VOCAL THRONG TURNS OUT TO HEAR VERDICT.

Byline: Fred Shuster, Dennis Love and Sherry Joe Crosby Daily News Staff Writers

The verdicts broke at 3:45 p.m., scrambling into action the scores of media and onlookers awaiting any news outside the seaside Santa Monica Courthouse. For three hours, they waited.

By 7 p.m., the crowd had swelled to more than 2,000, split in their allegiances to O.J. Simpson and the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Coded paper signs flashed by reporters announced the verdicts to the world.

There was an explosion of cheers. Applause and shouts of glee rocked the lot as the throng listened to the jury's eight decisions, relayed one by one, over portable televisions and radios.

From Santa Monica to South Central Los Angeles and beyond, reaction seemed to explode along starkly racial lines: a black verdict and a white verdict, in the public's mind and in the courtroom.

Onlookers hurled cries of ``Murderer!'' and ``Guilty!'' toward Simpson as the former NFL star, who was acquitted by a predominantly African-American jury of murder in 1995, emerged from the courthouse and made the short walk to his awaiting chauffeured Chevrolet Suburban.

Then the mood of the crowd quickly shifted. Fred Goldman, flanked by his wife, Patti, and daughter, Kim, joined hands held high above their heads. Surrounded by a throng of police, media and well wishers, the Goldmans and Sharon Rufo walked to the Doubletree hotel where they met with reporters.

``It's wonderful,'' Goldman told spectators, clearing relishing in the moment, the swirl of supporters. ``Thank you. Thank you.''

``Everyone now knows the truth about what happened on the night of the killings,'' said Gloria Allred, a former lawyer for the Browns who has been a family spokeswoman and an unrelenting critic of Simpson.

``Mr. Simpson, with his legion of lawyers and spin doctors, has not been able to hide the simple truth from this jury of courageous jurors from his community,'' Allred said.

Larry Turkheimer, 40, who rallied outside the courtroom said: ``I think he got his due. People in this town knew he was guilty and this proves it.''

In South Central Los Angeles, where riots destroyed parts of the neighborhood in 1992, a group of African-American men playing dominoes reacted with quiet anger as the verdicts were read.

``All of them whites, they'd like to see him crawl on the ground,'' said Lee Johnson, an 80-year-old retired construction worker. ``He could have got a better trial in Mississippi. It's all white on that jury.''

Even as the police went on a modified tactical alert as a precaution, Mayor Richard Riordan issued a call for a peaceful reaction to the verdicts. Across the city, there was calm.

``The city is extremely quiet,'' said Police Chief Willie L. Williams. ``There've been no problems and no incidents.''

Williams said during a news conference at police headquarters that some officers may take the verdict as a vindication of the department, but that the Los Angeles Police Department is still hurt from accusation of misconduct made during the criminal trial.

``There is some (vindication),'' Williams said. ``But I don't know that any decision in a civil trial or a criminal trial totally vindicates and frees the mantle and cloud that was tossed over this department in the last two and a half years.''

``Obviously the jury didn't buy into the conspiracy theory and the planting of evidence,'' said Police Commission President Ray Fisher. ``Certainly that's heartening to the department.''

The civil jury, using the lesser standard of ``preponderance of evidence'' rather than ``beyond a reasonable doubt,'' was unanimous on all counts in blaming Simpson for the June 12, 1994, slayings.

``I think this gives a little bit of solace to each of the divided camps,'' said Alan Dershowitz, part of Simpson's defense team at his murder trial. ``Those who believe he did it will look to the civil verdict; those who believe he didn't do it will look to the criminal verdict.''

CAPTION(S):

PHOTO (1) Crowds outside the Santa Monica Courthouse react to Tuesda y's verdict in the O.J. Simpson civil trial. More than 2,000 people were on hand.

(2) Spectators outside the Santa Monica Courthouse argue over O.J. Simpson's role in the deaths of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson.

David R. Crane/Daily News