In July, four months after members of the Los Angeles Police Department were seen beating Rodney King on national television, an independent commission appointed to examine persistent charges that the department is prone to brutality against blacks and other minorities delivered its findings. A "significant number" of LAPD members, the Christopher Commission reported, "repetitively use excessive force." Among the messages -- typed on patrol-car computers between late 1989 and early 1991 -- that the commission made public was this one: "Capture him, beat him, treat him like dirt."

If the commission is correct, it seems fair to ask: where was the press?

Covering police misconduct has always posed a problem for reporters, who sometimes form a symbiotic relationship with the cops. Television reporters, with their need for images and on-camera interviews, have had a particularly tough time covering the subject. A look at some history may help to explain why it wasn't a TV news crew but an amateur photographer who last March brought police brutality to national attention.

* In 1977 and 1978, Wayne Satz, a reporter for KABC-TV in Los Angeles, aired a series of reports alleging numerous instances of police abuse, among them cases involving the the shooting of unarmed suspect. The series, which included an interview with a masked LAPD officer, described incidents of brutality by fellow members of the force. It earned the station a Peabody award -- and the wrath of two Los Angeles police chiefs, Ed Davis and his successor, Daryl Gates, who is expected to retire next year.

It wasn't only the chiefs who were furious, Satz says; letter writers deluged the station with complaints, he began receiving death threats, his name appeared on bumper stickers ("Satz Sucks"), and, he says, officers used his likeness on the targets of their pistol ranges.

Satz attributes part of the fury to the fact that "there was an enormous disparity between the image of the cops on TV" -- a reference to such police-action series as Dragnet and Adam 12, whose producer once kept LAPD officers on his payroll as advisers -- "and the cops we were talking about on the news.

Satz adds that, while his station "never blinked" in the face of police and other opposition to his reports, "I felt very lonely back then because no one else in the news media -- electronic or print -- was jumping into the fray." Satz, who is now a TV commentator on the media, offers an explanation for this widespread reluctance: "If you're in the TV news racket, you principal goal is to be loved, and it is self-destructive to give viewers unsettling information, particularly to tell viewers that their confidence in their police force might be misplaced."

* Back in 1967, Roger Grimsby, then anchor and news director of KGO-TV in San Francisco, recalled a news judgment he made of the sort that few newspeople today would talk about in public. Grimsby, who went on to become anchor at WABC-TV in New York and is now retired, was addressing a meeting of California Press broadcasters. In his speech Grimsby said that earlier that year he had been allotted funds to hire an additional news crew and that he had decided to use it to cover San Francisco at night.

Grimsby told his audience that, during their very first week in the field, the crew picked up a police call about a drug deal in progress in the Haight-Asbury area. Arriving at the scene, the KGO-TV crew began filming the arrest of a luckless "hippy" (as Grimsby described him) being tackled, wrestled to the ground, and beaten by arresting officers. The camera operator then moved in as one of the officers walked up to the suspect and "gratuitously" (again Grimsby's word) kicked him in the head. The crew then returned to the studio, where the film was developed, edited, and shown to Grimsby, who in his speech, recalled that he was faced with a dilemma.

"I knew I had great piece of film," he said. "But at the same time I knew that our nighttime crew would not be able to operate effectively without the full cooperation of the San Francisco Police Department. And that film almost certainly would jeopardize our relationship." He decided to kill the piece, he said, adding that police had later tipped off his crew about a stakeout of an armed robbery at a downtown motel. KGO's coverage of that incident had resulted in high ratings and some prestigious journalism awards, he pointed out. Contacted recently, Grimsby said tersely, "A reporter has to remain in the good graces of the police."

* While journalists over the years have exchanged stories about the pressure police sometimes bring to bear to protect their image in the press, stories about intimidation rarely make it into print. A notable exception was a December 21, 1990, report in the San Diego Union and Tribune alleging that Michael Tuck, a former San Diego anchor who moved to KCBS-TV in Los Angeles last year, had been the target of a "political" police investigation. The paper claimed that after Tuck had broadcast a series of commentaries criticizing San Diego police chief bob Brugreen for his handling of allegations of police misconduct, the police made Tuck the subject of intensive surveillance, including the taking of aerial photographs of his home. Tuck was quoted by the newspaper as saying, "They didn't find anything. Believe me, if they had, they would have used it against me." (Burgreen later parried questions concerning the alleged surveillance, saying only that his department may investigate possible criminal conduct by anyone and, if after doing so "we determine there is no reason to prosecute the person, we do not disclose that information.")

Tom Reddin, who served as chief of the LAPD from 1967 to 1969, is the only police chief of a major city to become a television anchor (at KTLA) after leaving office. Speaking of the Christopher Commission, Reddin says, "What I hope will result from the investigation is a loosening of the flow of information regarding disciplinary procedures. Daryl [Gates] may talk about 'my policemen,' but they are really the people's policemen, and the people have a right know about how their policemen perform their duties."

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