angy Peter, who has spent years exposing police failures in the sprawling township of Khayelitsha outside Cape Town, was due to testify at an upcoming commission of inquiry. Instead, she is behind bars, charged with killing a petty thief and police informer, Rowan du Preez, who supporters say Peter once saved from an angry mob that had accused him of theft. The timing of Peter's arrest and the homicide allegation are both suspicious, say fellow activists from Cape Town's Social Justice Coalition.

Twenty years ago, as Rodney King was beaten by Los Angeles police officers, a private citizen in a nearby apartment turned on his video camera. Largely because of that tape, four officers were criminally charged. In July, a homeless schizophrenic man died after a police beating in Fullerton. Audio from a cellphone video caught Kelly Thomas' cries for his father and helped force an investigation that resulted in a first-degree murder charge against one police officer. The increasing availability of cellphones and video cameras has fundamentally changed police abuse cases, creating vital evidence in cases that were once dismissed as matters of conflicting accounts between officers and citizens.