Jackson Testifies in Brutality Case : Law enforcement: The ex-officer tells jurors that a Long Beach policeman shoved him through a plate-glass window. The scene was recorded on videotape by NBC.

Retired police sergeant Don Jackson testified Thursday that a Long Beach police officer shoved him through a plate-glass window after a traffic stop--a scene captured on videotape by an NBC television camera crew.

When the officer asked him to place his hands behind his head and turn his body toward a large plate-glass window, he obliged, Jackson testified. Then, he said, “I felt myself shoved forward into the glass.”

During his first day of testimony in the trial of two former officers on misdemeanor charges of assault and filing a false police report, Jackson told jurors in Long Beach Municipal Court that one officer, Mark Dickey, twisted his fingers backward, kicked his ankles, dug his nails into his neck and yanked his back.

“You hurt my back,” Jackson said he told the officer.

“That’s good,” he said Dickey responded.

The videotaped image image of Dickey appearing to shatter the plate-glass window by shoving Jackson through it was played earlier this week for jurors. The scene was shot by the NBC camera crew tailing Jackson, a black activist who drove to Long Beach with a friend two years ago to conduct a so-called “sting” designed to show how police mistreat minorities.

The highly publicized case focused national attention on Long Beach and its Police Department.

“It’s probably the biggest misdemeanor trial that ever hit Long Beach,” said Ed George Jr., attorney for Mark Ramsey, the other former officer on trial.

On Thursday, Jackson recounted the Jan. 14, 1989, confrontation in detail, saying he “had no intention of provoking a reaction.”

The activist denied allegations by Dickey’s attorneys that Jackson broke the window with his elbow. He also denied the attorneys’ allegation that at another point on the videotape he used his hand to make a loud thump when Dickey appears to push him down on the hood of the police cruiser.

“What hit the car?” asked Deputy Dist. Atty. Herbert Lapin. “That was my face,” Jackson responded.

Dickey, 30, faces assault charges, and both he and his former partner, Ramsey, 28, are charged with falsifying a police report.

Jackson has yet to face what is expected to be more grueling questioning from defense attorneys, who argue that Jackson arrived in Long Beach to stage a media event and purposely provoked Dickey into a confrontation.

The officers reacted as they had been trained to when confronted with someone who does not respond to police commands and uses tactics to divert an officer’s attention, according to George.

On Thursday, Jackson also denied a series of statements that Ramsey and Dickey made in their police report. The officers said that Jackson used obscenities, walked agitatedly with tightened fists, stood in a fighting stance and shook his fist at Dickey, among other things.

George told jurors earlier this week that the officers were under duress when they wrote the report.

“Officers believed the report had been written to the best of their recollection,” he said.

Both Dickey and Ramsey retired from the Police Department after taking stress-related leaves related to the Jackson case. Jackson, now studying criminology in graduate school, had earlier taken a disability retirement from the Hawthorne Police Department.