Criminal
Jul. 19, 2002
Beating Videographer Wants Record Wiped Clean
LOS ANGELES - Two days before he was arrested by district attorney's investigators on an old misdemeanor warrant, the amateur videographer who taped an Inglewood police officer beating an African-American teen offered to cooperate with investigators if his criminal record was wiped clean.
"I'm sure that you've already figured out my background. I want to let you know that, if my record is completely wiped out, I will completely comply and completely work with the district attorney's office," Mitchell Crooks said in a July 9 voice message to Lt. Alan Jarvis, a district attorney investigator.
Two phone messages were transcribed and released Wednesday by the district attorney, in response to criticism of Crooks' arrest. Crooks, who taped Inglewood Officer Jeremy Morse July 6 slamming 16-year-old Donovan Jackson face-first onto the back of a police cruiser, was arrested by plainclothes investigators July 11 because he had failed to serve his sentence on old misdemeanor charges from Placer County.
Activists have accused the district attorney's office of trying to intimidate Crooks.
Crooks' lawyers, Dean Masserman and Ralph Harrison, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
District Attorney Steve Cooley denied any intimidation. But Cooley has been open about the fact that he was upset Crooks gave several media interviews but ignored a subpoena from a grand jury looking into the July 6 Inglewood police beating.
The day before offering to make a deal, Crooks was defiant, according to a second message transcript.
"As far as I'm concerned, I am going to be completely uncooperative with you," he said in the message to Jarvis. "I won't give you any information whatever ... I'm not going to deal with you at all. I have a couple of things I want to be taken care of. All right. That's it."
On Tuesday night, after pleading not guilty to probation violations in Placer County, Crooks and his lawyers told CNN's Connie Chung he had been trying to cooperate all along.
"Since the first time that I talked to the district attorney's office, I told them I had no problem in speaking with him and talking to the grand jury and giving them the tape," Crooks told Chung. "I just wanted to speak to an attorney beforehand."
Crooks also claimed that he was mistreated during his arrest.
"I have bruises in several spots," Crooks said. "I was in handcuffs for 22 hours. They had locked me outside ... of the cell and my arm was in there. I couldn't sit down, I couldn't stand up and have any slack on it at all ... It was just cruel and unusual punishment to me."
David Houston
david_houston@dailyjournal.com
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