Passenger Feels King Beating Was Premeditated : Police: The two men who were also in car appear on ‘Donahue.’ One says he believes officers had decided to brutalize the driver before auto was stopped.

In his first interview on national television since Rodney G. King was beaten by police, a passenger in King’s car the night of the beating said Thursday he believes the officers had already decided to brutalize the occupants before pulling the car over.

“They seen three black guys in the car and they said, ‘OK, we can just pull them over and beat the mess out of them. It’s late, it’s dark, it’s like 2 o’clock, 3 o’clock in the morning,’ ” Freddie Helms told syndicated talk show host Phil Donahue.

Helms, 20, appeared on “Donahue” along with Bryant Allen, 25, the other passenger in King’s car when it was stopped by police and California Highway Patrol officers March 3 for allegedly speeding. The “Donahue” appearance also was Allen’s first on national television.

Allen told Donahue that he was unable to see the police actually beating King because he and Helms were ordered out of the car on the opposite side and told to lie face-down on the ground.

“They didn’t want us to turn our heads at all,” although both he and Helms attempted to, Allen recalled.

In response to a question by Donahue, Allen also said he did not hear the officers use any racial slurs against King.

But Helms maintained that it was difficult to hear anything because of the noise from a police helicopter hovering overhead during the incident.

“I couldn’t hear too much,” he said. “I just heard Rodney scream, you know. I know that they was beating him up, doing him real bad. . . . I was scared.”

King’s aunt, Kandyce Burke, who also appeared on the show, said she believes her nephew suffered severe brain damage as a result of blows to his head that night.

“He’s very paranoid,” she said. “He continues to get up, look around, turn the lights off, turn the shades down in the apartment. He continues to drift off other places when you’re talking to him. He’s sad and he’s hurt.”

She said King also is plagued by terrifying nightmares and can be heard screaming in his sleep every night: “Don’t beat me! Please, leave me alone!”

Referring to a videotape of the beating that was made by an amateur and has been shown around the world, she said: “Everyone has seen this tape, but Rodney sees it (in his mind) all day and all night long.”

In a brief interview with The Times after the show, Helms and Allen said that they, too, have recurring nightmares stemming from the incident.

“I go see a psychologist,” Helms said, adding that he has dizzy spells and needs “to relax a lot.”

Helms added that, as a result of the incident, he now is “scared to death” of police officers. “When I see them, I just go into the house. . . . I don’t trust them.”

Allen said that he gets paranoid whenever he is driving and a car behind him flashes its bright lights. “I think they’re police,” he said. “My heart beats faster and I get leery.”

Helms said he is hopeful that the public outrage over the incident may bring some much-needed changes in police conduct, but Allen said he is not nearly so optimistic.

“It’s been like this for years and I don’t think nothing will change,” he said.

The show aired live in New York and some other markets. In most of the rest of the country, the program will be shown today. “Donahue” producers said, however, that KNBC, the NBC station in Los Angeles, usually airs the show in the week after its taping.

Also appearing on the show were Steven A. Lerman, attorney for both King and Helms, and John Burton, Allen’s attorney, who have filed lawsuits on behalf of their clients alleging that their civil rights were violated by police officers during the incident.

Helms and Lerman also appeared on ABC’s “Prime Time Live” Thursday night, as well as two men described as officers “who were there” during the King beating. The officers, whose voices were garbled and faces not shown to protect their identities, restated police claims that King resisted arrest and appeared to be under the influence of drugs.

“King was acting very irrational,” one officer said. “He wouldn’t obey any officers’ commands to get on the ground; to lay down. Several officers ordered him down. He wouldn’t. He acted like he was on something.”

The other officer said that when his colleagues tried to take King into custody, “they were literally thrown off, like rag dolls, by Mr. King. I know I formed in the back of my mind that this gentleman was under the influence of probably a very strong drug, more than likely PCP.”

One of the officers said that when King was struck by a dart from a Taser, or electric stun gun, for a second time, “he gave out a scream. The scream that I heard was not really in pain, it was more in anger.”

On “Donahue,” two Jackson, Miss., police officers demonstrated what they described as the proper technique for making an arrest under such circumstances. Donahue portrayed the citizen.

But the civility with which the officers treated Donahue during the mock procedure, which included Donahue’s being handcuffed, prompted Lerman, Helms’ attorney, to quip sarcastically: “A white man with a suit (on) gets arrested just like that, Phil.”

After the show, a member of the audience buttonholed one of the Jackson officers and asked whether police brutality might be justified in the case of suspected lawbreakers who put up unusual resistance to an arrest.

The officer replied that, unfortunately, in most cases the “brutality begins when the resistance ends.”

A caller to the program, who said he was a New York policeman, said he wanted to see officers like those who beat King prosecuted because “those guys went definitely above and beyond what’s called for.”

But, he contended, such brutality is the exception rather than the rule. What is more, he added, many suspects often claim that they are roughed up by police during an arrest when in fact they are not.

He cited an example from his own experience two years ago when, he said, a fellow officer was killed in the line of duty and the three men arrested for the crime falsely claimed to have been beaten by officers.

“I am afraid if that crime happened now, people would believe them” and not the police, said the officer, who identified himself only as a beat policeman. “Most officers maintain their professionalism. If more officers were losing it, things would be worse than they are now.”

Don Jackson, a former Hawthorne officer who has campaigned against police brutality and who also appeared on the show as a guest, maintained that blacks are automatic targets for police abuse solely because of their skin color.

“If Colin Powell was driving on the streets of Los Angeles,” he said, referring to the black Army general who serves as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “he wouldn’t be safe.”