ALTADENA : Rodney King’s Brother Held in Family Dispute

Sheriff’s deputies went to Rodney G. King’s home in Altadena and arrested his brother after the brother punched out a window during an argument with King’s wife, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department spokesman said Friday.

“Deputies walked into the middle of a family dispute,” said the spokesman, Sgt. Richard Dinsmoor.

Dinsmoor said that King’s wife, Crystal Watters, had called 911 about 8:55 p.m. Thursday and, with little explanation, demanded that deputies be sent to the King home. Ronald King, 31, apparently had gotten into an argument with Watters and she had told him to leave, Dinsmoor said.

Over Rodney King’s objections, Watters made a citizen’s arrest and deputies took Ronald King into custody. “Rodney King was very uncooperative and was verbally abusive toward the deputies throughout their contact,” Dinsmoor said.

Ronald King was booked at the sheriff’s Crescenta Valley Station on suspicion of vandalism and being drunk in public. He was treated at a hospital for a minor cut he received in hitting the window, Dinsmoor said.

Rodney King--whose name became familiar throughout the world after a bystander videotaped Los Angeles police beating him at the end of a high-speed pursuit on March 3, 1991--denied Friday that he had been abusive during Thursday’s incident. “It didn’t happen like that,” he told a television reporter.

A federal jury eventually convicted two Los Angeles police officers of violating King’s civil rights, but only after they were found not guilty, along with two other officers, in a state trial held in Simi Valley. The not-guilty verdicts were blamed for inciting devastating riots in Los Angeles in April, 1992.

Last year, King was awarded $3.8 million in a civil suit.