The ghetto birds, the cop choppers, ”the largest ... airborne law enforcement operation in the world.”  No, do not mistake these nouns and adjectives for descriptions of a regimental-sized air element of a first-world military tasked with destroying enablers and instruments of international  terror.  This litany does, however, provide many with a common slang for the Los Angeles Police Department’s presence above the labrynthine sprawl of the city it “protects and serves.”

Because of the gang violence and drug addiction that is synonymous with the inner city and especially Los Angeles, there is sense that these type of measures are warranted for a people who commit such acts intra-communally. And police brutality stands as another repressive constant within the inner city. Something NWA summed up with their classic single F*ck Tha Police. Although some may cringe at the title and lyrics of the song, the sentiment is shared across the predominantly African-American inner cities in this country. 

Less than two weeks before his death, I was scheduled to interview Rodney King on the public stage at the annual Leimert Park Book festival in Los Angeles. I had two conflicting thoughts about the interview. One was that if the well-worn term accident of history term ever applied to anyone, it was King. The second was what made King, 21 after that fateful night of his beating by four white Los Angeles Police officers captured in shocking detail on videotape, still such an enduring figure, name and most importantly, a symbol.