“Hey, man you got any stuff?” I was asked as I walked up to a house party. The inquirer was a 20-something white guy dressed like a middle-aged male with his hair cut short. It was 1969.
He couldn’t have been more out of place.
I said no and thought narc.
Weird white guy and another like him roughly grabbed my biceps and manhandled me a few yards to a parked Los Angeles Police cruiser. A uniformed officer emerged from the car and, with the help of what I deduced were not random white guys but undercover cops, handcuffed me. The officer shoved me into the back seat, where two prisoners sat.
I was stunned and bewildered. Why was I being arrested? I asked. “You’re drunk,” the officer brusquely replied. Now, I was dumbfounded. In the previous two hours, I had sipped two beers. The light buzz the beers gave me was gone. I was sober and naively believed I would prove to the cops I was not intoxicated.
“Please, give me a test,” I pleaded. When the officers did not respond, I understood that I was headed for a drunk holding tank. On the way to the LAPD Van Nuys Division station, I repeatedly begged for a sobriety test.
Suddenly, the car came to a halt. The cop riding in the passenger side grasped my lower jaw and cocked back one of his arms, the hand in a fist. “If you don’t shut up, I’m knock out your fuck..g teeth,” he roared.
I took a vow of silence.
A few blocks from the station, we came upon a young white man stumbling drunkenly along a sidewalk. The officer driving stopped, and the officer riding shotgun swiftly exited the car and ran to the guy.
Instead of attempting to arrest the man, the cop assaulted him. Here was yet another unbelievable incident to take in. Despite being inebriated or heavily drugged, the guy fought back hard and effectively; the two stood toe to toe, trading blows.
Soon, the driver joined the fray. He and his partner rained punches on the man. Not surprisingly, the fellow was beaten into submission and pulled to the car.
His face was a mass of bloody, oozing lacerations. “So, you think you’re a tough guy, Charly Brown?” one of the officers mockingly asked him.
“F__k you!” the suspect mumbled through bloody lips. The cop punched him hard in the face. He repeated the question, got the same response, and the cop let fly another devastating blow to the face.
On multiple occasions, I had seen LAPD officers in my destitute neighborhood behave pretty shamefully. Cops, for no reason, stopped me while I drove countless times, often subjecting me to insults. I also had been on the receiving end of officers physically comporting themselves inappropriately.
But I had never witnessed anything as horrifying as that brutal beating. That memory will never leave me.
As I was being fingerprinted, a cop placed four of my fingers on a metal platen. He pushed down hard and ran the inked fingers across the platen’s sharp edge, inflicting deep wounds.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the sadist said snidely.
My upbringing in rough and tumble Pacoima toughened me, a guy not often frightened and never bullied.
However, in those few hours, LAPD cops put the fear of god in me. I was powerless and in the hands of men capable of exceptional cruelty and callousness.
Tony, my long-time friend, bailed me out.
I faced a charge of public intoxication, and I was determined to prove my innocence. My public defender advised me to plead guilty on the day of the hearing. In exchange, I would be placed on probation. I was not going to plead guilty, I told the lawyer.
The officers did not attend the hearing, and the judge dismissed the case.
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 