Malik King just wanted to ask a California Highway Patrol officer for directions. What he got instead was brutally beaten, attacked by a police dog, shocked multiple times with a Taser gun and arrested and jailed on trumped up charges.
King, a 28-year-old, African American charge nurse from San Diego was driving north through Orange County on March 9, 2011, on his way to Venice Beach, when he realized that he had missed the 405 freeway interchange. Seeing a California Highway Patrol officer on the side of the freeway, he pulled over ahead of him and waved to him. The officer pulled up behind him and King got out of his car and walked back to the patrol car. He quickly realized that that was a mistake.
“I asked him how to get back to San Diego,” King recalled, figuring he would go back the way he had come and get onto the 405. But King says the officer, later identified as Oswaldo Guzman, began to aggressively interrogate him. Guzman made him put his hands on the hood of the patrol car, patted him down and then told him to sit on the ground, as King told him, “I just needed your help!”
Noticing that the officer was sweating and behaving erratically, King began to fear for his safety. He walked toward the freeway to see if he could signal somebody for help. Seeing no one, he walked back to his car, got in and drove away.
The next thing King knew, four CHP cars were behind him with lights and sirens on. Two patrol cars rammed his SUV, pushing it off the freeway and into a ditch.
Once his car was stopped, King stayed where he was with his seatbelt on and his hands in view. It was then that CHP officer Carlo Marzocca put a dog inside his car, which sunk its teeth into his right arm. King told Liberation that if it weren’t for the leather sleeves on his jacket, the dog might have punctured an artery. The officers allowed the dog attack to last for over a minute and a half, during which time officers Marzocca and Jin Kawanaka shocked him with Tasers, while he was still in his seatbelt.
Asked how it felt to be shocked, King said it was painful. “I was already in incredible pain from the dog biting me.” On a scale of one to 10, King said the shocks felt like a 12. He also thinks the dog got shocked, since it had its teeth in his arm while he was being tased.
Finally, officers on the driver’s side unbuckled his seatbelt, dragged him out of the car and handcuffed him. Then they walked him over to the pavement, slammed him on the ground, cuffed his hands to his feet, and tased, beat him and kicked him in the head. King lost consciousness at this point, and came to bloodied, beaten and hogtied in the back of a patrol car.
King, the victim of a brutal police assault, was arrested and charged with multiple felonies. He spent two weeks in jail unable to contact anyone, and only after his girlfriend filed a missing person’s report was she informed that he was in custody. There are a total of four trumped-up charges against King at this time.
In addition to filing reports claiming that King assaulted the officers with his car and kicked the dog, CHP officers have destroyed videos taken by the cameras mounted on their patrol cars. They also claim a police helicopter that was overhead was not filming the incident. Fortunately, King went to the CHP station and filmed two of the patrol car videos off of a computer screen before they could be destroyed.
As a result of the CHP attack, King has suffered physical and mental trauma, rendering him unable to go back to work and continue his master’s degree program. His car, badly damaged, has been returned to the dealership. He just could not make the payments and he learned that car insurance does not cover damage caused by the government.
King is a victim of brutal police violence. His case is like so many others in California and across the country. Police exist not to help people in need, but to harass, beat and jail Black, Latino and other working and poor people.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation demands that OC District Attorney Tony Rackauckas drop all charges against King now. The DA should instead prosecute the cops who ordered the dog attack, beat and tased King and destroyed evidence. Justice for Malik King!
