Twilight: Los Angeles 1992. Where the Water Is - Sergeant Charles Duke
Powell holds the baton
like this
and that is
not a good...
the proper way of holding the baton
is like that.
So one of the things
they keep talking about
why did it take fifty-six baton blows.
Powell has no strength and no power
in his baton strikes.
The whole thing boils down to...
Powell was ineffective with the baton.
You're aware
that that night
he went to baton training
and the sergeant held him afterward
because he was weak and inefficient with the baton
training.
That night. That night.
He should have been taken out of the field.
He needed to be taken up to the academy and had a couple
days of
instruction get him back into
focus.
(He drinks water)
Oh, I know what I was gonna do.
Prior to this
we lost upper-body-control holds,
in 1982.
If we had upper-body control holds
involved in this,
this tape woulda never been on,
this incident woulda lasted about
fifteen seconds.
The reason that we lost upper-body-control holds...
because we had something like seventeen to twenty deaths in a period of about 1975-76 to
1982, and
they said it was associated with its being used on Blacks
and Blacks were dying.
Now, the so-called community leaders
came forward and complained
(He drinks water)
and they started a hysteria
about the upper-body-control holds-
that it was inhumane use of force-
so it got elevated from intermediate use of force,
which is the same category as a baton,
to deadly force,
and what I told you was that it was used
in all but one of the incidents.
High levels of PCP and cocaine were found in the systems
of those people it was used on.
If PCP and cocaine did not correlate into the equation
of why people were dying,
how come we used it since the fifties and we had maybe in a ten-year period one incident of a
death?
The use of force policy hasn't changed since this incident.
And Gilbert Lindsay,
who was a really neat man,
when he saw a demonstration with the baton
he made a statement
that "you're not gonna beat my people with the baton,
I want you to use the chokehold on 'em."
And a couple of other people said,
"I don't care you beat em into submission,
you break their bones,
you're not chokin' 'em anymore."
So the political framework was laid
for eliminating upper-body-control holds,
and Daryl Gates-
I believe, but I can't prove it-
but his attitude supports it.
He
and his command staff
and I started
use-of-force reports come through my office,
so I review 'em and I look for training things
and I look for things that will impact how I can make
training
better.
So I started seeing a lot of incidents similar to Rodney King
and some of them identical to Rodney King
and I said we gotta find some alternative uses of force.
And their attitude was:
"Don't worry about it,
don't worry about it."
And I said, "Wait a minute,
you gonna get some policemen indicted,
you gonna get some policemen sent to jail,
and they're gonna hurt somebody and it's gonna be
perceived to be
other than a proper use of force,
and then you guys in management are gonna scurry away
from it,
you're gonna run away from it,
you're gonna get somebody... somebody
is gonna go to the joint because of your lack of effort."
And the last conversation I had was with one of my...
He walked by my office,
so I ran out of my office and I catch up with him right by
the
fountain,
right by where the water is.
I said,
"Listen, We got another one of these...
we gotta explore some techniques and we gotta explore
some options,"
and his response to me:
"Sergeant Duke,
I'm tired of hearing this shit.
We're gonna beat people into submission
and we're gonna break bones."
And he said the Police Commission and the City Council
took this
away from us.
"Do you understand that,
Sergeant Duke?"
And I said, "Yes, sir,"
and I never brought it up again.
And that, to me,
tells me
this is an "in your face" to the City council and to the
Police
Commission.
And like I said, I can't prove this,
but I believe that Daryl Gates
and the Command staff were gonna do an "in your face" to
the City
Council and the Police Commission, saying,
"You took upper-body-control holds away from us.
Now we're really gonna show you what you're gonna get,
with lawsuits and all the other things that are associated with it."