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It seems plain from watching the videotape that Jeremy Morse, the Inglewood police officer at the center of the controversy, used excessive force when taking Donovan Jackson into custody. Morse, who looks like a man who knows his way around the weight room, can be seen picking Jackson up from the ground and slamming him forcefully onto the trunk lid of a police car. While Jackson is still bent over the car, Morse strikes him in the face with a closed fist. He is then restrained by a fellow Inglewood officer when it appears he is about to hit Jackson again. Okay, it looks bad, and if the investigation reveals it to be as bad as it looks, then Morse deserves whatever fate the criminal- and civil- justice systems might mete out. Investigations have been initiated by the Inglewood Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the district attorney, and the FBI. Before this drama is over, Morse's entire life will have been laid bare for the entire world to see. Get ready for some headline like this: "Accused Cop Returned Tapes to Blockbuster Without Rewinding." On Monday, Inglewood mayor Roosevelt Dorn took a measured approach and called for calm. "[I]t doesn't resemble Rodney King," Dorn said, invoking the inevitable yet facile comparison, "because you don't have four or five officers beating this one young man. What I saw was one officer. The only concern I have at this point is to see justice is done. One officer's conduct is not going to destroy this city." But such reasonableness must have failed to satisfy the baser appetites of some of the mayor's constituents, leading him to change his tune overnight and call for Morse's head on a pike. On Tuesday, Dorn told reporters he believed Morse to be guilty of at least four felonies. "And I'm sure if I looked there are other crimes," he said. Dorn was a superior court judge prior to his election in 1997, so one might expect him to be more circumspect in his public statements. Indeed, should Morse one day be convicted of a crime in this case, we can look forward to seeing Dorn's comments liberally quoted in the appellate briefs. The incident began at about 5 P.M. on Saturday, when two deputies from the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, which patrols an area adjacent to Inglewood, saw a car with expired registration tags on Century Boulevard, just east of Los Angeles International Airport. Jackson was a passenger in the car; his father, Coby Chavis, 41, was the driver. The deputies followed the car as it entered a gas station, then spoke with Chavis while Jackson went to the cashier's booth. For reasons still unclear, Jackson had an altercation with the sheriff's deputies when he returned to the car. This attracted the attention of passing Inglewood officers, four of whom responded and joined the fray. Strangely, of the six officers shown in the video, the two deputies who initiated the stop appear to be the most detached. As Morse lifts Jackson from the ground, a deputy opens the back door of the sheriff's patrol car, presumably so they can transport Jackson to their station. But when Morse slams Jackson onto the car's trunk lid and strikes him, the deputies back away. One of them, way, way away. It does not seem unreasonable to conclude that the deputies were troubled by what they had witnessed. Still, much remains to be learned. In the video, Officer Morse can be seen bleeding from a cut near his left ear. If it was Jackson who caused the cut, he is not the cherubic little lamb his supporters are so eager to present. The oft-repeated claims that Jackson was just standing there when he was set upon by the officers strike me as preposterous, as do the inevitable reports that officers used the "N-word." I won't surrender my credibility by claiming I've never heard a cop use the word, but I strongly doubt anyone used it on Jackson that day. The four Inglewood officers must have been fairly well acquainted with one another, and one of them was himself black. But in all likelihood they had never met the two sheriff's deputies they came to assist. For a cop to use the word in a busy gas station, on a busy street, in front of officers he doesn't know is all but unthinkable. In police work these days, it's almost better to be accused of killing someone than calling him a you-know-what. Investigators may find it difficult to sort out the truth. The tape, as was the case in the Rodney King arrest, begins at some point after things heated up and therefore doesn't tell the entire story. Some witnesses, motivated by allegiance to one party or the other, may lie or embellish their accounts. Even the man who shot the tape, Mitchell Crooks, seems to have an agenda. When asked by reporters if he had heard the officers use any racial slurs, Crooks responded that he hadn't, "but they probably did." So much for being an impartial witness. As the events unfold outside Crooks's motel room, he can be heard on the tape giving running commentary to others in the room. Near the end of the tape, Crooks says, regarding Officer Morse, "You just lost your job, buddy." And maybe he has. But I'll close with a little anecdote from the Dunphy Files. I was once on patrol in an area that Dirty Harry Callahan would have described as a "VFW neighborhood" — Very Few Whites. And when a white person was spotted in the area, he was usually there to buy dope. I stopped one such man, and when he stepped from his car he kept his right hand hidden behind his back. When I grabbed his arm a small pistol fell to the ground at our feet. My partner and I wrestled with him for what seemed like an eternity with the gun only inches from his hand. I brought the festivities to a close by crowning the guy with my flashlight. A woman was watching from across the street, and she later informed our sergeant that we had roughed up the poor fellow for no reason at all. The sergeant asked her if she had seen the gun. She had not, and she agreed that this new information certainly put a different light on things. Yes, things look bad for Officer Morse. But things are not always as they seem. Let the investigations take their course, and let the chips fall where they may. In the meantime, why doesn't everyone just be quiet. — Jack Dunphy is an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department. "Jack Dunphy" is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management. |
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ell,
here we go again. In Inglewood last Saturday, a white police officer was
videotaped dishing out a bit of the rough stuff to a black teenager, setting
the stage for the no-justice-no-peace crowd to carry on and howl about
it right through the dog days of summer and then some. There will be no
shortage of decibels devoted to the subject in the days and weeks to come.
It seems dispassionate discourse is all but impossible when the matter
is discussed, with the talk shows devolving into shouting matches at the
mere suggestion that there might be more to the story than the tape revealed.
Appearing on Hannity & Colmes Monday night, attorney Leo Terrell,
never a portrait of serenity, was so agitated he couldn't even stay in
his chair. Even Alan Colmes seemed embarrassed for him. 
