Lawyer Disputes Police Version of King Arrest

An attorney for Rodney G. King on Monday denounced his client’s recent drunk-driving arrest as harassment and said he has strong evidence contradicting police assertions that King was driving erratically and failed his sobriety tests.

Lawyer Steven A. Lerman said comments from at least a dozen witnesses indicate that King was not driving recklessly and had passed the sobriety tests during his arrest by the California Highway Patrol outside a Denny’s restaurant in Orange on Thursday.

“I believe they targeted him once they knew who he was,” said Lerman, whose client is black. “If it was a white man in a BMW, I don’t think they would have given him a second look. I didn’t realize that parking in a restaurant parking lot was illegal unless you are black and it’s 2 a.m.”

King was taken into custody Thursday shortly after he and his wife, Crystal Waters, went to the Denny’s restaurant at Chapman Avenue and State College Boulevard.

According to the CHP, two officers followed a traffic violator into the restaurant’s parking lot about 1:40 a.m. and saw a 1986 Chevrolet Blazer back out of a parking space in an “erratic manner” before skidding to a stop and hitting a concrete block.

When they stopped the Blazer, the officers said they recognized King and smelled alcohol on his breath. The CHP reported that he failed his field sobriety tests and was booked at the Orange County Jail, where he refused to take breath, blood and urine tests.

Lerman said Monday there was no evidence to confirm CHP allegations that King had skidded and hit a concrete block while backing out of the parking space. He said his investigators found no tire marks in the parking lot nor any damage or scapes on King’s truck to suggest that he had hit anything.

“Over a dozen witnesses at the Denny’s restaurant refute the CHP version of the incident,” Lerman said. “King was not driving erratically. The Chevy Blazer did not hit anything. He performed everything as demonstrated, and he did not fail the test.”

Lerman suspects that the CHP became suspicious of King because he is black and decided to confront him when they found out that the Blazer was registered to him.

If there was any resistance to the police, Lerman said, it was because King suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder--the result of the severe beating he received in March, 1991, at the hands of four Los Angeles police officers.

Not guilty verdicts in the trial of the officers charged with beating King sparked civil disturbances in Los Angeles and several other cities in April and May.

“There is nothing I’ve seen that indicates harassment or conduct . . . other than what was appropriate,” said Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Guy Ormes, who has been assigned to King’s drunk-driving case.

Although Ormes declined to comment on what Lerman’s witnesses purportedly saw, he contended that they might not have seen all the events surrounding King’s arrest. The CHP, he said, might have a more complete view of the incident.

King, who was released on his own recognizance from the Orange County Jail, is scheduled for arraignment in Orange County Central Municipal Court on Aug. 13 if a criminal case is filed. Ormes said a decision on whether to proceed with drunk-driving charges is at least a week away.

The CHP has maintained that the two officers who arrested King acted properly.

But Lerman said the arrest is part of an effort to discredit his client, who is trying to reach a $5-million to $8-million settlement in a police brutality case he brought against the Los Angeles Police Department. The Los Angeles City Council is considering the settlement.

“They jammed him. He did nothing wrong, nothing illegal,” said Lerman, who also represents King in the civil lawsuit. “It is an attempt to embarrass this guy while his settlement is pending before the City Council.”