LAPD detective kills herself in sheriff's Santa Clarita Valley station

SIMI VALLEY -- Minutes after he repeatedly clubbed Rodney King, a police officer said he was so "scared" during the confrontation that he feared he would have to shoot the motorist, a policewoman testified Wednesday.

Officer Susan Clemmer also told jurors that King spat blood at her in the ambulance and laughingly told a sergeant in the hospital emergency room, "I love you."

Clemmer 's testimony came as the defense got under way in the trial of four Los Angeles policemen charged with assault and excessive force in King's beating.

She is the first of a string of police officers who were at the beating scene and expected to back up the defendants' claims they used reasonable force because King appeared combative and high on PCP.

None of the two dozen law officers standing by at the scene reported any misconduct after the March 3, 1991, incident, prompting prosecutors, in the face of a public uproar last year, to unsuccessfully seek indictments against them.

Attack had occurred

Officers Laurence Powell and Timothy Wind had already beaten King with batons, when Clemmer said she drove up and saw the handcuffed, hogtied mo torist on the side of a Lake View Terrace road. A shaken Powell was pacing and out of breath, she recounted.

"He said, `I was scared. The guy threw me off his back. I thought I was going to have to shoot him,' " Clemmer said.

In the ambulance, King, who remained hogtied and face-down with a towel over his head, "kept blowing or spitting blood on my legs or my shoes," Clemmer testified. When she asked him to stop and turn his head, he "laughed and continued."

But under cross-examination by Deputy District Attorney Terry White, Clemmer conceded that she did not know if King, who had a severe mouth laceration, was deliberately spitting blood. She also said a paramedic filled out forms and made small talk with the officers as King bled from the mouth.

Clemmer said she never heard Powell taunt King at the hospital -- as two nurses testified for the prosecution -- but she did remember King's comment to Sgt. Stacey Koon.

"He looked at Sgt. Koon and he says, `I love you,' and he started laughing and he smiled," Clemmer testified.

Powell, Wind, Koon and officer Theodore Briseno were charged in the case after a plumber's homemade videotape of the beating was broadcast nationwide.

Prosecutors concede King was drunk and initially resisted arrest after he led California Highway Patrol officers on an eight-mile, high-speed chase. But they maintain the police officers went far beyond the amount of force that was necessary to subdue King.

Earlier, Kathleen Bosak, a Los Angeles paramedic who transported King to the hospital, said he was "combative" and spit blood on the walls of the ambulance.

Bosak also said she determined King's injuries were minor and limited to one cut on his cheek.

"It didn't look like anything was struck on him," she testified. "It looked like he had fallen on the ground and scraped his face up."

Emergency room physicians testified during the prosecution's phase that King required 20 stitches in his face, and suffered a facial fracture, broken leg and numerous bruises.

Under cross-examination, Bosak acknowledged that King may have been writhing in the ambulance, not because he was uncooperative, but because he was uncomfortable at being hogtied for half an hour.

She also said King was quiet and cooperative at the hospital after the restraints were removed.

In another matter, Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg ruled that another Los Angeles Police Department officer at the scene, David Love, could only tell jurors about the three to five blows he witnessed in person.

Outside the presence of the jury, Love testified that some of the first baton strikes to King's chest and legs were justified. He also said the other four dozen blows he saw only on the videotape were "excessive and unnecessary." The judge said Love, however, cannot give the jury opinions about events he did not personally see.