NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE? SITUATION IN L.A. ISN'T THAT SIMPLE; NIGHT IN OAKLAND ILLUSTRATES THE DIFFICULTY OF TELEVISION JUSTICE. MEANWHILE, HOW DO WE DEFEAT RACISM HERE AT HOME IN CAPE GIRARDEAU?

For three months during the summer of 1987, I did a research study for the Fremont, California, police department. While there, I spent time in several other California cities conducting interviews, participating in training panels, and going on ride-alongs. One night, while on a ride-along in crime-plagued Oakland, the tactical cop I was with, a man who looked remarkably like Kirby Puckett, thought it would be worthwhile if I had a few specific responsibilities. One responsibility included "arresting drunks."

In Oakland, the murder rate and drug abuse are some of the highest in the nation. So arresting people for public intoxication is not a priority. Only if the man or woman is likely to harm himself or someone else do the police act.

On this humid July night, the tactical cop and I responded to a call about a man who was running in crazy circles in the middle of a heavily-trafficked intersection. As three beat cops controlled the traffic, the tactical cop gave me the job of trying to coax the drunk man to the sidewalk.

"Hey buddy," I said. "Are you sure you want to be out here? Look over there, there's more space to walk over there," I suggested, pointing at a parking lot next to a McDonald's.

Obviously, the man didn't like my suggestion. Maybe he didn't like the tone of my voice. Maybe he just didn't like the look of my face, because...he stopped turning circles and hit me. Several times, in fact, before I could get away.

Once I slipped away, the man went back to turning circles.

The tactical cop didn't fare much better. Not only did the "drunk" leap and flail at him when he approached, but he bit him. In fact, the "drunk" went totally berserk. And in the end, it took the tactical cop and the three beat cops working together to subdue him. It was not a pretty sight. The man was charged.

Finally, they laid on him in the middle of the street. They cuffed him. Then they struggled to lead him to a beat cop's car. The man fought the whole time. He gnashed his teeth. He spit. He jerked against the handcuffs. And he yelled, "This is police brutality. This is police brutality. POLICE BRUTALITY!"

Arriving at the car, he would not go in. He became a flurry of crazed energy. In the end, the tactical cop tackled him into the car, both of them bouncing off the door and the door frame in the process.

The cops handcuffed him to the cage and then let him sit there as a police van was called. The man's forehead dripped blood from a gash caused by the door frame. Meanwhile, the tactical cop looked over the bite on his arm and cursed that the guy could be H.I.V. positive.

A few minutes later the van arrived, and after another struggle, the "drunk" was hauled off. We found out later that the man had been shot up with P.C.P., a drug which can cause wild and uncontrollable urges in people (later that summer on another ride-along I poured sand on a street to soak up the blood of a man, who, high on P.C.P., had hurled himself in front of a car).

This episode and that whole summer has been in my mind for the past two weeks because of the Rodney King verdict and the response to that verdict. Scenes from that summer have been juxtaposed in my mind with the horrible scenes of King's beating, as well as with the horror of Los Angeles in flames.

First, if someone had videotaped that scene in Oakland, and then shown only the portion of it where the cop tackled the screaming, handcuffed man into the car, I'm sure there would be little hesitation from many people to label the scene police brutality. Indeed, it is the nature of some people to view any violent force as excessive regardless of the circumstance.

Second, three of the cops in this case were black. The man on P.C.P. was an otherwise innocuous-looking white man. The cops' actions had nothing to do with race, however; they had to do with getting this man, who was congesting a major thoroughfare and endangering his own life in the process, off of the street. Were this man black or were the cops white, I don't doubt the situation would have been the same. There was a job to do, and it was done.

Third, there are major problems within urban police forces. Fremont is a booming bedroom community just south of Oakland and east of San Francisco. It is home to many computer firms as well as Teddy Ruxpin, the mechanical bear which was a phenomenally trendy toy when I was there. Sunnyvale, Los Gatos and Cupertino, California, were other towns I spent time in. Each of these communities was awash in the money that came from their strong tax bases, the result of being in the center of Silicone Valley. Their police and public safety departments were equipped with the finest equipment on the market (meanwhile, they were places where crime was naturally low).

Oakland, however, was a whole other story. Heroine capital of the United States, mecca of public housing turned into fortified gang communities, it was still dealing with the legacy of the sixties, when San Francisco shipped their unwanteds across the bay. Business was bankrupt. The tax base was empty, and so the police tried to make due with out-dated equipment and abysmally-low salaries.

Moreover, many of the police officers themselves were scary. Tactical cops were something unique to Oakland, I found out as I traveled to other departments in California. Kenneth, the tactical cop I spent most of my time with explained it something like this: "One of our main jobs is to get to the sensitive situations before the beat cops. You never know what they might do. They have a special feel for their neighborhoods, but they don't always do what's right." What he meant is that they tended to beat up on people when push came to shove.

I also found out in interviews that the reading skills, education levels and, even, English language ability of some of the cops were severely lacking. "But what is there to do?" one Sergeant told me. "We can't pay enough to get good cops to come in from outside the area. More cops have been killed here in the past ten years. And it would be total anarchy if there weren't any cops. The whole city would be like `the Acorn' (an ambitious but ill-conceived public housing project in Oakland turned into a drug and crime fortress, where cops did not dare to enter)."

I have been thinking about other parts of that summer a lot lately. And frankly, it is a complex world. No matter how much many of us hate to believe it, cops do act criminally sometimes. At the same time, judging a scene from a portion of an 81-second videotape is dangerous. What is clear, however, is that problems exist. And the best way to overcome them is not by ignoring them or by rioting about them.

They are solved by focusing on education not of appeasement, but of basic skills. By hard work, equal opportunity and individual responsibility. Sadly, government seems to have been an obstacle in all of this in the past few decades. It is time it stops pandering to groups whomever they might be and it works to solve the root causes of problems, which might, in some cases, be itself.

* * * * *

As an addendum to this piece, which I wrote a week ago, I would like to add a comment about a local situation. Recently, there has been much discussion in some parts of the community about the possibility of a K.K.K. rally in Cape Girardeau in June. Last Wednesday, Cape Girardeau Police Chief Howard Boyd organized a meeting to explain where the rumor of a rally originated, and what the likelihood was of one actually taking place. He also outlined what actions the police department had taken to alert state and area officials to the possibility of such a rally.

For the most part, the information was no different than what it was when this newspaper originally reported it in late January. To repeat, as we did again on Thursday of last week: an 18-year old boy from Cape Girardeau contacted several white supremacy groups last year, seeking information about their activities. While doing this, he entered himself with at least one of these groups as an organizer for a Cape rally in June.

This group then mailed him 50 flyers to publicize the rally. He distributed seven, at least one which, through repeated photocopying by concerned citizens, came to the attention of the Southeast Missourian, the police department, the N.A.A.C.P., the Southeast Missouri State University Department of Student Affairs, the Association of Black Collegians, the Justice Department, the Sheriff's office, and a few area radio stations.

Since that time, the boy, who has a checkered history, has left the state, and a warrant for his arrest has been put out on him because of an unrelated incident.

There is not much new to the story.

Meanwhile, Chief Boyd and the police department appear to have investigated thoroughly all aspects of the situation, including contacting several state and national human rights and white supremacy watch groups to inquire about the likelihood of such a rally in Cape. The overwhelming evidence is that this rally is a one-person show, and that that one person is no longer around.

Does this mean that there is no racism in Cape Girardeau? Or that a rally won't ever happen here?

No, unfortunately, just as there will always be sick, misguided and obnoxious people in the world, there will be sick, obnoxious and misguided people in Cape Girardeau. And racism, in today's world, is sick, misguided and obnoxious behavior.

It is also damaging behavior. And it is frightening, especially to those racism is aimed at. These people should know, however, that the great majority of the world is with them, and many are working alongside to bring about racism's end.

Ultimately, racism will not be defeated in Cape Girardeau or elsewhere by public statements, government programs, federal laws or even city ordinances, however, no matter how well-intentioned.

We must speak out against injustice, certainly, for the spoken word bestows strength to a cause. But we must also realize that determining what is just is not always simple. As others are flawed, so are we. And name-calling rarely takes anyone anyplace but down.

More importantly, we must renew our own personal efforts to respect all men and women, for each of us are creations of God, made no better or worse, but equally, blessed with lives that are just as precious and fragile.

There has been only one perfect being, and He taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves. If all of us were to live this creed, then and only then, will racism perish. Is this likely soon? No. Does this mean that we should disregard this golden rule as ineffective and take some other means of action? No, again. On this long and troubled road, it just means we have to work even harder. And we must build not tear down.

Jon K. Rust is editor of the Southeast Missourian's Perspective page. He worked for the Fremont, Ca., police department while on an internship as a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina.