Residents Tell Panel of Encounters With LAPD : Police: Commission investigating response to riots hears angry criticism of officers’ attitudes toward minorities.

In a barrage of angry criticism Thursday night, residents told a special commission set up to study the Police Department’s response to the Los Angeles riots that police officers lost touch with the community long before the riots broke out.

In the third public meeting held this week in areas most affected by the spring unrest, about 40 residents gathered at Adams Junior High School, near USC, to describe their encounters with police.

Saying that the LAPD is too quick to treat people of color as criminals, several speakers complained that only in minority neighborhoods are residents routinely subject to verbal abuse and made to lie on the ground during questioning.

“We aren’t counting on the police to do anything for us anymore,” said Paul Wesley Parker, who said his brother was among those arrested during the early stages of the riots that erupted on April 29. “All you do for African-Americans is dehumanize us.”

Although the meeting at Adams was somewhat calmer than Wednesday’s stormy session in South-Central Los Angeles, many of those who spoke before the so-called Webster commission on Thursday shouted into the microphone. A few angrily pointed their fingers at former FBI and CIA director William Webster, the panel’s chairman.

One resident, John L. Jones, voiced a complaint heard frequently during the two-hour session: that police tend to view all minority residents as outlaws.

“They should get to know us,” he said. “Everyone is not a hardened criminal.”

Jones recounted how one of his neighbors had been forced to lie on the ground because he resembled a suspect in a drive-by shooting. No apology was offered when officers realized their mistake, Jones said.

“I think the way the LAPD is used in our city is to keep people under strict control,” he said.

Carl Jackson, a longtime resident of the Nickerson Gardens housing project, disagreed with a recently announced proposal by city officials to increase the number of women on the police force, saying he doubted it would do much to improve the LAPD’s standing in minority communities.

“A responsible police officer has nothing to do with gender or racial makeup,” he said. “Either a person is capable of doing the job or they’re not. If they’re not, get them off the street.”

Many of the complaints heard Thursday echoed those voiced during two public meetings earlier this week in South-Central Los Angeles. While Adams is in a heavily Latino district, only about a dozen in the audience were Latino.

Criticism of the LAPD’s slow response to the riots has been heard repeatedly at the sessions, with many residents saying it was too little, too late, and not unusual for the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

But suspicion also runs high regarding the Webster inquiry and what its recommendations could mean in terms of beefing up the LAPD, rather than addressing broader social and economic ills.

Webster initially emphasized that his panel would not attempt to delve into the broader issues that may have contributed to the riot. But in the face of a barrage of community complaints, he appears to be widening the scope of the inquiry to encompass the long and deep split between minority communities and the Police Department.

In an interview after Thursday’s session, Webster acknowledged the extent of the task the LAPD faces in improving its image among minority residents.

“They want the police to know them better,” he said. “That’s what I’m hearing. How that translates into policy is what we have to deal with. How do you build trust when the trust has been weakened this much?”

Tonight’s meeting begins at 7 o’clock at Berendo Junior High, near Koreatown.