That jury in Los Angeles didn`t do policemen any favor with their not-guilty verdict in the Rodney King case. Not for the cops who have to go into the toughest black neighborhoods in cities all over America.
It will take more than the usual community relations, public relations and other glad-handing to make a dent in the anger that began spreading as soon as TV flashed the verdict across the country. Complete with reruns of King being beaten and stomped by the supposedly terrified cops.
This wasn`t your typical police brutality case, which is usually a your-word-against-his-word situation, maybe with some photographs of the supposed victim`s black eye and swollen lip as the only other evidence.
It was the most widely viewed example of police muscle in history. Because some guy with a video camera happened to be nearby, just about everybody in the country got to see the cops deliver blow after blow, like the boys back in the supermarket`s meat department working over a tough cut.
Through another miracle of modern electronics, we heard recordings of the police chatting about their exploits on their radio band, cracking wise in racist terms about the flogging they gave some poor bozo.
And those who saw the trial on TV heard the cops` justification: They were scared of Rodney King. If so, they must have been absolutely terrified to have given him more than 50 whacks, many after King didn`t seem capable of anything more hostile than a twitch.
But what else could they say? That they were tenderizing him?
As feeble as that defense sounded, the jury bought it. Or it bought something during the three-month trial, but who knows what? There is no way to know how the minds of jurors work. A jury trial is a legal crapshoot.
But most blacks who ponder this verdict will assume that they know how the jurors` minds worked. They worked like the minds of 10 whites, one Asian and one Hispanic. Not a black in the crowd.
And if you were black, what would you think? Would you view the tape, listen to the nasty jibes on the police radio, then say: ”Well, yes, this Rodney King wasn`t a model citizen, and he had led the police on a car chase, and they thought he had been using drugs, and although he was not armed, they had reason to fear that he might grab all four of them in a huge bearhug and squeeze them to death, or that he might bite them, and who knows if he brushed and flossed that day.”
Or might you say: ”Uh-huh. Here we go again. White cops, white jury, white system. The more things change, baby, the more they remain the same.”
And that`s the pity of this verdict. Cops aren`t as casually brutal as they once were. That`s a blanket statement, but it`s true. When I was a police reporter 35 years ago, anything went. Minority rights ceased at the heavy end of the night stick. And who was going to blow the whistle? There were few black cops, judges or officeholders. The press was almost all white and, at best, paternalistic.
That`s changed enormously. Yes, there are still mean cops. In our shoot-em-up cities, it would be amazing if there weren`t. But the average cop just about everywhere is better educated, better trained and better disciplined than the ham-fisted old-timers. And when someone is bashed around, he has ways of making his complaint heard. Rodney King might not have been given a fair deal in court, but his beating is no secret, the way it would have been in 1955.
But tell that to a young black man or woman who saw the Rodney King beating on TV and heard the jury`s verdict. Don`t tell me about 1955, they`ll say, this is 1992. And I can`t blame them. I can only hope that they don`t believe that every person in a police uniform is as hyperactive as those L.A. cops.
Of course, there are those of the pink-cheeked persuasion who will cheer the verdict and say that even if Rodney King wasn`t on the 10-most-wanted list, he probably deserved a beating anyway just for being there. And if not 50-plus whacks, the first dozen or two were probably appropriate. So what`s the big deal?
If so, I would suggest that you try to imagine that instead of Rodney King, it was your father, husband or brother. Would the verdict be to your satisfaction?
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It will be enlightening to hear what the jurors thought, if anything. Who knows, with all the goofy stuff we have on TV now, maybe they thought it was all a dramatic re-enactment.