The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Tuesday, we look at the American violence streak as exemplified by the original Rodney King beating and the post verdict riots. And Betty Ann Bowser reports on the most unusual Presidential campaign of Ross Perot. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Attorney Gen. William Barr announced today that a joint federal/state task force is being formed to investigate and prosecute crimes committed during the Los Angeles riots. Earlier in the day, President Bush told a group of Republican Senators the government would fully prosecute anyone who looted, set fires or committed murders. Mr. Bush planned to fly to Los Angeles tomorrow to visit some of the areas worst hit by the violence. Also on Capitol Hill today, members of the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on new measures to fight police brutality. Michigan Democrat John Conyers said the President's emphasis was misdirected.

REP. JOHN CONYERS, [D] Michigan: By acquitting those four officers, that jury confirmed the fears of many African-Americans that the criminal justice system is a failure. You know, one of the things that the President of the United States can't get through his head is that those weren't criminals out in LA, those were outraged citizens that had nothing else that they could do that were venting the rage of years of political and economic repression.

MR. MacNeil: At that same hearing, the committee heard testimony from a U.S. Circuit Court Judge from Connecticut who said it was difficult to get criminal convictions in police brutality cases. He proposed giving the federal government authority to bringcivil suits as well as criminal prosecutions.

JUDGE JON NEWMAN, U.S. Court of Appeals: I tried these cases and I saw the jury reaction to them. Occasionally, they were successful, but frequently, they were not. And one reason they were not is that just as juries are reluctant to brand a police officer a criminal, they are also reluctant to impose heavy financial obligations on that police officer. The suit should be brought by the United States and the defendant should be the city. Rodney King tomorrow can bring a 1983 suit which would be called King versus the Four Police Officers. He might win. He might not. I suggest to you the suit will have far better chance of success and will be far more meaningful to the citizens of America and to the police departments of America if the suit is called The United States of America versus the City of Los Angeles.

MR. MacNeil: The committee will hear a response from the head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division on Thursday. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Life continued its return to normal in Los Angeles. Hundreds of people began returning goods they stole during the rioting. Some were given directly to the police; others left their stolen goods at LA churches. Many who have not given their loot back are being arrested in raids on homes in the riot area. The nighttime curfew was lifted last night for the first time since Thursday. There were scattered incidents of shooting at National Guardsmen, but they did not return fire and there were not reports of injuries. The violence spread to Canada last night. About 1,000 people smashed windows and looted shops in Toronto. It happened after a peaceful demonstration to protest the Rodney King verdict and the Saturday killing of a black man by Toronto police. Seven people suffered minor injuries. Twenty-five people were arrested.

MR. MacNeil: A man shot his estranged wife to death today inside a Missouri courthouse. He wounded four others before he was shot and critically wounded by court officers. It happened just before the man's divorce hearing. The wounded included lawyers for the woman and the gunman, a bailiff, and a guard. A North Dakota judge was critically wounded in another courthouse shooting today. The incident took place in Grand Forks during a child support hearing. The gunman was appearing for failure to make payments. He escaped but was later caught by police.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Joseph McDade, Republican of Pennsylvania, was indicted today on federal charges of accepting bribes from defense contractors. The indictment alleged from 1983 to '88 McDade received free airplane trips in return for his influence in obtaining government contracts. McDade has served in Congress for 30 years. He said he expected to be exonerated. Today is Presidential Primary Day in North Carolina, Indiana, and the District of Columbia. Bill Clinton and President Bush are expected to be the big winners. Clinton received the formal endorsement of the AFL-CIO today. A new poll from the Times Mirror Center today showed a tight race for President. A two-man Bush-Clinton race would end in a virtual tie if the election were held today, said the poll. If Ross Perot was in there too, it would be an almost even three-way split. We'll have more about the Perot campaign later in the program.

MR. MacNeil: The bombardment of Sarajevo went on today, despite word of a truce. A European Community mediator said the Bosnian Presidency and the Yugoslav army had agreed to an immediate cease- fire, but mortar shells rained down on the capital throughout the day even after the cease-fire deadline. The fighting forced the withdrawal of European Community monitors who are trying to stop the bloodshed. We have more in this report from Terry Lloyd of Independent Television News.

MR. LLOYD: The continued heavy fighting which has left suburbs and streets deserted illustrates why the EEC found it impossible to carry out their task. Today it centered around the federal army barracks which has been surrounded by Muslim forces, but still union negotiators attempt to bring about another cease-fire.

COLM DOYLE, E.C. Adviser: I think all we can do is try and if there's a little bit of reason on both sides, if we can try and convince them that the destruction of the city doesn't do anything good for the city, for the people, and that the international condemnation is quite severe to follow, I don't really have an idea, except that we will try and see can we come to some arrangement.

MR. LLOYD: The Bosnian Presidency agreed to meet Mr. Doyle and late morning a convoy took off with the intention of sitting down with the federal army and the Serbs if a cease-fire was called first. Families living in this area are mixed and they have no wish to fight their neighbors.

WOMAN ON STREET: It's very stupid. This is a city of love, not of war.

MR. LLOYD: But the Muslim militia who returned home to rest said they had to continue the battle. And so throughout this morning, the bombardment has continued.

MR. MacNeil: There was also more fighting in Afghanistan today. Afghan Television said 40 people died and 200 were wounded during a second day of rocket attacks on the capital city of Kabul. The rockets were fired by an extremist rebel faction. The faction is opposed to the new interim government headed by a more moderate rebel leader.

MR. LEHRER: The strike of German public workers closed down the Frankfurt Airport today. It is Europe's busiest airport. Almost all air traffic in Germany has been halted now by the nine-day strike. Trains and buses were also not running and garbage collection and mail service have been disrupted. The dispute is over pay. The government and the workers union resumed talks tomorrow. Russian officials said today trading in the ruble will begin on international currency markets July 1st. They said the ruble will be fully convertible a month later. This step is considered key to attracting international investment because money earned there now in rubles is virtually worthless abroad. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to violence, and the campaign of Ross Perot. FOCUS - CULTURE OF VIOLENCE

MR. LEHRER: Our lead story is once again tonight the aftermath of the riots in Los Angeles. Last night on this program a teacher at an LA high school asked his students to list some words they associated with the nightmare they had just experienced. High on that list was the word "violence." Tonight we examine what creates that violence and the fear of violence in America. Jess Mowry is the author of "Way Past Cool," a novel about the street gangs of Oakland. Joseph Wambaugh is a former Los Angeles police officer, the author of 12 best selling novels about police work, including "The New Centurions," and "The Onion Field." Jewelle Taylor Gibbs is a psychologist, professor at the University of California, at Berkeley's School of Social Welfare, currently at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. She's the author of a book "Young Black and Male in America, An Endangered Species." Larry Whalen is the police chief of Cincinnati, Ohio, where he has been on the force for 34 years. Robert Coles is a Harvard psychiatrist who has worked with and written extensively about children from various backgrounds. We expect him to join us from Boston in a moment. And Hubert Williams is the former Chief of Police at Newark, New Jersey. He's now president of the Police Foundation. Beginning with you, Chief Williams, A.M. Rosenthal wrote this morning in the New York Times the following: "We live in a cultural nuthouse, a mad world of blood, torture, and murder, that surrounds us in the movies and follows us home when we turn on television entertainment. Violence is chic, profitable, the scene." Is he right?

CHIEF WILLIAMS: That may not be the America for all Americans, but clearly for people in the inner cities, that is the America. And that's the world that police must confront on a daily basis.

MR. LEHRER: Is it -- do they bring -- what do police bring to that violence scene?

CHIEF WILLIAMS: I think that police bring a level of expectations. They're dealing with people willing to use guns and have bigger weapons now, heavy fire power weapons, military weapons. A cop has to be very cautious and very careful, very guarded. He is likely to be more at the edge than he would ordinarily be let's say 10 years ago.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Mowry, how would you see a police officer going into the situation that Hubert Williams just described?

MR. MOWRY: Well, I would see them as my kids see them, and I've seen them all my life, that they're seen as the enemies, whether they intend to become that or not, that's what I and the people I've grown up with have seen them as.

MR. LEHRER: So they bring violence into the situation. In other words, they bring as much violence to the situation as the people they're going to calm down, or going to deal with, is that what you're suggesting?

MR. MOWRY: Sometimes it certainly looks that way.

MR. LEHRER: In whose eyes?

MR. MOWRY: Well, in the eyes of myself. In the eyes of the kids around here, my own four kids, you can't -- it's like the old cliche -- you can't get a cop when you need one and when you do, the three times in my life I've actually called police, I've regretted it each time. It's like -- again, another cliche -- like the victim is usually treated worse than a criminal in them cases.

MR. LEHRER: Chief Whalen in Cincinnati, that's a terrible indictment of the way you make your living.

CHIEF WHALEN: Well, I certainly think it indicates that some people aren't keeping current with modern police practices in the way of community-oriented policemen. And the police officer brings a lot more to the scene in the way of prevention and education and ability to relate to those communities than they do bring violence.

MR. LEHRER: But they're trained to deal in violence, are they not, in addition to dealing with violence?

CHIEF WHALEN: They are trained to deal with violence, but they are trained first of all to try to reduce the violence, to try to get into manageable terms through non-violent techniques. And then if they're forced to escalate it by circumstances, then they may go ahead and do that.

MR. LEHRER: Joseph Wambaugh, you were a police officer for 14 years. Were you more violent as a person, just as a human being, when you stopped being a cop than you were when you began?

MR. WAMBAUGH: I was more cynical, that's for sure. I think if there's one thing police work does, it makes people cynical, and part of the way that happens is listening to people like your guest who indicts police departments all over the country based on his one experience or two or three, with one police department. There are thousands of police departments all over the country. We don't have a monolithic, national police force. This is not the United Kingdom. So first of all, we have to start being specific and not talk about "the" police as though we have one police force.

MR. LEHRER: But where does the violence begin, Mr. Wambaugh? I mean, does it begin as A.M. Rosenthal suggested in a way that's just in the air everywhere, it's on radio, it's on television, it's in the movies, it's in the novels that you and others write. Is it part of our culture, or is it brought there by the police, or is it already there where the police go? Where is it?

MR. WAMBAUGH: This country has become so de-sensitized to violence that a horror comic book like "Silence of the Lambs" can win Best Picture and the director can get up and say, this is a very moral film, when in the last scenes, a serial killer who devours people goes off into the sunset for the sequel and the audience cheers him at the end of that film. That would not have happened a generation or two ago. Our young people are now totally de-sensitized to violence so that the savagery we saw on the streets of Los Angeles in the past week or so probably won't make the impression on them that it will make on people our age.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Professor Gibbs,

PROF. GIBBS: Yes. I think he's made a point that our culture has been de-sensitized to violence. I think though that we really have a tradition in this culture of violence, from the frontier society. We have had a great deal of trouble getting any kind of decent gun control laws. People feel they have a right to use guns. We have a great deal of family violence, most of which goes unreported. We have date rape, which is coming out of the closet. So the society really does have a great deal of violence at all levels. And I think if you do look at the films and the books and the mass media, what really sells, violence does sell, so that there is a general - -

MR. LEHRER: But why does it sell?

PROF. GIBBS: I think it sells because it excites people. Some people have said that violence is the new pornography, that we've gone so far in terms of pornographic materials that they no longer excite people, so people are now excited by tremendous violence, like the novel he mentioned, gory kinds of tales. But the other thing I think the mass media has to take some responsibility for is the way they have portrayed young black males, basically as sexual and aggressive. And this you can see in any newspaper, on any television program, and this has raised a level of fear not only in the general public but cops, themselves. I think policemen are a part of this general culture. I think they have negative stereotypes of young black males. And I think they, themselves, come from a culture, a police culture, which is a very macho culture, which is a culture that emphasizes force, which is a culture that rewards how many arrests you've made, and so I think that we're dealing with two kinds of cultures here, American culture, and the police culture.

MR. LEHRER: Chief Whalen, is she right?

CHIEF WHALEN: No, I don't think that's correct at all in the sense that it kind of ignores the training that's being provided to police agencies across this country. It ignores the selection process. It ignores the affirmative action processes that have led a great number of agencies to integrated police forces, both in terms of minority and female representation, that can react better to the communities in which they're called in to work with. I think there's a great emphasis on the part of municipal police and to identify with the people that they serve if, in fact, they follow the service model of policing.

MR. LEHRER: But you're not suggesting that there isn't a macho element in police work, is there? Isn't there an excitement to go out there and enforce the law and confront danger and all that sort of thing?

CHIEF WHALEN: Well, macho if you can apply that also to the male and female of the species.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. Use the word in a non-gender way.

CHIEF WHALEN: In a generic sense?

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

CHIEF WHALEN: Certainly there is some macho impression, but I think that experience tends to reduce that expectation and that the realities of having to deal with the problems and the realities of injury and danger to the police officers becomes every bit as paramount as that macho rush of adrenalin that people seem to think drives the modern day police officer. I think there's other things of genuine concern on the part of those police officers for the people that they serve, but a lack of programs and a lack of assistance from other elements of government and the criminal justice system in accomplishing those goals.

MR. LEHRER: Chief Williams, the Police Foundation looks at all kinds of things like this in police work. Based on your experience and based on what the foundation has looked at, is the average police officer today on the street -- whether it's Los Angeles or Newark or Madison, Wisconsin, or wherever -- confronted with a more violent situation than used to be, or are we just -- that's the first question.

CHIEF WILLIAMS: First let me say that police work is portrayed as exciting and violence. That is an aspect of police work and the average cop on the street has to confront greater risk to his own safety and greater violence because of what he sees every day in his work.

MR. LEHRER: Is it worse now than it's ever been?

CHIEF WILLIAMS: It's bad and it's probably worse now than it has been in decades. I wouldn't want to say it's worse now than it's ever been.

MR. LEHRER: Sure, okay.

CHIEF WILLIAMS: But it's extremely bad. All you need to do is look at the homicide rate in our cities and you can see how bad it is. Cops are the ones that are out there dealing with the crime, dealing with the violence. They're confronted with all of us. The rest of us, we sit back and we expect that the police will do this and this is his job. He does more because of institutional failure within our society. And I think Dr. Gibbs was absolutely right when she talked about the stereotyping of the young black male. If you look at the drug problem, for example, the drug problem is a central city problem. When drugs in America is a $200 billion a year industry, this is not a central city problem because central cities do not have that money, but it's a portrayal. So we've got to begin to disaggragate this in a way that we have a level playing field and everyone is looked at with respect to their level of contribution in it. That's part of the problem.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Mowry, you've heard what Mr. Wambaugh and Mr. Williams and Chief Whalen have said about police work. Does that change your feelings about this situation at all?

MR. MOWRY: Well, all I know if he's talking about the cops being out here, in the recent riots they had here in San Francisco, the first night it was going on I saw two police cruisers crammed, three cops in front, three cops in back, two of them sitting there with the windows rolled up, watchingwhite people get pulled out of cars and beat up. Now, when that situation -- those who serve and protect -- I can see white America thinking that we're paying these people to do something? Now, what those cops could have done, I don't know. I ain't sayin', but they could have done something more than what they did and it's -- it's hard to believe that they're out on the front lines when they be outnumbered -- when the situation is different, when they don't have a black man on the ground beating him, three or four of 'em, five or six of 'em, then they're -- again, they sat there in the car and did nothing.

MR. LEHRER: Prof. Wambaugh, what do you think when you hear something like that?

MR. WAMBAUGH: I think that the cops generally get blamed for being too aggressive and too tough. And now when they use restraint, they're being blamed for using too much restraint and being too timid. So what I think is the policeman's lot is an unhappy one, and if you want love, join the fire department, apparently.

MR. LEHRER: If you want love, join the fire department, Mr. Mowry?

MR. MOWRY: No, I think that I met a good cop I guess is what you call one time, OPD, but he's no longer there. Back to what the gentleman was saying a few minutes go, cops seem to class society into three categories, cops, civilians, and garbage. At least there I grew up in the inner city, they don't seem to feel that any civilians live around there.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Mowry, is there any one incident or one series of incidents that causes you to feel to the way -- that causes you to feel the way you do about police officers?

MR. MOWRY: Well, the examples are out there every day.

MR. LEHRER: I mean, in your own life.

MR. MOWRY: Yes. I was a kid, I was questioned, and when -- I think I was about 13 years old -- when the two big cops didn't like what I said, they took me round the corner and beat the hell out of me. This isn't an isolated incident. I mean, that's what happened to me, but it happens to my kids. You take a kid that society teaches him the policeman is your friend and then when they find out early that the policeman isn't your friend, then you've got the beginning of the problems right there.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Prof. Gibbs?

PROF. GIBBS: Well, I think it's important to point out that what is called police brutality is quite frequent in minority communities, especially in low income inner cities and in the rural South. And we have documented records on that which we can talk about over and over. A young black male was killed in Teaneck, New Jersey, about a year ago, shot in the back, and there was very credible evidence that he had stopped, that he had put his hands in the air. Several witnesses said that. That cop was exonerated and, again, I think one of the earlier guests on the program mentioned that juries are very reluctant to convict a policeman, because they see policemen as the embodiment of law and order. And I think in this country we have really given the police the message, the political message, that law and order is more important than social justice. What those young people in Watts were saying the other night is, we want social justice even at the cost of law and order. And I think that's a message of pain, it's a message of anger, and I think our politicians really need to listen to that message, because sending troops in isn't going to solve the problem. The problem was not the verdict on Rodney King's case, the problem is poverty. The problem is unemployment. The problem is inner cities which have been neglected for the last 12 years, and the problem is the way politicians and other leaders of our society have divided whites from blacks, rich from poor. Those are the problems that we have to take care of if America is going to survive as a united country.

MR. LEHRER: Chief Williams.

CHIEF WILLIAMS: But one of the problems that I have is that the tendency to generalize, to look at the cops, for example, that this gentleman has had the problem with, and to see all police officers in the same fashion, or the officers that were involved with the King incident, and generalize from that about all police. There's been a tremendous in policing in America, a shift and change in the way police departments are trying to conduct the business of public service. And you see the shifts by looking at some of the leadership in New York, Lee Brown and others, minorities that have taken the reins of policing and tried to come closer to community. And I think that there are some very positive things that we've got to point out about our police in this country and not let it be said that merely because of this King incident -- I think police were more appalled, as much -- as appalled by that violence associated with that than anybody. If there's a problem, it's the failure of the justice system to hold people accountable for the excesses that they had committed in that act with respect to King. That's where the failure is. It is not merely the fact that those officers abused their authority or may have abused their authority. It's the judicial system didn't hold them accountable for their acts. And I'd say that's the case with the other situation that you've mentioned as well. I'm just afraid that we are casting too broad a net here, bringing in all the good with the bad, and that doesn't do anybody any good.

MR. LEHRER: Chief Whalen, how do you feel about this very question?

CHIEF WHALEN: Well, it seems like cop bashing is the easiest thing to engage in on a generalized kind of basis, but I think what the lady had to say about the failure of the political system deserves a lot more attention. I can already see the groundswell of the media and the politicians who place the blame for the Los Angeles and ensuing riots on the police, when in reality, people for the most part aren't mad at their police. The police are the only visible twenty-four hour a day, seven day a week, three hundred and sixty-five day a year exponent of government, so that when the people, and particularly the inner city people, are frustrated by the inactivity of their government, the inability of their politicians and their machinery to meet the needs of the people, they vent their frustrations on the most obvious object around, and that happens to be the uniformed municipal police officer. That police officer doesn't go in there with any hate in their heart for any particular individual, but they're the subject of a lot of that hate, because of the failure of the governmental programs that have now been in place for 30 years to resolve the problems they were intended to resolve.

MR. LEHRER: But Chief Whalen, you're not suggesting that there are not police officers in some cases that do go in and abuse their authority and get carried away and are overly-violent against people, white, black, Hispanic, et cetera, are you, sir?

CHIEF WHALEN: I would be the first one to tell you that we've got bad cops, like everybody has bad apples in their organization, but I also tell you that the police are the first ones now to -- as Hubert Williams said and as Joe Wambaugh said -- they realize what the problems are. And they're trying to work toward resolving them. If we could get the other elements of government to work at it as energetically as the police are, I think we'd all see a lot of more rapid progress.

MR. LEHRER: Joseph Wambaugh, what about Prof. Gibbs' point, that the message that has been delivered by the political leaders to this country is that law and order is more important than social justice and that message has gotten through obviously to the police?

MR. WAMBAUGH: I wish that we could get the level of hysteria down enough to recognize a simple, basic fact that race and police brutality are not necessarily intertwined in the way we think they are. A brutal cop, whether he's black or white, will beat the hell out of anybody, whether he's black or white. The race of the person getting abused doesn't seem to matter to these kind of cops. Thankfully, they are few and far between. And about our political leaders, two hours after the Rodney King verdict, our mayor in Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, made a speech and said, we must express our outrage and anger at this verdict; it was based on race, pure and simple. He struck the match.

MR. LEHRER: Did he strike the match?

PROF. GIBBS: Well, I must say I'd have to disagree with someone whose novels I really have enjoyed. And I'd have to say that I think that the situation in Los Angeles was a tinder box and that the verdict was the match that lit that tinder box. I think that perhaps at the time the mayor of Los Angeles was really identifying with that young black man who had been brutally beaten and perhaps was unwise to say what he said, but I think many people said some very unwise things immediately after that happened. And I'd like to ask some of the policemen on the program to comment on the leadership of Mr. Gates, who was, in fact, at a political fund- raiser and is said to have been there by the New York Times this morning for at least half an hour. He did not call out his troops. He certainly was not a commanding officer at his post when he should have been, and it looks to many people -- many people have said that this is the way Chief Gates got his revenge on the people in Los Angeles, the leaders of Los Angeles, who want him to resign, that he simply said, let the ghetto burn, we will not go in there and protect these people. And we have seen all week scenes of policemen standing by while people looted supermarkets, while they burned, and it wasn't that the police were not there; it is that the police did not do anything to stop those riots. So I think we have to ask about the leadership not only of the mayor but of the police chief, because he was in control of the policing.

MR. LEHRER: Let me ask Joe Wambaugh about that. Do you want to respond to that?

MR. WAMBAUGH: Yes, indeed. There's no question but that the LAPD was slow in responding to the first violence. And the reasons for that are yet to be explained. My information is that there were political decisions being made at the city hall in conjunction with the police department to use restraint because LAPD has historically been too aggressive and too quick to use force and violence, according to the critics of LAPD. So we have yet to hear the explanation of the fact that they were, indeed, slow to respond to the first violence.

MR. LEHRER: Well, let's go back to the more general question, Chief Williams, and that is just the question of this violent culture that we all live in. You said that we all live in it and yet it's more difficult for people living in the inner cities. Whereverwe live, how do we start getting it out of our society? Is there any way to do it, or is it just something we have to learn to live with, along with the weather?

CHIEF WILLIAMS: I think Wambaugh made a point when he said that we have to reduce the level of hysteria. And I think we also have to be open and honest about these issues and be willing to discuss them, particularly amongst people of different races. I mean, Bill Bradley made the point recent, he said, if you're white and you haven't had a discussion, a serious discussion with some black person that you know about the race issue, then you're part of the problem. I think part of our problem is that we're not sufficiently open and bold enough to deal with these major issues and we allow them to be politicized to the point where you've got to take sides irrespective of whether or not what's going on is the right thing. And I see even on this program here, as we look at the issue with respect to Gates, I would question, you know, the statement that Joe Wambaugh made with respect to what happened. I think that there's enough blame to go around, not only for the police in LA, but for the guards not being equipped, for other agencies not going in. No matter how you make this call, it's a difficult call. The thing that we've got to do at this point, I believe, is for people that are responsible to begin to speak out. And we don't see anything near the level of that.

MR. LEHRER: Well, are you uncomfortable at all? Here you are, police chief, a spokesman for a national police organization, black, defending, having to defend policemen in a very difficult situation.

CHIEF WILLIAMS: First, you remember my comment about this generalization business --

MR. LEHRER: Right.

CHIEF WILLIAMS: -- that I said from the outset. I condemned the behavior of those officers. I was very proud of the Los Angeles police officer that condemned that behavior, and I was appalled at the decision that the jury made. I didn't see much condemnation from people with respect to that conduct until after the decision, after the explosion. People should have been speaking out about it. It was wrong. He went too far. There's no standard in policing that allows that much force to be used against any human being. He had to desist when there was no resistance being used against him and when that person was down and no longer constituted a threat. So I think there was a big problem with respect to the way the King situation was handled. On the other hand, cops in America have a very honorable profession. They come, they help people in times of trouble. If they aren't there, then we, as a society, we have a major problem. We'll have to use the military to police our streets. So I think that the policing in America is a tough, difficult responsibility. We have cops that overstep the bounds. When they do, we have an obligation to call them on it, say that they are wrong, make it known publicly that they are wrong, and particularly for people in leadership positions in the police, and that's the only way we can have the respect of the people that we service.

MR. LEHRER: Chief Whalen in Cincinnati, when the original Rodney King incident happened and the videotape went on, did you speak out against it in Cincinnati?

CHIEF WHALEN: We were asked the question about our opinion and I said, from what we could see on that videotape, it certainly appeared that the officers went beyond the bounds of propriety. As time unfolded and the evidence was presented to the jury, again, all that we have to go on is what the nationalmedia presents to us, the verdict didn't appear to be consistent with the evidence that was presented.

MR. LEHRER: Did you say that the other night, after the verdict was returned?

CHIEF WHALEN: Yes. I've made that comment here in the area publicly and privately to citizen groups and to anybody else. Two things: The conduct of the officers appeared to be excessive and the verdict didn't seem to be consistent with the evidence that was presented.

MR. LEHRER: Joseph Wambaugh, what did you say after the original incident and then after the verdict?

MR. WAMBAUGH: Virtually everyone has condemned the action that we saw on the Holiday Video Tape as being an example of excessive force. But that prosecution was mishandled from the beginning by the DA. Those cops were charged with felonious assault, which requires a high level of intent. Those jurors didn't say the cops were innocent. They said the cops were not guilty of the crime that was charged. The DA could have charged them with lesser included crimes that didn't require such a high level of proof of intent. That was a very technical trial that had more to do with law than with justice. But after the jury has spoken, it behooves the rest of us to remember that sometimes in court trials we don't necessarily get justice as we see justice, but we must protect the law and that those cops, like it or not, were deemed not guilty, which is different from innocent, and we can't keep trying them until we get it right. Those cops couldn't even get a fair trial today as a result of the riots.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Mowry, does that help you resolve this in your own mind about justice?

MR. MOWRY: No, sir. I feel -- I feel the whole incident, the Rodney King verdict was to send a message loud and clear to black people in this country that we, the system, whatever you want to call it, can do whatever we want to do to you, we can do it in the eyes of the world and nobody is going to lift a finger to help you. That's the basic -- I mean, that's what this whole discussion is all about and what it's being caused by, the Rodney King incident, and a Rodney King verdict.

MR. LEHRER: And Prof. Gibbs, you believe there are a lot of people who would agree with Mr. Mowry?

PROF. GIBBS: Well, I think so. It's really very complex. They didn't say that he was innocent, but, on the other hand, they walked free. And that's what people understand, that he is -- by being not guilty, you are not punished. And I think there was a sense that these officers exceeded the bounds of correct police behavior. They treated this man like an animal and that there should have been some kind of, if you talk about justice, that we should have had some kind of justice. And that is the match that lit the flame. But as I wanted to say again, I think that the problems are much deeper than the verdict in the Rodney King case. I think it's really just a symptom. And I do believe that the -- perhaps the jurors didn't see him as a human being. They saw him as sort of a black person who was threatening their way of life and, therefore, we need these officers to keep him under control. And I think that is the message that was sent by the defense when they talked about the thin blue line separating the -- all of us in civilization from chaos, from the jungle. He roared like a bull. They used animal-like references to this man. And so he was able to distance these white, predominantly white jurors from Rodney King as a human being who had been treated very brutally. And by distancing them, they were able to say, we need these police to protect us and this thin blue line is your defense against chaos.

MR. LEHRER: But Hubert Williams says that that's exactly the case, that we do need the police out there to protect us.

PROF. GIBBS: Well, I think we would all agree that we need police who are well trained. And I have to say I agree with Mr. Williams that we are getting better, more modern police techniques. Community policing seems to be the wave of the future. But I still think it would be -- it would really be good to hear some of the police leaders to admit that they do have renegade cops, they do have police brutality, and there are certainly studies that have been done showing that there is differential treatment of black men in the justice system. From the time they are arrested, the rates are higher, the conviction rates are higher, their sentences are higher, and they stay in prison longer. So the whole criminal justice system is biased against black men in this country.

MR. LEHRER: Is that true?

CHIEF WILLIAMS: Let me be the first to admit it, that we have brutal cops. Let me also agree with the techniques that were being used before that jury, characterizing African Americans as animals, and that was also the kind of message being sent over the mobile digital terminals by the Los Angeles police officers according to the Christopher Commission Report, characterizing gorilla in the mist, it's monkey slapping time. Come on, let's be honest about this thing. Race is a big factor here. And until we can say that and begin to deal with that as an issue, we're going to color everything with it. Now we've got bad cops. All cops are not bad. And the majority of cops, in my view, are hard working, honest decent citizens trying to make a living out there at a tough and difficult job. But they're afraid in many instances to condemn those officers that over step their authority and I think we've got to reach the point in law enforcement where when a police officer goes too far, that it's made clear that he's gone too far and we're not afraid to say it. So I'm saying, yes, we do have police officers just like what she described. But no one should assume that that is the majority of police officers in this country, because it's not.

MR. LEHRER: Would you agree with that, Chief Whalen, what Hubert Williams just said, that there is that in the culture, and the culture has to be changed?

CHIEF WHALEN: It's in there to some degree, but I also agree with what Hubert says, that the majority of those police officers out there are professionals and they want to do the job the way that it has to be done. I think one of the big contributors to the solution might be the realization that people have to be held accountable for their individual acts, that adults do have a responsibility toward their children to raise them in the proper manner. They can't defer that to the schools and to the churches and to third parties to try to inculcate all the morality and all the good things that they have to learn as they grow up, so that the focus on the police is a diversion. It's proper but it's a diversion. It's a nice thing for everybody to focus on so that they can ignore their own responsibilities toward resolving this problem. And those responsibilities constitute a larger part of the problem than the police do.

MR. LEHRER: All right. We will leave it there. I'm sorry that Robert Coles at Harvard did not make it to the studio in Boston, but thanks to the five of you. FOCUS - '92 - GRASSROOTS CAMPAIGN

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight, we examine the non-campaign of the non-candidate. Texas billionaire Ross Perot is not yet officially running for President, but a Times Mirror poll released today showed that if he were, he would right now finish in a dead heat with official candidates Bush and Clinton. Perot said today he's cutting back on public appearances and interviews to formulate a platform and build an organization for a campaign. We have a report on his fledgling campaign organization from Betty Ann Bowser of public station KUHT-Houston.

SPOKESMAN: Every day there is another event in the non-candidacy of Ross Perot.

MS. BOWSER: In Texas, they're not only talking about him; they're also writing songs.

[ROSS PEROT SONG]

MS. BOWSER: There is nothing conventional about the non-candidacy of Ross Perot.

SPOKESPERSON: Well, they're having petition drives to get Ross on all of the ballots.

MS. BOWSER: Here at his Dallas headquarters you won't find any campaign posters. If you want a bumper sticker or a T-shirt you have to pay for it yourself. There are no spin doctors, no handlers, no campaign strategists, just a lot of volunteers trying to get Perot's name on the ballot in all 50 states. And the man hasn't even officially announced he'll run for President. Perot's people are a small army who man their battle stations seven days a week. These folks took over an abandoned automatic teller machine adjacent to a Dallas freeway exit.

DAN RUTTMAN, Perot Supporter: Everyone who calls in, everyone who stops by petition locations, they don't want to just sign a petition; they want to volunteer.

MS. BOWSER: On this Saturday morning, the petition business was brisk. In the first weeks of Perot's non-candidacy, volunteers manned a phone bank to answer about 20,000 calls a day.

SHARON HOLMAN, Perot Staff: We'll we're over, just over 1.9 million calls since the beginning.

MS. BOWSER: Sharon Holman is one of twenty-seven paid staffers drafted by the boss to work on the petition effort. Like the others, she has no political experience.

SHARON HOLMAN: This person wants to be an office worker, circulate petitions. That's Billingham, Washington, this one from New York wants to circulate petitions, sign petitions. Bell Port, New York, part-time officer worker, circulate petitions; Medina, Ohio, Springfield, Utah, Kingston, New York, Louisville, Kentucky, all of these people want to volunteer in their state.

RENA PEDERSON, Dallas Morning News: I've lived in Texas most of my life and certainly covered politics since the early '70s. I have never seen anything quite like it.

MS. BOWSER: Rena Pederson is the editorial page editor for the Dallas Morning News.

MS. PEDERSON: Just to test it for myself, I went out to the Perot phone bank the other evening just to go up to the volunteers and talk to them and say, who are you. I found that they cross party lines. They were Democrats. They were Republicans. They were middle class. They were working class, mostly thirty to fiftyish, sixtyish range, although I understand quite a few students have gotten involved.

[SEGMENT FROM SIMPSONS]

MS. BOWSER: Every Thursday night, these Southern Methodist University students get together to watch the cartoon show "The Simpsons," but on this particular night, they hung around to watch Perot live on the Larry King Show.

LARRY KING: Who's your campaign manager?

ROSS PEROT: Well, I guess if we have one, it's me. But I don't have a campaign yet.

MR. KING: You're doing this today alone, no entourage?

ROSS PEROT: That's right.

MARK MONIOT, Student: I volunteered already to answer phones, do whatever they want me to do. The headquarters of the whole thing is up here in North Dallas.

CHRIS MULDER, Student: Generally, whether you agree with him or not, you know for sure just by seeing his demeanor on television and seeing the way he answers questions and that he is going to shake things up.

ALEX KELLER, Student: From listening tonight, I always thought he was kind of like -- you always see him on the news -- he seems kind of like a jokester or kind of a funny kind of guy and everything like that, but I think he seems kind of genuine.

MS. BOWSER: This is where Perot is waging the other half of his non-campaign for President, in the media, with almost daily visits from reporters who want to know how he'll get through a maze of state regulations, it makes it difficult for an outsider to get on the ballot. For example, in Texas, you need 54,000 registered voters who did not vote in the Presidential primary. Still, for every voter who can't sign, there seem to be two others who qualify, and so far, Perot's petition effort is succeeding. Vance Smith is a retired Panama Canal plumber who sets up his battle station every morning at a busy Dallas intersection. Like so many of Perot's warriors, Smith has never been involved in politics before.

VANCE SMITH, Perot Volunteer: Bush is a zero. He changes his mind every 15 minutes just like the weather. He's pro quota; he's anti-quota. He's birth control, anti-birth control. He's everything to all people. We've got to get somebody up there who can run this country, somebody that can offer some leadership, but we don't have it.

MS. BOWSER: Stephen Klineberg is a sociologist who said Smith is a typical Perot supporter.

STEPHEN KLINEBERG, Sociologist: Someone like Perot comes along who has this "can do" reputation, who is not beholding to either party, who has his own money, so he's not going to be beholding to the -- the big donors, which is one of the real concerns that Americans have. And it sort of fits into the old American mythology from the Westerns, of the guy comes out from out of town and cleans up the town. There's a whole bunch of reasons, both negative and positive, that account for a really quite unusual and interesting phenomenon.

RENA PEDERSON: Well, what is interesting about him is here is a very sophisticated man. On the other man, he still talks like he came in on a load of wood from Texarkana. He has a larger than life personality, almost mythic. It's funny -- I have a friend who says that he looks like a gerbil with a bad haircut but thinks he's John Wayne.

MS. BOWSER: Politically Perot's an independent. He's for gun control, is pro choice. If elected, he says he could create a financial blitz to cure AIDs, and in spite of the massive petition campaign, Perot says he's a reluctant candidate.

ROSS PEROT: I don't want to do this job. I am a strange duck in this pond in that I consider it the toughest, dirtiest, most thankless, brutal job in the world, not only on the person but on every person that person happens to love. I concluded that this country's been so good to me and I have lived completely across the economic spectrum, had more than my share of good luck, that if thousands and thousands of people who write me and have been writing me for months saying, please run, please run, please run, I finally put the whole responsibility on their shoulders.

MS. BOWSER: While the President and front-runner Clinton campaign for primary votes, Perot does the TV talk show circuit. He's done Donahue. He's done David Frost. He's done Larry King twice. He's done C-Span. He's done 60Minutes. He's done Face the Nation. He's done the NewsHour. And he even got a call from David Letterman.

DAVID LETTERMAN: Well, now when you go to work in the morning, what exactly do you do?

ROSS PEROT: [on phone] Well, I've got plenty to work on all day, so I have to come in early and work hard. I've got a wife and four daughters. So I have to work to stay even, David.

DAVID LETTERMAN: Do you find that a dollar just doesn't go as far as it used to, Ross?

MS. BOWSER: Since he's not a candidate yet, he doesn't make stump speeches.

SPOKESPERSON: Please welcome back to the National Press Club Mr. Ross Perot.

MS. BOWSER: When Mr. Perot goes to Washington, he writes his own material and he usually talks about his favorite subject, the need to get rid of the national debt.

ROSS PEROT: The total national debt was only 1 trillion dollars in 1980 when President Reagan took office. It is now 4 trillion dollars. Maybe it was voodoo economics. Whatever it was, we are now in deep voodoo, I'll tell you that.

MS. BOWSER: Wherever he goes, he is usually the center of attention and never leaves his sense of humor at home.

REPORTER: Have you ever cheated on your wife or have you cheated on your taxes?

ROSS PEROT: No.

REPORTER: No?

ROSS PEROT: No, no.

REPORTER: No, no. Okay. That's what we're talking about.

ROSS PEROT: Why don't we -- anybody want to know if I use fingernail polish? Does anybody have any serious questions?

MS. BOWSER: In Dallas, Perot is quietly bringing together what he refers to as the great minds to consult with him. He says out of this will come specific programs to cure the country's ills. Perot says he won't accept federal campaign money, which means he can spend millions of his own trying to get elected. And polls show the American public thinks that's fine. Richard Murray is a Houston pollster.

RICHARD MURRAY, Political Scientist: No one with the personal resources has ever contested a Presidential race, literally the ability to pay for a Cadillac campaign from day one. Second, we're an electronic commonwealth now, and that's very different. Ross Perot can go through television and reach every voter in America almost instantaneously. He's the ultimate plebiscite kind of politician and it's an electronic plebiscite and he's got a shot in that kind of environment.

ROSS PEROT: We will run an unorthodox campaign. I will not spell out our strategy and tactics. That wouldn't make any sense to lay out to your competitors what you're planning to do. We will just let them discover it as it happened, but I think the American people will find it interesting. And I just don't want to talk about it for obvious reasons. That would be like explaining to your competition in a sports event exactly what you were going to do play by play. While Perot won't talk strategy, you don't have to be a sportscaster to understand this. These are the dates where Perot must qualify by petition to be on the ballot, a process that doesn't end until September.

MR. MURRAY: I think that the whole ballot access thing gives Perot more of an opportunity than a hurdle, an opportunity because first I think it's doable. He'll get on the ballot I think easily in Texas. These deadlines are spread out over several months so he can move through states systematically. It also keeps him in the news. He's not going to be winning any primaries, but, you know, on May 11th, Perot announces 400,000 Texans have signed up to put me on the ballot. Then three weeks later he qualifies in Tennessee, and then he qualifies in Ohio. So he has an opportunity to continue to generate political successes, and in a sense, the tougher the better, the higher the standard for ballot qualification, the more of a story it is.

BERNARD SHAW: [CNN] Dramatic evidence today that billionaire Ross Perot could cause big problems for Bush in his adopted home state of Texas.

MS. BOWSER: As interest in Perot grows, so do the numbers he's getting in polls conducted by news organizations. He's even out polling the President on his own turf in Texas.

BOB STEIN, Political Analyst: He's truly an independent.

MS. BOWSER: Bob Stein says his polling shows Perot draws a lot of his support from people who consider themselves independent.

BOB STEIN: Ross Perot is very different. Most voters in recent polls do not know which party he is ever affiliated with. Most importantly, there are far more independent voters in 1968, something in the area of about 15 to 17 percent of the electorate identify themselves as independent. That number is up to close to a third in 1992. The two parties witnessed an increasing numbers of voters who see themselves as independent, have not captured the imagination of the American voter. And whether Ross Perot will be elected President I think is a far less significant question than what his candidacy is going to do to the two party system in terms of the way in which we recruit candidates, and how those candidates stand on issues.

MS. BOWSER: If Perot does run for President, this is one treasured bit of independence he'll likely have to give up, and trade the driver's seat of his Oldsmobile for the back seat of a big black Secret Service limousine. There are some things in politics that even Ross Perot can't change. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major story of this Tuesday, Attorney General William Barr said a joint federal/state task force is being formed to investigate and prosecute crimes committed during the Los Angeles riots. President Bush plans to fly to Los Angeles tomorrow to visit some of the areas worst hit by the violence. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour for tonight and we will be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.