TWO white California policemen disciplined for the beating of a black teenager which was caught on camera have been awarded $2.4 million (£1.3 million) in damages after claiming that they were the victims of racial discrimination.

Officer Jeremy Morse and his partner Bijan Darvish were filmed by a bystander as they arrested Donovan Jackson, 16, at a petrol station in the Inglewood district of Los Angeles on July 6, 2002. The amateur video showed Mr Morse punching the handcuffed youth in the head and slamming him on to the boot of his squad car.

The tape, which dominated TV news bulletins, stirred fears of a repeat of the rioting that swept the nearby South Central neighbourhood of Los Angeles in 1992 when four white police officers were acquitted in the videotaped assault of the black motorist Rodney King. Fifty-four people were killed, 2,000 injured and more than 1,000 buildings destroyed in that violence.

Mr Jackson was riding with his father, Coby Chavis Jr, in a car with expired number plates on the day of the incident. Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies had begun questioning Mr Jackson’s father about the number plates at the petrol station when the teenager came out of the snack shop.

When the youth failed to follow the deputies’ instructions, one of them walked him over to a squad car and ordered him to sit down. But he refused, leading to a scuffle. The Inglewood police officers, who had arrived to help out, wrestled Mr Jackson to the ground and clamped him in handcuffs.

The video, which begins after the original struggle, shows Mr Morse throwing a limp Mr Jackson on to the boot of the squad car and punching him in the face. Mr Morse insists he was reacting to Mr Jackson grabbing his testicles, but that cannot be seen on the video.

Local officials in the largely black area of the city acted resolutely, determined to avoid another flare-up of racial violence. Mr Morse was fired from the police force and charged with assault — although the criminal case eventually collapsed when two juries failed to reach a verdict. Mr Darvish was suspended for ten days for failing to report the incident and was later acquitted of filing a false police report.

The two white officers counter-attacked with a discrimination lawsuit claiming that they had been more harshly disciplined than a black officer at the scene. That officer, Willie Crook, was suspended for four days after he was found to have hit the teenager with his torch.

In their lawsuit, the two white officers claimed that “a form of hysteria swept the mayor’s office and the chief of police” after the video flashed on TV screens nationwide.

Despite an internal police finding that the amount of force used in the arrest was reasonable, “decisions were immediately made to terminate Morse because he had been caught on video perfecting an arrest of an African-American and had used force”, the suit claimed. A jury voted 11-1 on Tuesday to award Mr Morse $1.6 million in damages and allowed him to seek reinstatement in the police force. Mr Darvish was awarded $810,000. “This is not the first time police officers have been trapped in race situations where they suffered unfairly,” Gregory Smith, their lawyer, said after the verdict. “This will have an impact in police departments across the country.”

But the decision was ridiculed by Roosevelt Dorn, Inglewood’s mayor, who called it inflated and inappropriate. “How do you give a man who was suspended for only ten days more than $800,000? Morse was fired, but $1.6 million?” he told the Los Angeles Times. He said it was up to the city council to decide whether to appeal.

Ronald Banks, Inglewood’s police chief, who is black, insisted that race was not a factor in his decision to fire Mr Morse and suspend Mr Darvish.

“I based my decision on their actions and what I thought their responsibility was. It was based purely on the facts,” he said. Locals expressed concern that the award could encourage police officers to abuse ethnic minorities in the area, and said it would only alienate residents from the police force.

Mr Morse and Mr Darvish are not out of legal jeopardy entirely, however. Mr Jackson has also filed a civil rights lawsuit against them.

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