‘Rodney King All Over’--Not Likely

And so once again the billy clubs flail, and once again the suspects fall, and once again a camera rolls, and once again a drumbeat of public outrage begins to pound. Pictures don’t lie. No more street justice. Call in the feds. Prosecute. Reform. Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat.

Yes, in some ways the heavy-handed apprehension by Riverside County deputies of two suspected illegal immigrants is, as an American Civil Liberties Union leader put it, “Rodney King all over again.” The incident opens with a high-speed chase. The deputies are white, the suspects brown. And television news directors coast to coast, for the moment, find the precious frames of street action irresistible.

Beyond that, the comparison erodes. To Southern Californians who lived through it, “Rodney King all over again” implies more than a case of cop thuggery. It implies roiling racial politics, high-profile investigations, edgy stabs at justice. It implies national scorn. And it implies a riot.

However repulsive the fresh imagery from the Pomona Freeway, however loud the early shouting, what transpired Monday simply cannot be expected to uncork a King-like eruption. Some reasons for this are mundane, almost silly. Others cut deeper, exposing--as if it truly needed to be exposed--the shabby way California assigns subhuman status to the undocumented workers who cross its borders.

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To dispense with the mundane, this happened to involve Riverside County deputies, not LAPD officers. Part of what made Rodney King a national affair was that it happened in America’s favorite anti-city, demon Los Angeles. It seems implausible that national press crews will set up camp in Riverside as they did in Los Angeles for King. Just for starters, the cuisine’s not nearly so swell.

The Riverside beating happened in daylight. What was especially chilling about King’s thumping was that it was carried out in the dark hours, by cops who thought no one was watching. The officers who gathered to root on Sgt. Koon’s boys looked for all the world like a cell of the Ku Klux Klan, caught with their sheets down. By contrast, the Riverside deputies come across a bit more like working cops dealing, however crudely, with a rough situation. To be blunt, they just don’t seem to be having quite as much fun.

Nor do the suspects’ injuries appear to be as severe as King’s. Thus, the smell of money is not there for high-profile attorneys to pursue a civil case. Damages awarded for lost wages would be calibrated to what a Mexican peasant could earn south of the border--”what they call,” a Latino attorney who deals in such cases explained, “the rice and bean scale.” And it would be a tough case to make. Before too long, any friendly witnesses--the other riders in the truck--no doubt will find themselves deposited on the other side of Bill Clinton’s new border fence.

Which leads to the central reason this dismal moment is not destined to become Rodney King II: The people on the wrong end of the clubs were illegal immigrants--aliens, as their foes call them. They enjoy no natural constituency on this side of the border, no strong political support, no real legal protection and barely any expectation of simple human sympathy. One little example: State law forbids hauling dogs in the beds of pickups. The rules are significantly less stringent, however, when it comes to migrant workers.

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Imagine the deputies go to trial. Imagine they are acquitted. (The defense is obvious: They ordered the suspects, who had feloniously hurled objects at them in the chase, to go prone. For whatever reasons--language?--the suspects did not do as commanded, requiring department-sanctioned stickwork.) Who will riot after this acquittal? Certainly not any undocumented workers. They have been trained for docility, to know their place, to understand that the INS is but a telephone call away. It’s why field bosses and factory foremen can’t get enough of ‘em.

Yes, it’s true: President Clinton was said Tuesday to be “concerned” about the beating. He’ll get over it--once the White House grasps that the beating is destined to play out, not as a law enforcement story, but as an immigration incident. Clinton appears convinced that to win California, and thus reelection, he must pose as a border patriot, defending the land from lettuce pickers. From there, the indifference will just trickle on down.

For too many Californians, the lasting image from this incident will not be one of billy clubs flailing. It will be the sight of 17 illegals scampering out of the pickup, heading for the bushes. See, they will say. They keep coming, by the truckload. Sadly, the demonization of a people who have come here across generations for seasonal work is complete.