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Rodney King's Personal Struggle With Alcohol

Matt Sayles
/
AP

I still cannot stop thinking about Rodney King, whose drowning death in his swimming pool this weekend seemed like the kind of ending only the authors of a Greek tragedy would write. It's as if the Gods are sending some sort of message.

But what message? Was it really too much to ask that this man, who made mistakes in his life, but who knew what they were, who openly mourned the suffering of others, could end his life peacefully in his own bed?

Still, it's worth remembering just how that whole Greek tragedy got started. Let's let him tell it:

"I know drinking and driving is not OK, and I shouldn't have been back then, and there's no excuse for it. But I had a job to go to that Monday, and so I went over to a friend's house and popped a couple of beers. We were just sitting around awhile, and I decided to go to a spot where my dad used to take us fishing called Hansen Dam in California."

This from a conversation I had with King just a few weeks go, around the time of the 20th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots in April:

"On the way over there, you know, I saw the highway patrol behind me, and the only thing I could think about was maybe I could lose them. And the only thing I was thinking about was getting to work Monday. And like I say, I know I shouldn't have been drinking and driving. I was on parole, and I knew that I was going to go back to jail and just lose everything, my family, everything that I had been working hard for since I'd been out of jail."

Let's think about this for a minute, all that death, all that destruction, all that sorrow: six days of riots, more than 50 people killed, an estimated billion dollars in damage, because a man had a problem with alcohol and he didn't want to lose his job because of it.

I know there are people listening to this who will say, "No, this happened because those police officers thought they were judge, jury and executioner and they had the right to beat a man half to death because he bucked them."

Rodney King attends a book festival in Los Angeles in April. King was found unconscious in a swimming pool Sunday and was later pronounced dead.
Katy Winn / AP
/
AP
Rodney King attends a book festival in Los Angeles in April. King was found unconscious in a swimming pool Sunday and was later pronounced dead.

So let me just say, of course what those officers did was wrong. You don't have to take my word for it; a jury eventually said so and sent three of them to prison.

And even if the officers were right to pull King over and arrest him for driving drunk, there is nothing in this country's penal code that says you can fracture a man's skull, break the bones in his face and body, because he tried to get away from you.

And of course there are those who will say, "No, this happened because too many people believe that anything a man or woman with a badge does is acceptable, as long as they do it to a poor man, or a black or brown man, or someone who is both."

To which I would say that in the long, ongoing story of how race, and poverty, and criminal justice collide in this country, this is indeed a bitter chapter — but one which did finally cause millions of people to see, in the light, what their fellow citizens had too long suffered in the shadows.

But while we are thinking about all of that, could we also take a moment to think about the fact that at the very beginning of this story was a man who, like millions of other Americans, had a problem with alcohol? And it had messed up his life. And he'd finally gotten a job he wanted, and he was afraid he'd lose it.

Can we wonder what would have happened if, when he'd had too much to drink, he would have had a place to run to get help? Or if, instead of beating him to the ground, those officers could have taken him somewhere to sober up?

Now, I know that's a fantasy. But how much better than the nightmare that Rodney King and all of us have already lived through?

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Michel Martin is the weekend host of All Things Considered, where she draws on her deep reporting and interviewing experience to dig in to the week's news. Outside the studio, she has also hosted "Michel Martin: Going There," an ambitious live event series in collaboration with Member Stations.