Neither Side Views Decision as Final Victory or Defeat : Reactions: Rights activists voice concern and anger while police supporters express cautious relief.

By PATT MORRISON and ANDREA FORD

May 11, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Dismay and relief, tempered on both sides by the awareness that “it’s not over until it’s over,” greeted the announcement Friday that the Los Angeles County Grand Jury will not indict any more of the officers who were on hand the night Rodney G. King was beaten.

Because the officers--many of them with the Los Angeles Police Department--may still be prosecuted federally or disciplined internally, neither of the opposing camps in the King matter claimed outright defeat or complete victory.

But the reactions of civil rights activists who had demanded that the 17 onlookers be charged ranged from concern to fury.

“This represents a major disappointment,” said John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League. “It’s a sad day in the history of Los Angeles that some 17 police officers are going to be able to get away with being accessories to a crime.”

Mack said he was “not sure every legal stone was upturned” to find a legal basis to charge them. If no state law was applicable, he said, he is surprised Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner did not call for appropriate legislation (which Mayor Tom Bradley did, late Friday). Two pieces of legislation clarifying what a police officer is required to do if he witnesses crimes committed by colleagues are in the works, said Assemblyman Curtis Tucker (D-Inglewood), chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus.

The decision “sends out a message that if you wear a badge and uniform you are above the law,” said Mack.

Ramona Ripston, director of the Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, agreed. It “sends the wrong message to rank-and-file officers that they can stand by and watch someone being deprived of their civil rights and not have to stop them or report them,” she said.

Diane Marchant, a lawyer hired by the Los Angeles Police Protective League to represent the 17 officers during the various investigations, was not surprised at the grand jury’s decision.

“I have said all along that I wasn’t aware of any state law that had been violated,” she said. “If we get subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury, we’ll have to deal with that on a day-by-day basis.”

At Parker Center, Los Angeles Police Cmdr. Rick Dinse, a spokesman for Chief Daryl F. Gates on the King matter, noted that police felt “from the onset” that the officers who stood by had no criminal liability.

“Citizens all the time view criminal misconduct, they witness crime, they witness all kinds of beatings, they don’t intercede,” Dinse said. “The ones that do, we make heroes out of. Had somebody here done it (interceded), I think they would have been a hero. The fact that they didn’t, does that make them criminal? So far it hasn’t. . . .

“It doesn’t mean they’re not accountable to this department or to this community for possible acts that they did or did not commit . . . but it does not make a criminal out of them.”

Danny Bakewell, director of the Brotherhood Crusade, said Reiner’s announcement reinforced what he called the district attorney’s double standard on cases against police officers.

“If we as citizens had tried to stop those officers (from beating King) we would have been charged with obstruction of justice,” Bakewell said. “Yet they are under no mandate when they stand by and watch an African-American being brutalized. That they are pursuing civil rights charges does nothing to lessen our sense of hurt and sense of pain.”

At the Foothill Division, where many of the police officers, including the four indicted in the case, were assigned, Sgt. Stephen Warren said that there would certainly be “a sense of relief” at the news.

But “I think everybody is still kind of skeptical; it’s a long process yet to unfold,” through federal and internal investigations. The decision not to indict “is nice, but there’s no guarantee that somewhere down the line, someone might not be indicted.”

Reiner told reporters that he found it “disturbing” that some officers interviewed “do not acknowledge that the incident should have been handled any differently.”

But Warren said, “I haven’t talked to an officer yet that wasn’t shocked by what they saw on that video. But at the same time . . . the video made it look bad, but there’s visual impact and there’s nothing to go with the visuals. I know there’s some other dynamics going on at the time that haven’t come into it and probably will.”

Outside Parker Center, Gilbert Encinas, 60, of Norwalk--whose stepson is a Los Angeles policeman--said he believes the U.S. attorney “should file some kind of charges” against “the men who just stood there and watched.”

Across the sidewalk, writing “Ax Lomax”--referring to controversial police commissioner Melanie Lomax--in red letters on white cardboard, was Alberta Gentile, who has lived in South-Central Los Angeles for 30 years.

She said she was heartened by the grand jury’s decision, especially if jurors felt they might be held “responsible for what’s going to happen in the streets.”