Timothy Goldman was thinking nonstop about the verdicts in the Rodney G. King case last Wednesday when he gathered up his new video camera and headed for the intersection where rioting is said to have started.
The 32-year-old amateur photographer's dramatic footage taken at Florence and Normandie avenues caught Los Angeles police officers apparently fleeing in the face of an angry crowd, which then attacked and beat passing motorists, looted stores and set fires.
Goldman's tape, along with footage shot by two other South Los Angeles residents, may be the most complete record of the early frantic hours of the melee. The ABC television network purchased the combined tapes for an undisclosed sum and aired a portion of them on news programs Tuesday night.
Only Goldman agreed to speak about his experiences. The other two, he said, want to remain anonymous.
The South Los Angeles resident said he was dumbfounded by the behavior of LAPD officers he saw "literally running to their vehicles to get away" from the shouting, shoving crowd before the rioting began.
The often clumsily filmed tapes surfaced Monday. Goldman had ventured out with his camera again Thursday and met a USC student, Gregory Sandoval, who was writing a story for his school paper. Goldman told Sandoval about the tapes he and his friend had filmed, and later about the third tape. Sandoval became their agent to sell the footage.
A black man who spent much of his youth in South Los Angeles, Goldman said he had only returned to the area in the past year. Before that, he said, he had spent 8 1/2 years in the Air Force, rising to the rank of captain.
A graduate of Palisades High School and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., Goldman said he had been "taking a break" since leaving the Air Force, living on savings. Separated from his wife, he lives with his mother, who is a teacher, and his 6-year-old son. He hopes eventually to find work with an airline company.
Goldman was at first sympathetic to the anger voiced by the crowd, he said, and even to some of the violence he witnessed. But as time passed, Goldman said, he became dismayed and tried at one point to dissuade some people he recognized from looting, imploring them, "Be cool, it's not worth it."
Goldman taped several beatings, including that of Reginald O. Denny, who was yanked from the cab of his 18-wheeler and nearly killed.
Last Wednesday afternoon, he was riding in a friend's car, reacting to the news of the verdicts "in disbelief," he said.
The friend's car was equipped with a police scanner. "We heard on the police scanner, 'Officer needs assistance,' " Goldman said. Goldman had his RCA Camcorder with him, and so did his friend, so they headed for the corner of Florence and Normandie.
The arrest seemed to inflame the crowd of about 100 people, he said. "There were some bottles, cans and sticks being thrown. It wasn't fighting and punching, none of that. It was just a lot of angry people out there."
As he taped, Goldman recalled, "I was just watching what was going on, (thinking) the city had it coming with that verdict. I didn't have any regrets that some of it was taking place because I grew up with most of these people. I know how they feel. We're a bit tired of the LAPD."
Then a police official, using a megaphone, called out: "It's not worth it. Let's go!" Goldman said he was surprised. Goldman said he assumed the police would soon return, armed with riot gear. "But they never did come back."
Almost immediately, the crowd turned on Anglo and Latino motorists caught in the intersection. Goldman taped angry men and women throwing rocks and bottles at cars.
Finally, the effect of watching the violence drove him away. "I don't like to see bloody bodies, or people getting beat up," he said. After three hours at the scene, "I was walking westbound on Florence. I filmed another accident, and then I saw another guy laying on the street. I don't know how he got there. I was just too sick to go see anything else. I turned the camera off, and I just walked home."
Of the thousands of people who filled the streets in the Los Angeles riots last April, one resident of the area, Timothy Goldman, is finding himself in the role of official witness to the violence.
An unemployed 33-year-old former Air Force officer who likes to play with video cameras, Mr. Goldman lived within blocks of where the rioting began on April 29 and was able to tape the outbreak of looting, arson and beatings. Among other things he captured on tape was the beating of a truck driver, Reginald Denny, who was pulled from his vehicle in the attack at an intersection.
Mr. Goldman, with the help of his brother and a friend, used three cameras to film nearly two hours of violence on that first day. Then, having viewed the tapes a couple of times, he said he almost erased them, thinking no one else would be interested.
But the television networks and Government prosecutors were, and the tapes are now among the most valuable of 329 tapes that are being studied by a joint Federal, state and local prosecuting group preparing riot-related charges. Crucial to Prosecutions
Because of his videotapes and his familiarity with the neighborhood and its residents, Mr. Goldman said in a recent interview, prosecutors are using him as a sort of universal witness, asking him to identify people shown not only on his own videotapes but on those of others.
"After every five or 10 seconds they stop the tape and ask me to identify someone," he said. "The attorney told me they might try to use me as a witness to what was going on and have me try to finger people."
Mr. Goldman said he had been subpoenaed to testify for the first time in public on Friday at a pretrial hearing for three men accused of participating in the beating of Mr. Denny, who remains under medical care with serious head injuries.
The three men, Damian Williams, 19 years old, Henry Watson, 27, and Antoine Miller, 20, are charged with attempted murder, torture, aggravated mayhem and robbery. They have also been charged with assault in the beating of 12 other people in seven vehicles at the same intersection. They are being held on bail ranging from $500,000 to $580,000. If convicted, they would face possible life sentences.
A fourth man who was arrested with them, Gary Williams, 33, will be tried separately on a charge of robbery. Mr. Williams is accused of picking Mr. Denny's pocket while he was lying in street. Victims Also Seek His Help
Mr. Goldman said some victims of the violence have asked him to testify in their civil suits against the city. His role as a witness to the riot could last many more months.
Mr. Goldman said this role has placed him in danger from the gang members who are his neighbors, many of whom are suspected of taking part in the violence or the looting. Mr. Goldman, who was interviewed at a friend's house, said he is in hiding with his 6-year-old.
"We've had some threats," Mr. Goldman said. "There are a lot of people out there that blame me for a lot of the arrests.
"The Feds have contacted me in the past about joining a witness protection program, but I have taken my own measures to secure myself. No one in my family knows where I live. I communicate through a mobile phone or from a phone booth."
Federal officials would not discuss Mr. Goldman or comment on any grand jury proceedings. But an F.B.I. spokesman said videotapes and photographs by amateurs and news organizations are critical to the riot investigation. Videos Transform Cases
Indeed, law-enforcement investigations in general have been transformed by the rapid spread of amateur videotapes like the famous tape of the police beating of Rodney G. King in March 1991 that set the stage for the rioting, said John Hoos, an F.B.I spokesman. The attacks at the intersection in South-Central Los Angeles occurred in the first hours after a jury acquitted four white police officers of assault and related charges in the beating of Mr. King, who is black.
"There has never been anything like this," Mr. Hoos said. "The new technology has created a wealth of vital information that is revolutionizing our ability to do investigations like this."
He said that apart from Mr. Goldman's tape, residents have continued to come forward with videotapes and photographs that are helping the task force of about 100 investigators to identify suspects and victims.
But while amateurs have offered their tapes for inspection, most news organizations have resisted subpoenas to turn over any photographs or videotapes that have not been used in broadcasts or published.
Mr. Goldman had also tried to resist giving them up, but his effort failed because there is no law that gives him a right to do so. As a private citizen, Mr. Goldman is not covered by state statutes, called shield laws, that protect the notes or tapes of professional journalists. Blurring of Lines
"Very broadly, the question is going to be, 'Is the person asserting protection of the shield law a journalist or just a member of the public?' " said Rex Heinke, a lawyer specializing in the First Amendment. "Generally speaking, if I pick up a videocamera and just walk out the front door and decide to take shots and then assert the shield law, it's unlikely I'll be successful."
But he also said the spread of videocameras among the public would eventually test this definition of journalism and the limits of shield laws. "As the technology has evolved so that the average person can afford videocameras, the question as to where you draw the line has become blurred," Mr. Heinke said.
Mr. Goldman appears to have been the quintessential amateur.
"The camera is like a toy to me," he said, comparing it to a police scanner on which, as a former Air Force man, he liked to listen to air traffic transmissions.
He spoke of his videotaping of the riot violence as the last part of a daylong session. "We were downtown all that day filming girls, filming cars, going to bus stops, just recording," Mr. Goldman said.
In the afternoon he said that he was preparing to go to baseball practice when he heard a distress call on his police scanner and that he then went to the street corner near his house, where he saw the first violence of the riot.
"I stood on top of a car filming traffic," he said. "As people headed toward the intersection it was pretty weird to see them making U-turns." Amateur Agent Helps Out
He said he also saw people being dragged from their vehicles at the intersection and beaten, and he filmed that, too.
When he went out the next day, Mr. Goldman said, he met Gregory Sandoval, a journalism student at the University of California, while taping a standoff between a group of young men and police officers over a safe that had fallen from the back of a truck. He said the two struck up a conversation and that he told Mr. Sandoval he had videotaped some of the violence. He said Mr. Sandoval offered to act as his agent, and he accepted.
In the last three months, Mr. Goldman said, Mr. Sandoval has helped him to earn tens of thousands of dollars by selling broadcast rights, but not the tapes, to the networks and to foreign news organizations.
Mr. Sandoval said that as a first-time agent he did not initially get the best deals for Mr. Goldman's tapes, but that in later arrangements the two had made tens of thousands of dollars by, in effect, renting the tapes out for limited periods to the networks and to overseas news outlets.
In contrast, George Holliday, the plumbing salesman who videotaped the police beating of Mr. King, sold his videotape outright to a local television station. Although it has become one of the most widely viewed home videos in history, he earned only $500 for it.
