King Was No Threat, Officer Says : Trial: Briseno testifies that the beating incident was 'out of control' and blames his co-defendants. He says he feared the motorist might be shot.

By RICHARD A. SERRANO

April 4, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SIMI VALLEY — In a day of riveting testimony, Los Angeles Police Officer Theodore J. Briseno turned with a vengeance Friday on his three co-defendants in the Rodney G. King beating case, saying that King never posed a threat to the officers, that “the whole thing was out of control” and that the beating “was wrong.”

“I just didn’t know what was going on out there. I couldn’t see it. I didn’t understand it,” said Briseno in attempting to prove that he was King’s ally, not his assailant, on the night of March 3, 1991.

Briseno, accused of a single kick to King’s head, testified that he was merely trying to protect the battered motorist from further trauma by forcing him to lie down. “I was hoping he was going to stop (moving) and the officers were going to back away,” Briseno said.

His testimony sharply contradicted that of Officer Laurence M. Powell and Sgt. Stacey C. Koon, both of whom have insisted on the stand that King was combative and that he was struck only because he ignored their commands.

“It looked like they were just hitting him everywhere,” the 10-year veteran officer said of his fellow officers. “I thought the whole thing was out of control. It was wrong.”

Briseno’s testimony had been foreshadowed by his attorney during opening statements last month. But the power of the officer’s words on Friday remained undiminished as he testified to a rapt courtroom, providing the most dramatic moment of the trial and creating obstacles for his co-defendants.

Briseno, 39, was especially harsh on Powell, who is seen on the videotape of the beating as delivering the most baton blows to King as the motorist rolled on the ground in Lake View Terrace.

“Officer Powell had a look I’d never seen before,” Briseno testified. “It was just a look of pure exhaustion. His eyes looked like they could explode, like they were coming out. And he was constantly gasping for breath.”

Briseno said he feared Powell was tiring and might pull out his gun and shoot King.

Briseno said that, several times during the incident, he yelled at Powell to “get the hell off” King and to stop beating him. Briseno said he even pushed away Powell’s baton. Briseno said he did not push away the baton just to keep Powell from being shocked by the Taser wires, as Powell testified.

Frustrated and worried that he himself might get hit by the wildly swinging batons, Briseno said, he urged Koon, the supervisor at the scene, to intercede. “I asked him what the ---- was going on out here,” Briseno recalled. He said the sergeant simply called for another Taser stun gun to shoot King for a third time.

Said Briseno: “I just threw my arms up.”

After King was handcuffed, Briseno said, he returned to his patrol car and told Officer Rolando Solano, a trainee who was riding with him that night, that he did not like what he had seen. Solano testified to that effect earlier this week.

“I was very angry,” he said. “I was very upset. I was very frustrated.” He said he considered the incident a case of police misconduct for which Powell, Koon and Timothy E. Wind, an officer who has since been fired for the beating, should be held accountable.

With that in mind, Briseno said, he drove immediately to the Foothill Station and asked for Lt. Pat Conmay, the watch commander that night, to report the use of force on King. But he said that Conmay was out of the station, and that he then saw a computer message that Koon sent to the station in which he said a “big time use of force” had occurred.

“I thought he was reporting it,” Briseno said. “And it was accurate about what had just happened out in the field.”

Under cross-examination by Deputy Dist. Atty Terry White, Briseno also acknowledged that Los Angeles police officers have a “code of silence,” dating back to the 1950s or 1960s, in which they cover up each other’s misconduct.

Throughout the trial, Briseno has sat alone, far to the left of the defense counsel table. When he took the stand Friday morning, wearing a black suit, he sat stiffly. Except for several times when he repeated expletives that he spoke that night in disgust over beating, most of his answers were simply “yes, sir,” or “no, sir.”

Briseno, Koon and Powell have testified in their own behalf. Wind, however, chose not to testify, a decision made after the prosecutor aggressively cross-examined Powell about the beating and alleged racial slurs Powell made that night.

Briseno, who was questioned by his attorney, John Barnett, described the early minutes of the confrontation, when King first stepped out of his white Hyundai near the intersection of Foothill Boulevard and Osborne Street after a 7.8-mile car chase begun by the California Highway Patrol.

He said King first put his hands atop the roof of his car, then slipped his left hand into his left pocket and began to lie down. But when Briseno, Powell and others tried to handcuff King, Briseno said, the large man thrust himself up and knocked them off their feet.

“Mr. King came up into a kneeling position, hitting me in the chest, causing me to fall like in a backward crab position,” he said.

He said Koon then shot King twice with the Taser. The motorist then “very quickly” rose again to his feet and moved toward Powell.

“I saw Officer Powell hit him on the right side of his face,” Briseno said. “Mr. King had gained control of his feet and it was a quick charge and Officer Powell didn’t have time to react.”

He said he believed the baton blow to the head was “accidental,” and said it knocked King to the ground. There followed a series of baton blows by Powell, many of which Briseno said struck King “from the shoulders up.” But he said he did not see exactly where the blows landed. Powell has denied hitting King in the head.

White’s cross-examination of Briseno was brief and gentle compared to his questioning of Powell.

Likewise, attorneys for the other three defendants were very brief in their questioning of Briseno. Michael Stone, Powell’s attorney, asked the most questions, and elicited the response that the first head blow appeared to be accidental.

The defendants have pleaded not guilty. The trial continues Monday morning with a hearing away from the jury about testimony from a defense expert on the nature of King’s injuries.

TELEVISION AUDIENCE: KTTV’s live coverage of the trial in Simi Valley is attracting a large audience. B1