Didn’t Assault Jackson, Officer Tells Court

A former Long Beach police officer charged with assault and falsifying a police report testified Thursday that he neither assaulted activist Don Jackson nor lied about the incident.

Mark Dickey testified that Jackson resisted arrest, forcing the officer to use some pressure. “We go to the point to where it hurts . . . but nothing to warrant the screaming he did,” said Dickey, who is accused of pushing Jackson through a window after a secretly videotaped traffic stop in 1989. Dickey said that he used standard procedures.

Dickey also testified to the accuracy of an eight-page police report, which contained statements that contradict videotapes of the incident. Dickey said that he and his former partner, Mark Ramsey, wrote about the incident the way they remembered it.