The man who videotaped the incident, Mitch Crooks, 27, was picked up outside CNN offices today, district attorney's spokesman Sandi Gibbons said.
The chief deputy district atttorney revealed Wednesday during a radio program that Crooks was being sought for an appearance before a grand jury. Crooks, who was being interviewed by phone, responded that he was afraid of being jailed and hung up before telling the prosecutor where he was.
Crooks was arrested on warrants for petty theft and driving under the influence with a hit and run, Gibbons said.
The officer seen on the tape, Jeremy Morse, has been the subject of repeated complaints to the Inglewood Police Department, court and police records show, and now faces the possibility of assault charges in the alleged attack on Donovan Jackson. He also was named, along with the city of Inglewood, Los Angeles County and five other law enforcement officers, in a lawsuit filed Wednesday by Jackson's family.
In a report written Saturday night, apparently before police became aware of the existence of a videotape, Morse acknowledged having punched Jackson, authorities said. He said he had done so only after the handcuffed boy grabbed Morse's testicles.
It is not clear whether Morse said the boy grabbed him before or after the officer picked Jackson up and threw him face first on the trunk of a police cruiser, the act that is most prominent in the videotape.
Morse's lawyer, John Barnett of Orange, criticized officials for what he called their "rush to judgment based on a video."
"Public figures are already declaring the officer guilty before finding out what happened," Barnett said.
Barnett, who won the 1992 state court acquittal of Los Angeles Police Officer Theodore Briseno in the Rodney King beating, added: "It is disturbing that elected officials, including the mayor of the city where the officer works, have already made up their minds what happened. It creates an image of guilt in the public conscience."
Inglewood Mayor Roosevelt Dorn, a former Superior Court judge, said Tuesday that Morse appeared to have committed four crimes, including felony assault.
Morse, 24, was relieved of duty Monday after the videotape—taken by a man who was staying in a motel across the street from the gas station where the incident occurred—began airing publicly.
Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies say Morse and three other Inglewood police officers had arrived at the gas station where deputies were tussling with the boy. The deputies said they had been questioning Jackson's father about expired tags on his car's license plates when they became involved in a confrontation with the son, who was failing to obey their orders. Family members say Jackson has a mental impairment that causes him to react very slowly to commands.
The national profile of the case, raised through repeated broadcasts of the videotape on television news, was lifted still higher when Ashcroft expressed concern and announced that he was taking the unusual step of sending Ralph Boyd, the head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, to take a direct role in the case.
Boyd worked extensively with city officials in Cincinnati last year after allegations of police brutality and racism sparked rioting there. He was expected to meet with Inglewood officials today.
The attorney general called Dorn on Wednesday morning to offer his support in defusing racial tensions. Jackson is black, Morse is white, and some community activists have charged that the case is an example of racial profiling.
"The role of law enforcement officers in our society is to protect and serve the American people. The events caught on videotape in Inglewood, Calif., last weekend trouble me greatly, because they raise clear questions about whether that law enforcement mission was being served properly in Inglewood," Ashcroft said in a written statement.
Aides to Ashcroft acknowledged that his proclamation was unusual because it could suggest that he was prejudging an investigation that is still in its infancy.
But a senior Justice Department official said "this has become a very public issue, and [Ashcroft] felt there was a real need to let the public know how concerned he was about this."
The FBI and local authorities have opened separate civil rights investigations into Jackson's arrest and beating. The FBI is expected to deliver a preliminary report on its findings within 30 days to FBI headquarters and the Justice Department in Washington.
The episode has evoked bitter memories of the notorious Rodney King beating in 1991. Federal authorities intervened in that case as well, convicting two LAPD officers on federal civil rights charges in King's beating after they and two others had been acquitted in state court.
While the two cases have obvious similarities—both were secretly videotaped, and King, like Jackson, is black—there also are significant differences. One is that police immediately reported using force in the Jackson case, something they did not do with King.
Morse's account was contained in a section of the Inglewood police incident report read to The Times on Wednesday. It contained the first explanation of why the officer hit the boy, who had been slammed onto the trunk of a patrol car, his hands handcuffed behind his back.
The report, written by Morse and his partner, Bijan Darvish, said they "assisted Jackson to his feet and had him stand facing the police vehicle." On the video, it is apparent that Morse slammed Jackson down on the trunk of the patrol car.
The report then says Jackson "used his right hand and reached backward, grabbing Officer Morse in the crotch area. Officer Morse yelled at Jackson to let go. However, Jackson refused and began to squeeze Officer Morse by his testicles.
"Due to the extreme pain that Officer Morse was in and the fact that Jackson was still attacking, Officer Morse used his right fist and punched Jackson one time on the right side of his face," the report said. "Jackson then immediately let his grip loose of Officer Morse."
On the tape, Morse is standing close behind Jackson at that point, but it is unclear from the camera angle whether the boy could have grabbed the police officer.
Asked about the allegation that the boy grabbed Morse, an attorney for Jackson, Joe Hopkins, said, "The way I understand it, it was the other way around." However, he added: "I don't understand the specific chronology of events."
Roger Pettit, who identified himself as Morse's stepfather during a telephone interview, said his stepson telephoned him after the incident and said he had acted in self-defense.
"He actually called me after it happened," said Pettit, who lives in the Pacific Northwest. "He said the guy had him by the [testicles]. He didn't have no choice." Pettit described Morse as a "good, Christian kid" who became a police officer to help people.
He also insisted that his stepson is not a bigot. Pettit said Morse grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood and has a Latina girlfriend.
"Jeremy is not a racist in any way," Pettit said.
In addition to the Inglewood police report, another account of the incident is contained in a separate report written by sheriff's deputies, also on Saturday night, before the videotape aired on TV. It alleges that Jackson fought with Deputy Carlos Lopez and Inglewood police officers as they attempted to handcuff him.
He "pulled, scratched and fought with the victims [police officers] requiring Inglewood police ... to strike the subject [Jackson] with personal weapons on his facial area," the report said.
Sheriff's officials said "personal weapons" refers to officers' fists.
Two sheriff's deputies, Lopez and Daniel Leon, appeared before a grand jury Wednesday after being subpoenaed by Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley. The subpoenas were issued only after a deputy district attorney tried to sit in on an internal Sheriff's Department review of the case, but was asked to leave.
Lopez and Leon had been scheduled to be interviewed by the Sheriff's Department's Internal Affairs investigators. When the deputy district attorney arrived, the deputies' attorney objected, according to several Sheriff's Department sources.
The attorney, Richard Shinee, said that it was an administrative review and that he did not want the deputy district attorney to be present, the sources said. Shinee refused to discuss any details of the investigation with The Times.
After Cooley issued the subpoenas, the deputies attended the grand jury hearing with Shinee, Sheriff's Department sources said. The deputies were expected to return to the grand jury today.
Typically, the target of a grand jury investigation is invited, not subpoenaed, to attend, several defense attorneys said. They said it would appear, then, that prosecutors wanted the deputies to provide information for possible indictments against others, not themselves.
The district attorney's office does not customarily speak about grand jury investigations before they are completed. However, in an unusual exchange on a radio talk show Wednesday, Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Curt Livesay pointedly warned Mitchell Crooks, the man who shot the video of the incident, to answer a subpoena to appear before the grand jury today.
Crooks was being interviewed on the John & Ken show on KFI-FM when he said he was willing to cooperate with authorities, but was worried that he might face unspecified charges.
A few minutes later, the radio hosts introduced Livesay, who is second-in-command at the district attorney's office.
"Mitchell, let me assure you that there is a grand jury subpoena for you, and I suggest you honor it," Livesay told Crooks. "You show up at the Criminal Courts Building—that's downtown, 210 W. Temple [Street] and be there promptly ... at the grand jury."
"Yeah, well I hope the city rallies behind me," Crooks replied. "They're coming after me because I shot the video. I fear for my life."
"Mitchell, this is Livesay," the prosecutor shot back. "We want you before the grand jury, not in a cell somewhere. We want you before the grand jury and we want that original tape."
With Morse and Jackson at the center of what was rapidly becoming a national case, more details emerged Wednesday about each of them.
Two people filed a lawsuit Wednesday charging Morse and another officer with striking them in January, and documents and interviews point to several other complaints involving the officer. Not all of the other cases involved violence, but in one, 22-year-old Akkilah Artiga of Inglewood alleged that Morse struck her with a baton in the course of breaking up a party she attended last New Year's Eve.
Inglewood police would not comment on the allegations against Morse, but none has resulted in legal action against him, and his lawyer, Barnett, dismissed the accusations as the work of people in search of money or publicity for their stories.
Classmates of Jackson at Leuzinger High School in Lawndale described him as a quiet, easygoing person who likes to dress well and stays out of trouble. Most said they had no idea he had a mental disability, but stressed that he was not a violent boy.
"Heck no, he wouldn't hit an officer," said Arrin McDaniel, 15.
Students described Jackson as active in school clubs, including Ebony Nation, which promotes African American culture, history and community service.
Jackson had recently become one of the school's peer mediators, said Tatiana Morgan, 16.
Leuzinger High School officials would not say whether Jackson was enrolled in special education classes, although Jackson's lawyer showed a reporter a copy of a document that classified his disability.
John Minor, 17, of Hawthorne said he was enrolled in a regular science and math class with Jackson in the 10th grade and tutored Jackson during 20-minute periods their algebra teacher set aside every Friday.
"He could sit and have a conversation with you, but as far as learning he didn't catch on as quick as everyone else," Minor said. "You'd talk to him and you tried to explain something and it would take a while for him to understand. When I heard about what happened, that's the first thing that came to my mind."
