Life on the Street

It was a little over three years ago that we rode these streets, the day after the Rodney King beating, and now we were riding them again, the day after what most of us hope will be the last Rodney King verdict.

The timing of the first ride was an accident. Undercover narcotics cop Daniel Armand had written me about the cost of a policeman’s life in a city growing meaner by the minute.

He was working out of the Rampart Division then, just west of Downtown in a dangerous part of L.A. A woman under the influence of drugs had attacked him with a knife and was sentenced to 30 days in jail. She was out in 10.

“If she’d sold me a joint that day, she’d have done three months,” Armand wrote. “But she only tried to kill a cop. Ten days.”

It was a compelling letter and I asked to ride his beat with him and talk more about the perils that hide in the shadows of the alleys he patrolled. We set a date: March 4, 1991.

But events the night before--the videotaped beating of Rodney King--intervened. A column of modest praise for a cop doing a tough job became instead a monologue of regret.

Armand was embarrassed by what he saw on the videotape. He called the beaters thugs and said angrily, “Now everyone’s thinking we’re all like that. Who’s going to believe we’re not the same kind of cop?”

His attitude has changed since then.

*

After four trials and a devastating riot, two policemen are in prison and King is $3.8 million richer. And Armand’s anger has been redirected.

He’s 40 now and on patrol in the Hollywood Division, but I took him back to Rampart to re-create our conversation. We cruised the area around MacArthur Park, down Alvarado and across Wilshire, over Bonnie Brae and up Burlington.

He saw what he called business as usual: a dealer operating at a busy street corner on Westlake. He shook his head. “They’re not even in alleys anymore.”

But they were there too, buying and selling like traders in an open-air market, gathered in clusters, grouped in pairs or leaning against graffiti-scrawled walls, lost in half-lit worlds of their own.

“Nothing ever changes,” Armand said, bringing his 9-millimeter Beretta up from under the car seat to put next to him.

But things do change. The anger he once felt toward the cops who beat Rodney King isn’t there anymore. He says almost reluctantly that maybe Laurence Powell was excessive in his treatment of King, but mostly he feels sorry for the officers involved. Now he calls King a thug.

“When I first saw the video I thought it was terrible,” he said as we drove. “But I didn’t know then there’d been a pursuit or that there were two others in the car. It was just an incident that made the whole department look bad. I hope it’s over.”

Other problems occupy his mind now, including a sense of isolation in the LAPD. “If I’ve learned anything in the past three years,” he said, “it’s that you can’t trust anyone in the upper echelon of either the department or the city. We’re alone out here.”

*

They were strange words from a man who says he loves police work and the department he works for. Even patrolling the worst parts of town, he finds good people, and he was touched by the residents of South-Central who brought food and encouragement to cops trying to quell the riots.

But Armand feels betrayed by a city that won’t honor the risks its police officers take by giving them a decent raise. He has marched twice in demonstrations for a new contract and, were he not already scheduled to have the days off, would have come down with a migraine during the course of the “blue flu.”

“Riordan says he wants to turn this city around,” he said, circling MacArthur Park. “He’d damned well better remember that he can’t do it without us.”

The cop I rode with the other day isn’t the same man I rode with three years ago. He’s uneasy in the work he does, less aggressive on the street for fear of reprimand, burdened by new departmental rules that have turned gender respect into gender enmity, and envious of fellow officers leaving L.A.

They have been a tumultuous three years. Armand is caught up in a vortex of change that has created distrust and confusion. It was almost a plea when he said, “All I want to be able to do is go out there and catch bad guys.” After a moment he added, “I’m not sure that’s possible anymore.”

We rode in silence out of Rampart, slowing briefly by an alley. He squinted into the sun at a group of men in silhouette at the far end. They were dealing. Armand drove off and said nothing.