Council OKs Payout for Hazing Injury : Settlement: LAPD officer is awarded $215,000. He says he was beaten by colleagues for refusing to participate in initiation rite.

A Los Angeles police officer who was allegedly beaten by four fellow officers for refusing to participate in a locker room hazing won a $215,000 settlement from the City Council on Tuesday.

Patrol Officer Michael Hansen was attacked in the station locker room on Oct. 14, 1988, by members of a South Los Angeles gang detail, according to Hansen’s attorney, Alan B. Snitzer.

Snitzer said his client, who was hospitalized for four days after the beating, is now performing light duties and may never be able to return to field work.

While council members declined to discuss the details surrounding its action, Senior Assistant City Atty. Thomas C. Hokinson, who handled the case for the city, confirmed that the settlement “arose out of an incident of hazing at the Southeast station” in which an officer claimed “physical injuries, primarily back injuries.”

Lt. Fred Nixon, a spokesman for the department, said files on the case were not available, so he was unable to provide information about the incident.

Snitzer said one officer involved resigned after the incident and others received suspensions ranging from two to 10 days.

Police investigative reports say Hansen was in the locker room at the Southeast station when he saw members of an anti-gang detail confronting a new officer, Brian Agnew.

According to the report, the officers invited Hansen to join them in initiating Agnew into their unit.

When he refused, the officers turned on him, Snitzer said.

“Hansen at that time felt several blows being delivered to his upper body and back . . . with clenched fists,” the report said. “The blows were being administered with such force that he fell to the floor in a seated position, where several additional blows were delivered. . . .

“He recalls experiencing severe pain . . . so intense that it brought tears to his eyes.”

The attackers--identified in the report as officers Grace, Marshall, Hadley and Webster--then turned to Agnew and struck him several times, apparently as part of the initiation rite. Agnew was not injured. Snitzer identified the alleged attackers, named in Hansen’s lawsuit, as Mitch Grace, Bobby Marshall, Ron Hadley and Rico Webster.

Hansen was taken to Daniel Freeman Hospital in Inglewood for treatment of what his attorney described as disc injuries.

Hansen initially told department investigators that he was injured when he became dizzy and fainted, falling backward onto a wooden bench. He later admitted this was untrue, saying he was scared because so many officers were involved and because they had already injured him.

Hansen was admonished by the department for initially lying about what had happened.

Marshall and Grace later contacted him in the hospital and offered their apologies, according to Hansen’s statement in the report.

The report said Hansen had served for a time with the anti-gang unit, which concentrates on gang activities in South-Central Los Angeles. The report indicates that Hansen had several previous run-ins with some of the same officers because of his objections to hazing.

Hansen recalled confrontations with other officers while he was still a member of the unit, according to the investigative report. Once, he said, his pants were pulled off, and on another occasion he was pushed to the floor while officers, including Marshall, piled on him.

He was not injured in these earlier incidents. On Tuesday, Snitzer described the incident that led to the settlement as a “reverse Rodney King,” noting that his client and Agnew are white, while Grace, Marshall, Hadley and Webster are black.

But Hansen, when asked by investigators if he thought the incident was racially motivated, said he was not sure.

The settlement was approved on a 13-0 vote, with no discussion, after council members returned from a closed-door session.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the budget committee and a frequent critic of the Police Department, said the payout will come from a $23-million fund set aside for lawsuit settlements.

Yaroslavsky declined comment on the case, other than to say that “it’s a lot of money . . . but (the settlement) was strongly recommended by the city attorney. Obviously, we feel the (city’s financial) exposure would be higher if we decided to fight it.”