Goodbye Rodney King
You were flawed, selfish, fragile and resilient, feted and hated. You struggled through this life with all the rest of us. Sometimes I think that if you would have just pulled to the right and gotten arrested without incident in 1991 my life might have been much different. But other times I think that something else would have eventually set off the powder keg that was Los Angeles in the early 1990s.
Lost in all the violence porn, the tazering and batons, the fires and looting, is the story of thousands upon thousands of people who like King, just wanted to get along in a city that spiraled out of control. The Reagan years had high unemployment and the high profile "War on Drugs" had declared most of Los Angeles to be a war zone. Crack cocaine created a new kind of addict while guns and pure cocaine flowed over the Mexican border. The video of the Latasha Harlens shooting by an elderly Korean Grocer showed us all what we had long suspected -- that our city was lawless and that people had lost perspective.
You robbed a Korean shop keeper in 1989, hit them with an iron bar and took $200. You drove 110mph on our streets and put many lives at risk. You were no saint and your decision not to pull over that night disturbed my life greatly -- it brought already poor race relations to a full boil. It ended my job at Freeman and forced me to start over in another city. It moved me away from relatives and friends and my support network. I missed a lot and it wasn't easy but like I said before, it could have been anyone.
The coke, gangs, guns, LAPD, Daryl Gates, the recession, the blood thirsty media -- it was all one big mess just waiting to hit the fan.
You were the fan.
Goodbye.