"He was screaming, 'Stop!' " said Allen, who said he heard but did not see his friend being beaten. "Then he kind of quit, and all you could hear was like bones being broken, a crunching, like a whip sound."; In the first complete account of the incident from one who was there, Allen, 25, said he believed the beating of King and the blows directed at him and a second passenger, Freddie Helms, were racially motivated.; All three men in the car were black. The police officers were white. As many as 21 Los Angeles police officers were present; a sergeant and three officers have been indicted on assault charges.; Allen's lawyer, John C. Burton, said he would file a federal civil rights suit. King's lawyer said Tuesday he also would file a suit. None of the three men in the car has been charged.; Allen tapped his foot slowly as he sat with his lawyer Tuesday night, watching for the first time the full seven-minute videotape, which includes the two-minute beating that has been shown repeatedly on national television.; The videotape has led to calls for the resignation of Chief Daryl F. Gates and prompted inquiries into the extent of police brutality nationwide.; Speaking quietly, Allen described King's erratic behavior behind the wheel on a night when the three men had been drinking beer and said tension was heightened when King had trouble with his seat belt as he was complying with police orders to leave his car.; He said that at one point a female officer intervened when he himself was threatened with violence. "She's the one who had her hand out saying I didn't do anything wrong," Allen recalled. She was saying, 'He's the one that had his hands up.' "; Nevertheless, he said, he was kicked and manhandled, and Allen said he was threatened by officers who said: "You want to be like your home boy? You want to be like your home boy?"; When the beating was over, the police officers left him and Helms standing by the side of the road, he said. "They said, 'Guess what?' I said, 'What?' They said, 'You're in a Crips neighborhood.' They laughed and took off."; Allen said he and his friends, all unemployed, came from a neighborhood claimed by the Bloods, a rival to the Crips gang.; Since the incident, he said, he had spoken twice with King, 25, who suffered multiple fractures and what his lawyer said may be permanent brain damage. King initially declined to characterize the incident as racial.; On his recent visits, he said, King was having difficulty remembering the night of the beating in a coherent way. "It sounded like he was talking in riddles, all mixed up," Allen said.; As Allen recalls it, the late-night incident began with the three men speeding down the Foothill Freeway in northern Los Angeles at what might have been as fast as 80 miles an hour. Burton said the men had each drunk a 40-ounce bottle of Old English 800 malt liquor.; Burton said, "Drugs had absolutely nothing to do with this incident." Medical tests also showed that King was free of drugs.; After visiting at Allen's house, King told his friends he was taking them to a park where he had gone in the past with his father.; When he saw the flashing lights of a California Highway Patrol car behind them, Allen said: "I told him, 'Rodney, pull over, stop.' He just kept on going, kept on driving.; "I thought he was pulling over, but he was going down the off-ramp. We stopped at the stop sign, and then we were driving again. I said, 'Rodney, pull over.' We were still driving, and the lights were flashing. I could hear a lot of cars." Their small white Hyundai was surrounded by police cars and illuminated by the glare of headlights. It was at this point, he said, that the other passenger, Helms, who had been asleep in the front seat, woke up.; "The police ordered us, 'Driver, put your hands out the window,"' Allen continued. "They said, 'Take your left hand outside the door and step out.' Rodney had the seat belt, and it kind of yanked him back. The police were getting nervous too. They told him to lie flat down, and he lay flat down."; Allen said he and Helms left the car on the opposite side, beside a large, dark park, and also lay down.; "The police put the handcuffs on me, and that's when I heard Rodney screaming," Allen went on. "He was screaming like he was getting a whupping."; After the screaming stopped, he said, he continued to hear the whipping sound of the nightsticks through the clatter of a hovering helicopter.
Bryant Allen, a King passenger, gave the first eye-witness account of King's beating at the hands of police. The incident occurred on April 4, 1968, when police were called to an apartment building in Harlem after reports that someone had been shot. None of the three have been charged. Allen described King's behavior as erratic while driving that night, and said he had trouble with his seat belt while trying to leave the car on police orders. He also said he heard a female officer tell others that King had done nothing wrong. There are calls in Los Angeles for Chief Darryl Gates' resignation.