I don't know whether O. J. Simpson is being framed by the Los Angeles Police Department, but I wouldn't be surprised if the defense lawyers raise reasonable doubt among the jurors.
My premise is based on my own experiences. I had at least eight unpleasant encounters with the police while living in L.A. from 1972-78. No sooner had I arrived in L.A. than a friend told me that it was impossible for a black man or a Chicano to live there without being hassled by the cops. I never had any bad encounters with the police while growing up in Baltimore so I didn't believe him. Then it started happening.
I'm convinced that a couple of officers were out to frame me during the most outrageous incident in 1973. I'll never forget it. I was joking with a buddy as I drove on Olympic Boulevard in Korea Town. Suddenly, a siren wailed and a flashing red light filled my rear-view mirror. I stopped. Two cops jumped out of the squad car gripping their partially unholstered service revolvers. One positioned himself to shoot us through the rear window while other approached from the driver's side.
Ordered out of the car, we were frisked, handcuffed and whisked to a police station, where we were placed in an empty room near the booking desk. A couple of hours passed. A Kafkaesque dream, I thought, but the snake-cold handcuffs said otherwise.
My car was properly registered and the cops had not ticketed me, so I knew I wasn't being detained on a traffic charge. So what could it be? Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I've always made a point of staying on the right side of the law.
Just by chance, a cop we knew, a sergeant, walked by the door and glanced into the room. "What are you guys doing here?" he asked.
We explained. He left us. We overheard him talking to the cops in another room.
"Why did you pick those two guys up?" he asked.
"We were going to charge them with burglary," one cop replied.
"Burglary? I know those guys, they wouldn't do anything like that. . . . "
I strained to hear the rest of the conversation, but the cops moved out of earshot. A few minutes later, our friend uncuffed us. He offered an apology and told us we were free.
Innocent we were, but the scales of justice crashed down on us the moment the cops stopped us. Suppose we had been charged with burglary. I can't imagine these same scales tipping in our favor in the courtroom.
Imagine the outcome if the cops augmented their case with planted burglary tools. Add race. Two black men arrested by two white cops -- L.A.'s finest. Now whom do you suppose the judge would have believed -- us or them?
Once, I was walking when a cop jumped off his motorcycle and ran toward me gripping his holstered pistol. Hands-against-the-wall time. He said he was looking for a robbery suspect wearing a shirt like mine. Then he jumped back onto his bike and drove off.
Another time I was pulled over and given a choice of taking a roadside sobriety test or going to jail. The test was no problem because I hadn't been drinking. Disappointed, the cop grabbed my hands and smelled my fingers, presumably to detect the smell of marijuana. I was clean, so he gave me a ticket for "weaving." Weaving? Still haven't figured that one out.
And it's not just LAPD.
I was driving on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills one night when a cop pulled me over. I sat in my car for more than an hour after he took my license and registration papers. As he returned them to me, he asked why I was in Beverly Hills. I told him I had a night class at UCLA and I was returning to my apartment in L.A.
He told me that I did not "belong" in Beverly Hills and warned me against driving there again. "You'll only get arrested," he explained.
I don't know whether Mr. Simpson is innocent or guilty, but I think his lawyers are playing a smart game by putting the cops on trial. The majority of the jurors are black, and it is likely that they have seen the Rodney King beating countless times, and perhaps some have been either harassed by the cops or know someone who has. Folks in many nonwhite L.A. neighborhoods view the police as an occupying army rather than keepers of the law.
Polls show that many white people buy the prosecution's case against Mr. Simpson, perhaps because they have never suffered police harassment. But the LAPD's reputation may trigger reasonable doubt in the minds of blacks who know that Officer Friendly is a myth.
I;
Mike Adams is Perspective editor of The Baltimore Sun.