Lawyers air 'beat-down' bust.

Byline: Rebecca Nolan The Register-Guard

Witnesses who saw the fight between Eugene police officers and two brothers in the parking lot of the Southtowne Lanes bowling alley last year described it as "a beating" before a jury on Wednesday.

The police had another name for the altercation, which resulted in a criminal investigation and prompted one officer to resign from the department.

They jokingly referred to it as the "Southtowne beat-down."

A few seconds of the "beat-down" were captured on videotape, and special prosecutor Stephen Dingle from the Marion County district attorney's office played the footage for jurors Wednesday in Lane County Circuit Court.

Four officers are shown bent over a prostrate figure who is off screen. One of the officers, Aaron Berndt, can be clearly seen punching the prone figure at least eight times and kicking him as other officers hold him down and douse him with pepper spray. The image is brief, but powerful.

After the March 6, 2003, incident, the police department conducted a review of Berndt's actions that night and determined that he violated policy, so Berndt resigned. He now works for the Warrenton Police Department.

The department also asked the Oregon State Police to look into whether the officers involved committed any crimes in the Southtowne parking lot. The Lane County grand jury heard the case and decided not to indict the officers.

Instead, the grand jury indicted the two brothers, Mohammed Al-Nesayan, 32, and Hatem Al-Nasian, 29, citizens of Saudi Arabia living in the United States. They're being tried for allegedly resisting and assaulting the officers following a fistfight inside the bowling alley.

Mohammed Al-Nesayan is the prone figure in the brief videotape. The prosecution said he was aggressive and profane during the bowling alley confrontation. During a break in testimony Wednesday, he approached two officers as he exited the courtroom and told them, "I'll take you down with one punch."

One of those officers was Jason Berreth, whose in-car video camera taped part of the fight. He testified that nothing about the video footage disturbed him because he knew how Mohammed Al-Nesayan was resisting off-screen.

"It does not look good," Berreth told the jury, referring to the tape. "If you take it out of context it looks bad."

Berreth said officers are trained to deliver "focused blows" to sensitive areas of the body when people resist officer commands. "We're trying to gain compliance through pain," he said.

While the older brother was being subdued, his younger brother stood by in the parking lot, yelling "Be cool, be cool" to Mohammed Al-Nesayan. The younger brother was later forced to the ground, pepper-sprayed and handcuffed by Berndt, Berreth and former officer Juan Lara, who is currently serving more than five years in prison for official misconduct and harassing women on the job. Lara is expected to be called as a defense witness in the case.

The prosecution contends that the brothers both repeatedly ignored officers' orders to lie down on the wet pavement and put their hands behind their backs. Berreth testified that both men physically resisted as officers tried to handcuff them.

Also on Wednesday, jurors heard an audiotape of the bowling alley's assistant manager, Ian Gray, calling 911 that night.

In the recording, Gray gives the dispatcher a play-by-play account of a fistfight between the two brothers and two Hispanic men. He says the brothers are the aggressors, and Hatem Al-Nasian can be heard on the tape screaming racial slurs and profanities at the Hispanic men, who at one point were armed with pool cues.

Eventually the brothers leave through the front door, and the Hispanic men through the back. But Gray stays on the line until police arrive. When they do, Gray gasps into the phone, "Oh, Jesus Christ. The cops are beating up the guy."

The defense says the brothers were amped up on adrenaline after fighting inside the bowling alley with the other men. Attorneys James Britt and Will Childs argued that officers rushed on scene and got physical with the brothers before investigating what was going on.

Outside the courtroom, Britt, who represents Hatem Al-Nasian, said the case should never have gone to trial. He said once his client is acquitted he'll file a lawsuit seeking financial damages. "These are people we pay to do this job, and they're beating up this unarmed man," Britt said.

Testimony continues today before Circuit Court Judge Gregory Foote.

CAPTION(S):

A Eugene police officer appears to deliver blows to a suspect in this image from a police video that a prosecutor played for jurors Wednesday in the trial of Mohammed Al-Nesayan and Hatem Al-Nasian, who are accused of assaulting and resisting police.