In the years since becoming the most famous victim of police brutality ever, Rodney King admits he still has run-ins with the law. The difference is that now the cop is as likely to ask for his photo as his license and registration.
“Every time I get pulled over, it’s like, ‘Holy s–t!’” says King, who has written a memoir, “The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption.”
After getting caught for riding without a light on his bicycle a few years ago, King says, the officer was starstruck: “He goes, ‘Are you Rodney King? Damn — I thought it was you, dude! Can I get a picture with you?’ He was, like, 22. There’s a whole generation of cops that weren’t even born when that happened.”
Since that night in March of 1991, King has been arrested seven times, done two stints in jail and one house arrest (the latter this past February, 20 days for driving with traces of alcohol and marijuana in his system).
“I know that drinking and driving is never cool,” he says. “I had a drink earlier that day, but I waited till I thought my blood alcohol level came down.”
In May of 1991, King was arrested for allegedly trying to run over a cop who’d caught King with a hooker; he was never charged. He was put on probation in 1993 after driving drunk and smashing his car into a wall. King was arrested again in May 1995 for DUI (acquitted) and convicted of a hit-and-run on his wife that July (90 days in jail). In Sept. 2001, King was charged with being high on PCP; in 2003, he got 12 days in jail after crashing his car into a house, again on PCP. King was arrested yet again in 2005, for allegedly making threats against his daughter and ex-girlfriend.
After his most recent arrest in February, for misdemeanor reckless driving, King was given three years probation.
King tends to gloss over his propensity for driving under the influence, but he’s open about his love of speed. “I got a heavy foot, I must admit,” he says. “I drive a ’94 Mitsubishi, and that gets up to 140 [m.p.h.]. But when I’m speeding on the highway, I do 85.”
After all, what cop would risk mixing it up, on any level, with Rodney King?
“I wouldn’t say I have a lifetime free pass,” King says, laughing. “But there was a case where a cop pulled me over and tried to get hostile with me, and his partner said, ‘Do you know who that is? We gotta back off.’ Most cops, they try to get away from me. And I try to get away from them.”
King, more than most and for obvious reasons, has been riveted by the story of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed 17-year-old Floridian who was shot to death by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in February.
Now 47, King says that when he listened to the 911 tape and heard Martin’s primal yell, he was yanked back to that infamous night on March 3, 1991, when King was pulled over after a 7.8 mile high-speed chase and nearly beaten to death by four white L.A. cops — unaware they were being videotaped by a witness.
“There’s a different kind of scream when you’re inches away from death,” King says. “I know that scream all too well; any veteran who’s been to war can identify it. It’s a panic, and then the body goes real hot. When Trayvon screamed that scream, I thought about me.”
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the astonishing not-guilty verdict in Rodney King’s criminal case; within hours, L.A. was on fire for days. By the time law and order prevailed six days later, 55 people were dead, more than 2,300 injured, and 1,500 structures either destabilized or demolished.
King was horrified. He was horrified by the verdict, which he watched on TV from his room at the Radisson in Studio City, told by his own legal team, he says, not to show up in court, ever, let alone testify. And he was horrified by the rioting that erupted hours later, though he admits in his memoir that he was also kind of gratified.
“For the first few hours, before I heard about anyone getting killed or even hurt yet, I felt a certain vindication,” King writes. “I believed I was witnessing the simple fact that other people were mad as hell about the verdict.”
Any sense of satisfaction was eradicated the moment King saw a 36-year-old white truck driver named Reginald Denny dragged from his cab and beaten by four young black men. Unlike King’s assault, Denny’s was caught by live news cameras, and a local man who saw it unfolding on TV raced out of his house and stopped the attack; his name was Bobby Green Jr., and he was unarmed and black.
Everything about the absurdity of race relations in a post-Civil Rights America was distilled in that one day, and 72 hours later, as L.A. burned, King was asked by his lawyers and the LAPD to make a public statement. King agreed, and when he arrived at the press conference, he was presented with a prepared statement, four pages total.
“I took one look at those pages,” King writes, “and said ‘F–k that.’”
Instead, he made the heartfelt and confused plea that later became a punchline of the ‘90s: “People, I just want to say, Can we all get along? Can we all get along?”
In his book, King gives great credit to then-President George Bush, who pushed for a civil trial. King also writes of feeling used by prominent African-Americans such as Johnnie Cochran, who demanded 50 percent of any award as his legal fee (King declined) and Al Sharpton, who invited King to a high-profile dinner in New York, then never even acknowledged King’s presence.
His own attorneys in the civil trial, King writes, were “working me over too,” and though he was awarded $3.6 million in damages, King says he walked away with only $1 million after legal fees and medical bills.
“That’s not a lot of money over a long period of time,” King says. He bought a house for his mother, another for himself, then blew through the rest setting up an ill-fated hip-hop label and a construction company.
Today, the man who became the pre-eminent symbol of race relations in late 20th-century America has eked out a living as a reality-TV curio and a sideshow freak. He no longer works in construction, but says he makes decent money on the “celebrity boxing” circuit, where he hobnobs with the likes of the Octomom. He says he once agreed to a match against Laurence Powell, one of the LAPD officers accused of beating King (Powell, King claims, backed out), and this July he’ll will fight Jose Canseco.
King has also done a stint on VH1’s “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew,” and its follow-up show, “Sober House,” though those haven’t been successful endeavors.
“I have my battles with alcohol,” King says. “It runs in my family. But in the end, I’m responsible for what I put in my body.”
King’s greatest struggle, he says, has been with his own anger. He lives in Rialto, right outside of L.A.; he says he often considered leaving, but it’s home. It’s where he and his ex-wife raised their three girls (now 30, 28 and 18). His daughters “are shy” when it comes to asking about that night, he says, so he’s glad that they can just read his book.
He tries to re-frame all the low points in his life into benefits: If his father hadn’t abused him as a child, making the young Rodney bathe before whipping him with an electrical cord, for example, King believes that he never would’ve survived the 1991 assault.
And if the verdict hadn’t come down the way it did, he wouldn’t have had a civil trial, which is where he first set eyes on Cynthia Kelley, who was then Juror No. 5 and is now his fiance. (They met only after the trial ended, he says).
Today, Rodney King moves through the world with relative ease. “I hate to say it, but since the beatings, everything’s changed,” he says. “Doors opened up. It’s like, ‘A black man done paid the price, so let’s give him a break.’”
He says that the day Obama was sworn in as president was the first day he felt like “a real American, like I was part of the family.” Obama’s election, he believes, is indicative of the real America, one that he says “wants change. That showed real movement toward wanting to have a peaceful home. I really admire the progress we’ve made in this country.”
That said, King has no idea if the fallout from the Trayvon Martin case will be anything like the fallout from his own.
“Things are so unpredictable,” he says. “I just know that the family needs justice, and the system works. It’s a slow process, but I’m sure justice will prevail in the end. Change is slow. But it does happen.”
mcallahan@nypost.com