BRUTALITY NOT SEEN AS LOCAL ISSUE

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- Police brutality might happen elsewhere, but a local criminal-justice professor is sure it doesn't exist here.

"I know this community wouldn't tolerate that kind of conduct by the police," said Michael Brown, chairman of the department of criminal justice at Southeast Missouri State University. "This is where I make my home and I've been here 14 years."

Since March 3 the nation's attention, and that of the media, has focused on the issue of police brutality. The date coincides with the videotaped beating of a black, unarmed motorist, Rodney G. King, by Los Angeles police officers after a car chase.

Brown, also the director of the Southeast Missouri State Law Enforcement Academy at the university, said a community gets the kind of police protection it wants and local residents want professional police officers enforcing the law.

As for the beating in Los Angeles, Brown said he thought the incident was an aberration, what with the strides made by law enforcement in the last 25 years. But the incident has hurt law enforcement, he said.

"The law enforcement professionals that I've talked to are disgusted with the conduct of these officers. I haven't found anybody in this business who feels that what those officers did was appropriate not around here.

Said Brown: "It's simply intolerable; you can't accept it."

Sgt. Carl Kinnison of the Cape Girardeau Police Department said he doesn't see the public as perceiving the department's officers as using excessive force on an everyday basis.

Over the last five years, he said, the department has had 10 or less complaints filed annually against its officers. And those complaints deal with a wide gamut of matters, not just excessive force, Kinnison said.

Nevertheless, Kinnison said police brutality is an issue that needs to be researched more thoroughly to determine its causes. To continue to publicize and sensationalize brutality incidents themselves, he said, will do no good.

"I think to go along with that publicity needs to be some explanation as to why it's happening. These officers don't come out of law enforcement academy and start beating people. There's something that happens in their career or that particular situation that causes them to lose control," he said.

The sheriff of Scott County, Bill Ferrell, said he also doesn't think the public perception is that area law enforcement authorities use too much force.

"I don't know what the statistics are," the sheriff said, "but as far as excessive force I've heard very little of it in this part of Missouri entirely. We may have had some complaints about how someone acted, but not on excessive force."

The Los Angeles beating will have repercussions in the filing of complaints with law enforcement agencies in general, Ferrell predicted.

"I believe that there will be an increase in the number of complaints and a lot of them will be false." For that reason, he said, law enforcement agencies need to make sure that they document everything about arrests in case they are later accused of brutality.

Although she said she hasn't had a lot of encounters with police, Jackson resident Nancy Wardron feels there isn't as much police brutality here than there would be in larger cities.

"I hope not," she said Friday at West Park Mall. "That was a pretty brutal film they showed on TV."

In larger cities, she said, police officers probably deal with more life-threatening circumstances and the resulting fear may cause the officers to not use the best of judgment.

Chip King of Cape Girardeau said he doesn't believe local police brutality is excessive, based on his own observations. "They just do their job I guess."