Carmen
Angela King Aunt of Rodney King
A shop in Pasadena. A very, very rainy day. We are sitting in the back of the shop. She insists that my assistant, Kishisha Jefferson, join us, because she thought it was not good to make Kishisha sit in the car in the rain. We are in the back of her shop. There are work tables with paints, etc. She makes T-shirts. The shop itself is a boutique with clothing for men, women, and children. Some of the clothing is Afrocentric in design, other items are more mainstream. She is a powerful looking woman with a direct gaze and wavy hair, and a warmth that is natural, even when it is not intended. She looks as though she has Native American ancestry. She is wearing a white sweater, a long skirt, and boots. She smokes a cigarette. There is an iron gate at the main door that is painted white. There is a small television in the back where we are. She lives in an area behind where we are sitting. The interview was actually scheduled for the day before, but she was reluctant to speak with me, because when I arrived Kishisha was in the car. (Kishisha normally drove me to, but did not attend, each interview.) It is ironic that now at the rescheduled time, she insists that Kishisha join us.
Our life is something like,
uh,
what’s the name of that picture
with Dorothy Dandridge
when she was like
a prostitute and the guy she met was in the Air Force—
the service?
Carmen.
Dorothy Dandridge
and Harry Belafonte—
that was us.
How they partied a lot,
and the guy in in the Air Force,
the way he was conservative,
was my father.
We were brought up
for about five or six years like that.
The part where she was …
she got in some trouble,
the way my mom,
she cut my father:
They were at the NCO club,
they got to drinkin’,
and they went to jail out on the base.
She stabbed him—
oh yeah, honey—
he had a scar on his neck.
She went to jail behind that.
We were twelve or thirteen years old.
It seems like it should have been in a movie:
separated and
livin’ in different homes
and then joinin’ back together in different homes
and reuniting.
My brother and I were only two that stayed together,
and that brother was the father of Rodney.
Things that we did
like goin fishin’,
and then on Franklin,
the Sacramento River,
and then …
I ain’t never seen nothing like it in my life.
It was me, Rodney, Paul, and Sam,
Rodney’s friend,
and I looked up and Rodney was down in the water—
had his pants rolled,
feet and all,
like these Africans—
done caught him a big old
trout
by his—
with his hands.
That was the worst mess I seen.
Got him like this here:
“I got him, I got him!
I got a big …
’bout that big …”
I said, “Boy, you sure you ain’t got some African in you?”
Ooh,
yeah,
I’m talkin ’bout them wild Africans,
not one them well raised ones.
Like with a fish hook?
But to see somebody down in the water with the pants rolled up
like this here …
I said “Get out of there you scaring ’em, you scaring um!”
“Naw, I got this one, I got this one!”
And comin’ up there with this big old trout.
Hand fishin’!
He was the only one I saw down in there in that water,
him and this other guy, this big Mexican guy,
Sam?
And he’s the only one I seen catch fish like that.
The rest of ’em got poles.
Down in there with them pants up like that.
That remind me of what I see in Africa somewhere.
I ain’t never seen nobody fish with their hands.
Talkin’ bout “I ain’t got time to wait.”
That’s why I call him greedy.
I’m ’a ask him does he remember that.
He oughta remember it, he was bout sixteen or seventeen years old.
Um, Um, Um …
He—Glen,
Rodney—
went through three plastic surgeons
just to look like Rodney again.
Galen called to say cops done beat Glen up, talkin about Rodney,
I said “What?”
And when I was just turning the channels,
I saw this white car …
And he looked just like his father.
I don’t know if it’s when you lose a life
it comes back in somebody else.
Oh, you should have seen him.
It’s a hell of a look.
I, I mean you wouldn’t have known him
to look at him now.
I tell him he’s got a lot to be thankful for—
a hell of a lot:
He couldn’t talk,
just, “Der, der, der.”
I said, Goddamn!
I was right here
when it happened.
You want me to tell it?
Ah …
(She starts crying;
she makes about seven sobs)
Oh, man.
It just came out.
(She gets up and goes away to the door. The hammering is louder. There are two hammers, in different places, as if above or next door. The hammers really sound like a dialogue, and there are cars outside, and rain. The dripping is very close.)
Ah.
It comes up every now and then.
Don’t worry.
Just burst out …
Um …
I told you this whole thing is too much.
It’s hurting an’ then you’re happy,
’specially when I get to thinking about such treacherous people out there.
We weren’t raised like this.
We weren’t raised with no black and white thing.
We were raised with all kinds of friends:
Mexicans, Indians, Blacks, Whites, Chinese.
You never would have known that something like this would happen to us.
And now it’s such a shock.
And then the media,
and then, uh,
“What the hell did you get on there tellin’ them people?”
I said,
“Leave me the hell alone,”—
this is the other end of the family—
“them people wants to know.
I’m not gonna keep my doors closed up.”
I’m arguin’ with them.
“Well tell them this here,
and the next time you get on there,
you tell these people this”
I’m not tellin’ these people a damn thing—
all this here went through my damn mind.
I get up here,
“Well Mrs. King so and so and so and so.”
Um hum, yeah.
And then they …
You know I get up here,
“Oh should I say this should I say that?”
Just a mess, the whole thing.
The media came to me ’cause I was a relative
of Rodney’s
and his mother
Dessa wasn’t gonna talk—
they didn’t because of they religion,
they didn’t want to get involved in a political …
whatever this thing was.
B
ut I didn’t give a damn if it was the president’s …
whatever it was,
my brother’s son out there was lookin’ like hell,
that I saw in that bed, and I was gonna fight for every bit of
our justice
and fairness.
I didn’t care nothin’ ’bout no religious …
You know, the President,
he’s the top thing,
you know, they cared about him;
that’s the way I cared about Glen,
you know, Rodney.
That’s the way I feel,
you know, a higher sorts.
It could have been my mother.
But I’m not gonna say that.
You see how everybody rave when something happens with the
President of the United States?
Okay, here’s a nobody,
but the way they beat him,
this is the way I felt towards him.
You understand what I’m sayin’ now?
You do? (really making sure that I mean what I say)
Alright.
(a breath, and more speed as she proceeds)
That’s the way I felt.
I didn’t give a damn about no religious
nothin’ else,
I wanted justice,
and I wanted whatever
them things had comin’ to them done to them,
regardless—you can call it revenge or whatever, but
what I saw on that video,
on that TV,
that was a
mess.
And I just heard him holler,
that’s what got me ’while ago.
And then they say,
“Motorist.”
And then I look and saw that white car,
and then I saw him out on that ground,
I heard him hollerin’,
I recognized him
out on that ground.
Um …
Um …
That Koon—
that’s the one in that whole trial—
that man showed no kind of remorse at all,
you know that?
He sit there like, “It ain’t no big thing,
and I
will do it again.”
That’s the way he looked.
You ever seen him?
And he smile at you.
I don’t know how,
I don’t even know how …
the nerve,
the audacity.
And even Briseno,
he’s gonna get on there …
that’s what I’m tellin’
Rodney:
“They tryin’
to do everything they possibly can—anything they can—
to make you look bad to the people.
Because of what they had,
that, you know,
what’s been done to them—
they’ve been embarrassed,
and they caught them,
you know, on video,
beatin’ you like that,
and the public saw it,
they tryin’ to do anything they can to discredit you.
You need to get somewhere and sit down.”
I didn’t hear nobody mention
about ’em having a bug.
It was like a screw
about the size of my thumb
on the bumper—
on the Blazer—
and they were trailin’ him everywhere he went.
This is how they knew
where he was goin’,
or how
every time you turn around Rodney King’s encounter with the law
they had a screw.
This is how they had him tagged down.
Uhm hum. Uhm hum.
Right after that Hollywood incident
with that prostitute
and on the phone,
I can hear the echo.
And when I hang up someone is still there.
And then most of the time
I be talkin’ crazy anyway
so it doesn’t matter.
And why? I have no idea.
But they say there’s nothing they can do about the taps.
I’ve called the telephone company but
something—it being interfered with the federal government,
so it wasn’t nothin’ they could do about it.
But I know one thing:
Half the things I said to them on there—
it’s been goin’ on for a while—
I drop through profanity,
I do,
’cause I get on there, I be wantin’ to talk and relax, you know,
and here something click up and click up
and that’s when I get started.
I do.
’Cause you have to stop and catch yourself,
you can’t just talk comfortable.
Yeah.
Where the Water Is
Sergeant Charles Duke Special Weapons and Tactics Unit, LAPD Use-of-force expert for the defense witness, Simi Valley and Federal trials
(He is standing with a baton. He is wearing glasses and a uniform and black shoes.)
Powell holds the baton
like this
and that is
not a good …
the proper way of holding the baton
is like this.
So one of the things
they keep talking about
why did it take fifty-six baton blows.
Powell has no strength and no power
in his baton strikes.
The whole thing boils down to …
Powell was ineffective with the baton.
You’re aware
that that night
he went to baton training
and the sergeant held him afterward
because he was weak and inefficient with the baton training.
That night. That night.
He should have been taken out of the field.
He needed to be taken up to the academy and had a couple days of
instruction get him back into
focus.
(He drinks water)
Oh, I know what I was gonna do.
Prior to this
we lost upper-body-control holds,
in 1982.
If we had upper-body-control holds
involved in this,
this tape woulda never been on,
this incident woulda lasted about
fifteen seconds.
The reason that we lost upper-body-control holds …
because we had something like
seventeen to twenty deaths in a period of about 1975–76 to 1982, and
they said it was associated with its being used on Blacks
and Blacks were dying.
Now,
the so-called community leaders
came forward and complained
(He drinks water)
and they started a hysteria
about the upper-body-control holds—
that it was inhumane use of force—
so it got elevated from intermediate use of force,
which is the same category as a baton,
to deadly force,
and what I told you was that it was used
in all but one of the incidents.
High levels of PCP and cocaine were found in the systems
of those people it was used on.
If PCP and cocaine did not correlate into the equation
of why people were dying,
how come we used it since the fifties
and we had maybe in a ten-year period one incident of a death?
The use of force policy hasn’t changed since this incident.
And Gilbert Lindsay,
who was a really neat man,
when he saw a demonstration with the baton
he made a statement
t
hat “you’re not gonna beat my people with the baton,
I want you to use the chokehold on ’em.”
And a couple other people said,
“I don’t care you beat em into submission,
you break their bones,
you’re not chokin’ ’em anymore.”
So the political framework was laid
for eliminating upper-body-control holds,
and Daryl Gates—
I believe, but I can’t prove it—
but his attitude supports it.
He
and his command staff
and I started
use-of-force reports come through my office,
so I review ’em and I look for training things
and I look for things that will impact how I can make training
better.
So I started seeing a lot of incidents similar to Rodney King
and some of them identical to Rodney King
and I said we gotta find some alternative uses of force.
And their attitude was:
“Don’t worry about it,
don’t worry about it.”
And I said, “Wait a minute,
you gonna get some policemen indicted,
you gonna get some policemen sent to jail,
and they’re gonna hurt somebody and it’s gonna be perceived to be
other than a proper use of force,
and then you guys in management are gonna scurry away from it,
you’re gonna run away from it,
you’re gonna get somebody … somebody
is gonna go to the joint because of your lack of effort.”
And the last conversation I had was with one of my …
He walked by my office,
so I ran out of my office and I catch up with him right by the
fountain,
right by where the water is.
I said,
“Listen, we got another one of these …
we gotta explore some techniques and we gotta explore some options,”
and his response to me:
“Sergeant Duke,
I’m tired of hearing this shit.
We’re gonna beat people into submission
and we’re gonna break bones,”
And he said the Police Commission and the City Council took this
away from us.
“Do you understand that,
Sergeant Duke?”
And I said, “Yes, sir,”
and I never brought it up again.
And that, to me,
tells me
this is an “in your face” to the City Council and to the Police
Commission.
And like I said,
I can’t prove this,
but I believe that Daryl Gates
and the Command staff were gonna do an “in your face” to the City
Council and the Police Commission, saying,
“You took upper-body-control holds away from us.
Now we’re really gonna show you what you’re gonna get,
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