Police Denied Look at Tapes of Park Fracas : Investigation: Internal Affairs wants to see the videotapes of officers tangling with picnickers. Owners refuse to release them.

Witnesses to an altercation last week between police and a family of picnickers in Brookside Park are withholding videotapes of the incident, hampering an investigation of alleged misconduct and racial name-calling by police, officials said Tuesday.

“What we’ve heard is that (the owners of the videotapes) are testing their marketability with various news services,” police spokesman Lt. Frank Wills said.

But City Councilman Isaac Richard said Tuesday that those involved in the incident, in which two black picnickers were arrested and several were treated for exposure to tear gas, had lost confidence in the Pasadena Police Department and were saving the tapes for use in lawsuits.

Internal Affairs investigators are taking statements from witnesses and officers and expect to conclude their inquiry in about two weeks, Wills said. Police have obtained one resident’s videotape of the incident, which they made public Tuesday, and have videotaped a re-enactment using the officers who were involved. However, Wills said they have been unable to obtain at least two videotapes of the incident which, according to Richard, corroborate the allegation of police misconduct.

Richard, who said he has viewed the tapes being withheld from police, called for disciplinary action against two white police officers, one for allegedly using a racial epithet, the other for “Macing everybody, including one of his own fellow officers.”

None of the officers involved have been disciplined or reassigned, Wills said.

The incident occurred near the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center on Saturday, after police assigned to provide protection for an event sponsored by the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services saw a man dressed in women’s clothing talking to some children.

The officers approached James McCullough, who was wearing a wig and a dress and carrying a doll, to question him, police said. McCullough, who was in the park as part of a family reunion, allegedly attacked the officers, who subdued him and arrested him for assault on a police officer.

But the fracas with McCullough angered members of McCullough’s family, who explained that the children accompanying the suspect were his own, police said.

“Other members of the family surrounded the officers and the situation escalated from there,” Wills said.

Michael Harrison, another family member, allegedly jumped on a police officer’s back, and he also was arrested for assault on a police officer. Harrison’s 14-year-old son, whose name was not released because of his age, was taken into custody but was later released.

Before the incident was over, 17 officers and a police helicopter had been summoned to the scene. One officer was taken to Huntington Memorial Hospital for a jaw X-ray after he was punched, and others were treated for scratches and scrapes, Wills said. Two who got tear gas in their eyes were treated at the scene by paramedics, Wills said.

Onlookers, including a 2-year-old boy, were also treated for burning eyes from exposure to tear gas.

Police Chief Jerry Oliver briefed the City Council on the incident Tuesday evening in closed session. Mayor Jess Hughston said that the briefing was not held in public because of the possibility of litigation by participants.

A group of black civic leaders was invited Tuesday morning to police headquarters to view two videotapes, one of which had been made available by a someone described by police as a “neutral” Pasadena citizen, the other being a “walk-through” of the incident made afterward by police.

“There was a positive reaction,” said Audrey Brantley, one of the citizens who reviewed the police tapes. “It just appeared to me to be an unfortunate incident.”

But Richard chided the police for not taking action to reassure the 100 or so family picnickers, most of them Richard’s constituents from Northwest Pasadena. “These are law-abiding, God-fearing citizens,” Richard said. “They’re not the Pasadena Crips.”

The resident’s videotape shown by police showed angry family members standing around four or five police radio cars in a parking lot in Brookside Park. As paramedics dabbed at a police officer’s eyes, one man shouted excitedly: “You got to pay attention to who you’re Macing!”

It also showed a teen-ager in a red T-shirt being placed in a police car. A woman told fellow onlookers: “My little brother said something and they took his arm and took him to jail. He didn’t do nothing.”

Richard said the police were justified in questioning McCullough, whom he described as “a couple of fries short of a Happy Meal,” although he is employed and married.

“Assume the worst-case scenario in which McCullough actually assaulted an officer,” Richard said. “If they had taken him to jail right away, nothing would have happened.”

Instead, Richard said, police stayed in the area “baiting” the crowd. The videotapes Richard viewed showed a lack of professionalism on the part of some police officers and a lack of training in crowd control, he said.

Richard conceded that the tapes had not actually captured an officer using a racial epithet. Instead it showed an officer talking to a woman, who subsequently approached the camera, saying, “Did you hear what he said?” and repeating an epithet.

Wills said the woman declined to talk to police investigators on the advice of her lawyer. Police have not initiated legal action to get the resident-owned videotapes because “as of now, there’s no formal allegation of misconduct,” Wills added.

Oliver, who became chief less than two months ago, defended his officers’ handling of the situation. Tapes and other documentation by the police “show, from my standpoint, that the police were out there trying to maintain the peace,” he said.

He said the department, which prides itself on employing the “personal touch” in its dealings with citizens, had not emphasized “militaristic tactics” in handling crowd control.

“Our posture is not one of extreme military precision,” he said. “We’re not trained that way.”