Acquitted Officer Stirs Furor With His Manuscript -- Remarks About Race, A `Group Beat'

LOS ANGELES - Police Sgt. Stacey Koon, acquitted in the Rodney King beating, has written a book about the case and his years in the Los Angeles Police Department in which he repeats racial references and speaks candidly about the "high" he's had after using force.

In a copy of the 275-page manuscript, parts of which were published yesterday by The Los Angeles Times, Koon refers to King as "Mandingo."

"Mandingo" is a term for West Africans that has been used as a slur for black male slaves. But in an interview with The Los Angeles Times on Friday, Koon said the term wasn't meant to be derogatory.

In describing a separate incident in which he repeatedly shot a black man, Koon said his fellow officers joked that the man would survive because blacks "are too dumb to go into shock."

And Koon boasts that a videotape made of him viciously kicking a Latino drug suspect in the groin became a "legend" in the LAPD.

In his recollection of the King arrest on March 3, 1991, Koon said at first he was pleased it was captured on video. "Great!" he wrote. "I was to star in an actual in-field incident, a classic use of force . . . I had become a celebrity."

Minority leaders yesterday denounced Koon.

"The guy is beneath contempt," said Joe Hicks, head of the Los Angeles office of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. "It's obvious we're not dealing with a genius here."

Vibiana Andrade, regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said, "I was simultaneously angered and sickened by it, and I really think that it underscores that brutality is an acceptable way of acting in the LAPD."

Rev. Cecil Murray of First AME Church, a center of activism before and after the rioting, deplored the attitudes reflected in Koon's work, but emphasized that not all police officers "are to be painted with the Stacey Koon brush."

" The fair and just ones stand tall," Murray said. "They are still our protectors, and we still respect those who wear the blue with fairness and professionalism."

Police at the LAPD's Foothill Division, where Koon and the other officers were stationed at the time of the King beating, were reluctant to discuss the memoirs. But Lt. Thomas Maeweather said: "I'm not very happy with what I've read."

Koon, 41 and a 16-year veteran of the LAPD, is trying to sell his manuscript as either a book or television movie. He insists he's not seeking financial gain out of the King tragedy and the riots.

`A GROUP BEAT'

Koon called the King arrest a "group beat." He nicknamed George Holliday, the man who filmed the King videotape, "George of the Jungle." He gives a long description of how his officers reacted when King was finally handcuffed after the beating.

"They began to joke and laugh," he said. "It was not a laugh of a party atmosphere. It was a laugh of relief. It was a laugh to release the pressure of the incident. It was the gallows humor. The officers had faced a very stressful situation and they had prevailed. They were on a high."

Koon, who has titled his unsold manuscript "The Ides of March," said in an interview that although he stands by his words, he is not a racist and he does not condone police brutality.

Rather, he said, his words are a reflection of the way police officers think and feel after having to confront dangerous situations daily. It is written in the language of a tough-talking street cop.

"Ever work in a hospital?" he asks. "Ever been around a coroner? Ever been around a fireman? There are certain professions where it's normal, acceptable behavior for them to talk this way. It's the way they maintain their sanity. You can't continually see this stuff every day, day in and day out, and not relieve yourself with this kind of gallows humor."

Kerman Maddox, a public-affairs consultant and former candidate for the Los Angeles City Council, dismissed Koon's explanation as "the defense they've always used. Even if that's locker-room banter, that's inappropriate locker-room banter . . ."

`I AM NOT A RACIST'

Koon repeated in his book that he harbors no racial animosity.

"The critics argued LAPD was racist, the officers involved beat King because they were racist and I allowed it to happen because I was racist," wrote Koon.

"I found this to be destructive and personally offensive. I am not a racist and I do not condone or tolerate racism."

In one section of his manuscript, Koon uses a little descriptive geography to tell how he once kicked a Hispanic he said was under the influence of PCP.

"My boot came from the area of lower California and connected with the suspect's scrotum about lower Missouri," he wrote. "My boot stopped about Ohio, but the suspect's testicles continued into upper Maine."

A film crew happened to capture the kick for posterity and it became a popular training tool for young officers - long before anyone knew the name Rodney King.

One of the book's most graphic sections is his recollection of the King arrest, particularly Koon's descriptive recollection of how he watched King dance and shake his buttocks at California Highway Patrol Officer Melanie Singer who, worried for her safety, approached King with a gun.

"He grabbed his butt with both hands and began to shake and gyrate his fanny in a sexually suggestive fashion," Koon wrote. "As King sexually gyrated, a mixture of fear and offense overcame Melanie. The fear was of a Mandingo sexual encounter."

Koon, in the interview, defended his choice of words, saying that he was merely trying to draw out the antebellum image of a large black man and a defenseless white woman.

"In society," he said, "there's this sexual prowess of blacks on the old plantations of the South and intercourse between blacks and whites on the plantation. And that's where the fear comes in, because he's black."

Another section of the book describes an incident in which Koon shot a black man in the arms, legs and torso after the suspect confronted police with an assault rifle. "Although he was a light-skinned black, his skin began to take on the gray pallor of death," Koon wrote.

A group of officers gathered around. One asked: "Did you see that guy?" Another asked: "Do you think he'll die?" and the response was: "No way! You or I, we'd die, but not a Negro. They're too dumb to go into shock."

Koon, describing his feelings about the shooting, wrote: "I had confronted certain death and survived. It was a high."

The sergeant also defended as "a form of accepted police humor" the police computer messages the Christopher Commission last year termed as racist, such as one in which an officer said, "It's monkey-slapping time."

The commission and angry minority-community leaders said the message was a slur about police beating blacks. But Koon insisted, "Literally, it means an officer is going to go masturbate. However, in context it means an officer is going to kick back and relax."

`CALLS IT AS HE SEES IT'

Koon's attorney, Richard Rosenberg, said Koon doesn't mean to offend anyone by his language. "He calls it as he sees it," Rosenberg said. Since Koon isn't a professional writer, he said, any final draft would probably be toned down.

Koon said, "My intention was not to make a bazillion dollars off this book. You can donate the proceeds of this book to rebuilding South Central Los Angeles, because this is not blood money for me and I am not in this for my own good."

Koon and three other white officers were aquitted April 29, provoking riots in Los Angeles and elsewhere. One officer, Laurence Powell, is to be retried on an excessive-force charge on which the jury deadlocked.

All four officers still face possible federal civil-rights charges. Koon and two others remain suspended without pay. The fourth was fired.