VIDEO TELLS ONLY HALF OF STORY.

Byline: GREG MEYER Local View

THE Hollywood Division LAPD officers ``caught on tape'' provide the latest example of public outrage over police use of force. The increasing proliferation of video cameras guarantees that more and more police incidents will be captured. So it seems useful to provide some context about how such incidents are analyzed.

For the past 17 years, I've worked as an expert witness on civil and criminal use-of-force cases around this country, usually in favor of the police, sometimes not, sometimes with video, sometimes not.

The truth almost always lies deeper than the video.

When all the facts are included, there are a few glaringly obvious facts about this video.

First of all, there is not just one video. There are three videos of this incident posted on YouTube. One is 19 seconds long. One is five seconds long. One is one second short. They each capture a different part of the incident.

The videos were captured via someone's cell-phone camcorder. You should wonder (I do) about why the two shorter videos published on YouTube are so short. And you should wonder why the longer video suddenly stopped just as the suspect's right hand was approaching the gun holster of one of the officers.

Were the videos edited to someone's advantage? Or was it just the luck of the draw and the vagaries of an amateur pushing buttons on the cell phone?

Second, newspapers have published excerpts of the officers' own report of the arrest, in which they admit hitting the suspect in the head after describing the suspect's alleged resistance to arrest. It's very clear watching these videos that the officers are attempting to handcuff the suspect (one cuff is already on one wrist), but the suspect is not allowing that to happen.

Third, it is very interesting that the court commissioner who looked at the video (which was taken back in August) refused to dismiss the criminal case against the suspect. According to news reports, the commissioner said, ``The issue here is not whether the officers had to use force. The question is whether or not the defendant used force in resisting the lawful arrest, and I find that he did resist, using force.''

When there is a trial, jurors will work under the precedent of the 1989 case of Graham v. Connor. When police must use force, the court has ruled, the force must be ``objectively reasonable'' with respect to the facts and circumstances the officer is facing, and without 20/20 hindsight.

The court has found that ``The `reasonableness' of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, and its calculus must embody an allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second decisions about the amount of force necessary in a particular situation.'' Also what must be considered are the severity of the crime, the immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, whether the suspect is resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.

The list of facts to be considered is lengthy, but its highlights include: the number of suspects and officers involved; the size, age and condition of the suspect; the known or perceived fighting ability of the suspect; the duration of the action; the experience level of the officers; the distance from the officers to the suspect; and the weapons in the immediate vicinity of the suspect.

Use of force by police naturally upsets onlookers across the street as well as viewers of the 6 o'clock news. Conditioned by fictional media depictions of sanitized violence on one hand and fantastic ``megaviolence'' on the other, most people have no frame of reference other than personal emotions to evaluate an incident. But force is used in relatively small percentages of police confrontations, and people should not be surprised or offended that police must occasionally use force.

Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa are right to express concern about the Hollywood incident because it's obviously of concern to the public. But they are also right to withhold judgment until the various investigations play out.

The public -- and the media -- would do well to listen to them.

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

A single frame from a video, photographed by a cell-phone camera and now on the Internet, shows two officers beating William Cardenas. Authorities say they are investigating the incident, which the officers said occurred when Cardenas appeared to reach for an officer's gun during an arrest.