Police Beating of Fellow Officer

I am the attorney for LAPD Officer Michael J. Hansen, who received a $215,000 settlement from Los Angeles recently as a result of injuries he sustained at the hands of fellow officers during a “hazing” incident at the Southeast Division police station in 1988, as reported in your articles (Dec. 18 and 19).

Having been interviewed and quoted extensively by Rich Connell for those well-written and generally fair articles, I felt it was important to clarify some points raised by the articles.

The reason that I characterized the assault on Hansen by his fellow officers as a sort of “reverse Rodney King” incident is not only because Hansen is white and his four assailants were black officers, but also because (as the articles failed to mention) a black sergeant from that same South Bureau CRASH unit stood by and did nothing while his men beat a fellow officer senseless.

It is true that Hansen, to this date, cannot say for sure that the incident was racially motivated, just as Rodney King admitted shortly after his beating by white officers that he was not sure that incident was racially motivated. However, the facts of both incidents lend themselves to certain inferences regarding the role of race.

(The police investigative reports on the Hansen case noted for example that Hansen’s assailants first approached another officer who happened to be black and invited him to participate in their hazing ritual. Yet, when that officer refused their request, he was not harmed in any way.)

I think the most important point that my client and I want people to understand is that in the furor surrounding the King incident it was easily forgotten that this type of unfortunate event can, and does, happen to anyone. It works both ways.

It is neither more, nor less, appalling for a black criminal suspect to be beatenby white police officers, than it is for a white policeman to be beaten by black officers.

ALAN B. SNITZER

Pasadena