Inglewood Discipline Proposed

Inglewood Police Chief Ron Banks said Thursday he has recommended administrative actions against officers in connection with the videotaped beating of a 16-year-old boy, but he would not say how the officers would be disciplined.

Officer Jeremy Morse, who is seen on the videotape slamming the handcuffed boy onto the trunk of a patrol car and punching him in the face, would face either suspension or termination, according to sources close to the case.

Officer Bijan Darvish faces a short suspension; Officer Antoine Crook faces minor discipline ranging from an oral reprimand to a short suspension, and Officer Mariano Salcedo does not face any administrative action, according to Corey Glave, attorney for all the officers except Morse.

“All the use of force has been justified for the three officers I represent,” Glave said Thursday. Witnesses in the internal investigation confirmed, he said, that the teenager, Donovan Jackson, had resisted officers at an Inglewood gas station July 6.

Jackson has said he obeyed all orders and did not provoke the scuffle that ensued after sheriff’s deputies investigated expired registration tags on his father’s car.

The administrative discipline is separate from the criminal case against Morse and Darvish. Morse was indicted by the Los Angeles County Grand Jury on a charge of assault under the color of authority, and Darvish was indicted on a charge of filing a false police report for allegedly lying about the trunk slam. Each could serve three years in prison if convicted.

Salcedo and Crook were given immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony before the grand jury.

The internal police investigation concluded that Darvish did not see how his partner placed Donovan Jackson on the patrol car, and therefore did not lie in his police report, said Darvish’s criminal defense attorney, Ron Brower.

Brower said he was “gratified to see” that the Police Department had reached a different conclusion from that of the district attorney’s office on Darvish’s police report.

“My client will be pleased to return to the Police Department,” he said.

Activists have called on Banks to fire all of the officers involved.

Banks said that he has concluded the investigation and that the officers had been informed of the results. State law, he said, prohibited him from disclosing the details of their discipline.

The officers can accept the chief’s recommendations or appear at an administrative hearing within two weeks, when they will have a chance to present their case to Banks directly. Banks would then make his final decision.

The chief said his department acted with unprecedented speed by finishing the inquiry in three weeks. He said he hopes that the public will “understand that there is no perfect solution, and that they will look upon it as a fair and just decision, taking into consideration the interest of the public and the interest of the officers.”

Shortly after the incident, Banks had said he was “concerned and disappointed” by the images on the videotape.