LA police deny 'attack' on black youth akin to King case

A LOS ANGELES police officer has been suspended from duty after he was caught on video smashing the head of a handcuffed black teenager into the back of a car and punching him in the face during an arrest.

The incident involving 16-year-old Donovan Jackson has led to comparisons with the beating of black motorist Rodney King more than a decade ago.

In that case four white Los Angeles Police Department officers were captured on videotape hitting King with their batons. Their acquittal on assault charges sparked the 1992 LA riots which left 55 people dead in one of the worst civil disturbances in US history.

Following the filming of Jackson’s arrest on Saturday, white Inglewood police officer Jeremy Morse was placed on administrative leave and an investigation is under way.

The incident, which happened at a petrol station in the Inglewood area, was captured on video by a tourist, Mitchell Crooks, who saw Jackson’s arrest from a nearby hotel.

His dramatic film shows a police officer picking up the handcuffed boy and slamming his face down onto a squad car. The officer then punched him in the head while he was pinned down. Police booked Jackson who was a passenger in a car being driven by his father, Coby Chavis Jr, for allegedly assaulting a police officer. He was later released following medical treatment.

The officers involved are from Inglewood Police Department and were with two LA County sheriff’s deputies probing a car driven by Jackson’s father which had expired registration. The deputies had pulled up behind Chavis in the petrol station and began talking to him while Jackson went into the station’s shop to buy crisps.

The deputies say when the boy came out he argued with them and protested a request to sit in the patrol car while they talked to his father. They say Jackson lunged at one of them and the incident was spotted by four Inglewood police officers who then approached and arrested the youth.

“The incident is being taken very seriously”, said Inglewood Police Lieutenant Eve Irvine.

Both the Inglewood Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have begun formal investigations into the incident, she said. Lt Irvine said images from the petrol station’s surveillance cameras will be viewed to determine what occurred. The Los Angeles district attorney’s office is also probing the incident.

Spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said: “What occurred within the video is extremely disturbing to the Inglewood Police Department and also to the administrators of the city.”

Sheriff’s spokesman Sergeant Richard Myers said Jackson had become combative and was subdued with force and taken into custody. But Jackson’s family say the boy did not provoke the incident. They described him as a developmentally handicapped student who had no arrest record and who did not understand what was happening to him.

The case has already provoked comparisons with the Rodney King beating. Najee Ali of Project Islamic HOPE, a community activist group, told the Los Angeles Times newspaper: “We want this police officer fired and prosecuted. This is another Rodney King beating, it’s not a matter of race, it’s a matter of police culture.”

But although Roosevelt F Dorn, mayor of Inglewood called the tape disturbing and pledged a thorough investigation, he insisted it “doesn’t resemble Rodney King because you don’t have four or five officers beating one young man”.