Meeting Rodney King

About a decade ago, when I was still a reporter at The Press-Enterprise, LA police were once again caught on tape beating a violent suspect eluding their grasp. I forgot the year because there were so many caught-on-tape beatings.

The LA cop beating could only mean one thing in medialand: an investable comparison with Rodney King, whose post-chase beating sparked the LA riots in 1992.

As a police reporter in San Bernardino County, I then had the job of scanning arrest logs. And sure enough, while working a Saturday after a beating, I spotted the name of Rodney Glen King, then detained in the low-security Glen Helen Detention Center in Devore.

The media had been trying to make King the poster boy for police brutality for decades, but one arrest after another since his 1991 beating prevented the media promoting him to the ultimate victim status they had wanted to bestow on him. He just wasn’t a likeable public figure.

I drove from my office in San Bernardino to Devore to interview King and get his take on the latest police beating caught on video. And contrary to his public perception, King wasn’t the idiot I had been expecting.  He was actually very good at spinning reporters, a skill many politicians never master.

Maybe it’s because he was sober at that moment.

King, then in a blue prison jumpsuit, said he didn’t want to comment about the latest LA police beating.

“There are two sides to every story,” he said.

And, for some reason, he was adamant that his middle name was spelled “Glenn” with two n’s despite the media always spelling it with one.

And that was about it for my non-interview. I was in-and-out of the detention center in about 10 minutes. King didn’t say much, but I will always remember him as my only “celebrity” I had ever in the slammer.