"As a kid growing up in the ghetto, one of the things I wanted most was not money, it was fame." "I wanted to be known." "I want the people to say, "Hey, there goes O.J."" "You're approaching five years now at Lovelock." "Tell us about your work assignments." "How have you occupied yourtime for the past five years?" "Uh, when I first came here, I was a porter, which comprised of cleaning things in the unit that I was in, and basically after a relatively short period of time," "I started working as a gym worker." "I start each day, um, disinfecting, uh, the workout equipment in the gym, mopping floors with the other, uh, group of us that work in the gym." "Uh, I've coached teams, um, uh, since I've been here." "Uh, and I like to say that we won the championship, and we were old guys, a totally mixed group of players." "I didn't play, I just coached." "I do see that in 1994 you were arrested at the age of 46." "We... we're talking about this case?" "No, the age at first arrest." "How old were you, first time you were arrested?" "For any reason." "(Sighs)" "Um, I think about 46, yes." "With an enrollment of approximately 16,000 students, this is the largest and oldest university of continuous existence in Southern California." "Its buildings and grounds cover 45 acres and it has graduated many thousands of men and women who are now leaders in the business and professional world." "brown:" "I didn't know that much about him." "I heard about his reputation coming out ofjunior college." "He was big, fast, powerful, dynamic." "You're awed, because you haven't seen that." "I was teaching part-time at San Jose State and a friend of mine said," ""Hey, man, you gotta go check out this little cat from, um, San Francisco." "His name is Simpson." "Orenthal James Simpson."" "O.J. Takes the football." "Boom." "I think he runs about 90 yards with it for a touchdown." "He ran through 'em like foreign water through a tourist." "San Jose State was trying to recruit him, and I asked him," ""O.J., what is it that you're lookin' for?"" "Said, "I wanna be the best." "I wanna go to a school where I play against the best."" "Superstar phenom is coming to USC and all the buzz that goes around with it." "This is Marguerite Simpson." "She and O.J. Have been married for five months now." "Right." "Are you happy afterfive months?" "Yes, I'm very happy." "And do you like this campus and everything?" "I love it." "It's like a resort." "It's beautiful." "Now, you tell us the truth, Marguerite." "What kind of guy is O. J?" "O.J. Is very serious." "He loves football." "And he's just a serious person." "McKAY:" "He has a great running sense." "Uh, as a team man, he's an outstanding person." "As a citizen, he is a tremendous boy and, uh," "I don't think we've had a boy around here who has ever been any better." "Whoo!" "Get up!" "It was pretty obvious early on that O.J. Was a superior athlete, special, and Coach McKay was warmer and closer with him." "He had never had a player of this caliber." "And you didn't mess with it." "He protected him." "Johnny, would you describe that devastating" "Southern Cal offensive attack for us?" "Well, Duffy, I don't..." "I don't know how devastating it is, but our attack is built around the, uh, tailback, O.J. Simpson, running a football." "We think our attack will be able to let us move the ball on most people." "There was no drama." "John McKay was gonna give him the football, and he was gonna give it to him 35, 40 times a game and you were gonna tackle him." "And then when you missed, we were gonna score a touchdown." "So we fed him the football, fed him the football..." "He had incredible stamina, that he could take the ball every play and keep on going." "Every game he did something that was eye-opening." "You..."what?" "Did I see that?"" "He was one of a kind." "This is O.J. Simpson, USC's junior halfback." "You have been getting an awful lot of publicity lately." "How does it affect you?" "Does it botherya?" "Oh, it doesn't bother me at all." "It's" " It's a matter of winning, I guess." "If you win, you get publicity, and they have to give someone in our offense and on ourteam publicity, and, uh, I'm just in a position to get it, running at the tailback and carrying the ball as much as I do." "O.J., you've got an awful big game on Saturday." "It's the big intercity rivalry." "There's just all kind of pressure." "How does the pressure affect you?" "Well, uh, I don't know." "I don't think the pressure bothers..." "It doesn't bother me and... and I think most of the team right now, it's not bothering them yet." "I'm sure it will tomorrow." "We're shooting for all the marbles this week, and, uh, I think we'll be relaxed and ready to go." "USC football is not a matter of life and death." "It's much more important than that." "Live and in color, you are looking at this view, hovering above the Memorial Coliseum which is jam packed today." "As we look at Gary Beban, a reminder that college football, a pleasant and colorful way to spend an autumn afternoon." "UCLA's quarterback was Gary Beban." "It's gonna be his year for the Heisman Trophy." "So we have the upcomer running back against the established superstar quarterback." "We were ranked number 4, they were ranked number 1." "The city of Los Angeles, the two top teams in the country, and we're fighting for the national championship." "Today with 10 cameras covering this game, over 200, uh, newsmen here, 200 photographers." "There were people out here this morning at 6 o'clock trying to get in to the ballgame." "And the ballgame is underway." "I had never been to a college game ever." "And we all wanted to go see O.J." "Offensively nowfor the Trojans, watch for number 32, O.J. Simpson." "None of us had any tickets." "All of a sudden, we looked up and someone had cut a hole in the Coliseum fence and about 50 people ran through it, including us." "Okay, Bud, we have approximately 9 minutes remaining in the first half." "I'd never seen the Coliseum full like that." "There was just the colors, I was in awe." "Tie ballgame, and they are in UCLA territory." "Steve Sogge." "Simpson." "There's his brilliance." "Thirteen yards." "Touchdown." "Atremendously gifted athlete, number 32, O.J. Simpson." "Everybody loved watching O.J. Run." "As we look at it in slow motion..." "There was something about his style." "...O.J. Simpson." "I said, "Man, if I could but run half as well as this guy," "I might be all right."" "Beban hooking." "Deep and long to Copeland." "UCLA has tied it up." "There is Nuttall." "Touchdown, UCLA." "And with 11 minutes and 40 seconds left in the game UCLAgets the lead." "We were losing." "And we were fighting." "O.J. Simpson is deep." "Number 32." "And he's determined." "We were outplaying them, and we were very angry that we were not winning that game." "Thirty." "Moving away, and sheer sake of effort brings him out to the 34-yard line." "Things weren't going our way until that run." "Rose Bowl bid, Bud, is at stake." "Everything that they've fought for all year, it's coming down to the wire now, Chris." "These final minutes." "At the 36-yard line, a 4-yard gain, it'll be third down at three forthe Trojans." "It was a pass play." "They need three yards." "And they audible, and some guys missed the audible." "I couldn't hear it." "I made a mistake." "I stood up to pass block." "The linebacker read me and backed into his passing zone, and that opened up a lane for O.J." "And he did his magic." "First down and more." "There's Simpson." "Look at that cut!" "O.J. Simpson!" "All she wrote." "64 yards. 64 thrilling, captivating, collegiate football yards, and let's look at that one again." "Wow." "Don't recall seeing anybody that can turn it on like this boy, Chris." "If you were a football fan in the late '60s and someone said to you," ""Do you rememberthe run," it was just one run." "That set O.J. Apart from everyone." "He's so much faster, it makes no difference." "That single play is still felt to be one of the greatest college plays." "He became an instant national star." "A civil rights leader in Los Angeles has said if you are going to be a negro in a big city, then, Los Angeles is the best place to be." "The image of Los Angeles was milk and honey." "There's no prejudice in Los Angeles." "Everybody's free to do what they will." "You know, palm trees and sunshine." "It's just the ultimate place." "And anybody who was trying to go somewhere, at least in my area, you know, they were going to Los Angeles." "There is no group in America to whom California has meant more than it has to the negroes." "In the two decades between 1940 and 1960, while the population of all other groups in Los Angeles went up by 100 percent, the negro population went up by 600 percent." "Where do the people come from?" "People come from the states of Texas, Louisiana, Georgia..." "The hope is that all the trouble I've known will be gone." "2, 4, 6, 8, we don't wanna integrate!" "I will no longer be held down by this notion held against my skin and my hair." "More literally, I can get work because it's growing so fast here." "And I can buy a house, and nobody's ever gonna come take it away from me because I'm black." "This is something that you didn't have in the deep South." "The Simpsons are from Rodessa, Louisiana." "My parents and his parents, they grew up on a 200-acre farm." "Although they had land, there was no opportunity for people of color, so everybody "got out of Dodge", as they say." "O.J. And I were born in San Francisco in '47." "He had aspirations." "He knew that he wanted to better his circumstances, and LAwas the place to do that." "I moved out here looking for opportunities." "My grandmother gave me 67 dollars for a ticket, and my mother gave me 65 dollars to spend, and I got on a plane, one-way ticket." "If I had the money, I would've gone back home, 'cause it was very, very troubling once I got out here." "Racism out here was as stark as it was in Jim Crow South." "You don't really have any more power out here than you had there." "Everybody was always conscious of the police." "You a friend of Jack Grant's?" "Why?" "Jack Grant a friend of yours?" "I'm not gonna tell ya." "I grew up watching the Los Angeles Police Department." "They just were so sharp and professional all the time, if you watched things that depicted them." "I'm Lieutenant Moore of the Los Angeles Police Department." "Hell, no, we won't go." "If you do not leave now, you will be arrested for violation of section 602-J." "They werejust always squared away." "The institutional culture was really clear." "We expected you to be the best, we expected you to be professional." "It's not like it was in the '30s and '40s." "Police officers don't take bribes." "There's none of that stuff, that had been cleaned up by Chief Parker." "Chief Parkerturned a very corrupt police department into what was viewed as a very honest police department, but with that he brought a level of being untouchable." "Everything at the police academy was white, in the sense of command staff, officers, all the trainers were white." "Bill Parker was reputed to have actually recruited police officers from Klan rallies," "I think he, at minimum, was racially insensitive, at maximum, he was racist." "Police officers under Bill Parker would respond to a radio call, they would go snatch the person who was causing trouble, put 'em in the car, take 'em out and leave." "So their interaction with the community was almost entirely based on apprehension, and that's where the notion of an occupying army comes from." "Just getting tired of being pushed around by you white people, that's all." "You stopping' us on the street, kickin' down the doors, takin' down to the police station, you're kicking ourteeth in." "Well, he took me in the car and, uh, he just started getting on me." "But was there a fight?" "How can I fight with my hands stuck?" "The complaint that you hear everywhere is that the negro is not getting the same treatment from the police as the- well, I know, but I'm getting a little bit weary of that, and I think perhaps the best thing to do" "is just to pull the police out of the area." "I've offered to do that again and again, but you see how quick they are to come back and say," ""we can't afford to have that."" "The negroes are stepping up, they're waking up, and they're gonna do something about what the white man did to them." "I'm not afraid of bloodshed." "If I have to die for my rights, I will." "54 square miles in the middle of the nation's third-largest city." "No one expected the flashpoint of discontent to be in the sprawling, bungalow'd 450 square miles of Los Angeles." "This is where the fuse was lighted." "It began with the arrest by white officers of two young negroes, one on a charge of drunk driving, the other his brother." "Their mother came to the scene." "There was an argument, there was a scuffle." "By then, a crowd of several hundred negroes had gathered." "The story of police brutality quickly spread through the community." "The watts riots." "I was 10 years old, man." "It was summer, it was hot, and white policemen had been treating us like shit forever." "And we were gonna respond." "The police in their idiocy responded with too much force and not enough understanding, and it mushroomed." "I was nervous." "There were people screaming, people shooting, people lying on the ground, not moving." "The police, four-deep in a car, all holding up shotguns." "The watts riot was one of the first major events in the city of LA that was caught on TV." "People who grew up looking at those kinds of activities in the South, they thought that's where all of the racial divide was." "The only thing was missing in LA, there weren't dogs." "Hands up there." "Get 'em up." "Get your hands up." "Let's go." "I got home and my father was sitting there, upset, and he says," ""You know, walter, they're out there, riot."" "And he says, "I wanna do that." "I feel that." "I feel that anger." "I know it's wrong, so I can't do it." "But I want to."" "I didn't think it was a big deal." "I didn't think these people were, quote, "persecuted"." "I didn't think these people had any problem." "Why were they rioting?" "I was as naïïve as any other white person." "This area is being closed." "Please go in your homes." "The question came down from white people after watts." "They said, "Do most black people feel like this?"" "And the answer came back," ""About 99 percent of them feel like this." "And one percent are really mad."" "In creating this situation, where was the failure?" "On the part of the city, the county, the schools?" "This, sir, I think, is one of the difficulties in meeting this, is that we're trying to find a failure other than the people themselves." "They came in and..." "and flooded a community that wasn't prepared to meet them." "We didn't ask these people to come here." "So long as this stubborn attitude is maintained," "I can only see the situation worsening." "I can still smell the smoulderings of that event." "There was nervousness all overthe place that would ultimately translate into traumatizing an entire community." "Better to make all the rioting stop." "I don't think it'll ever stop, really." "Ever?" "And the institution that gave life to O.J. Simpson's image and presence nationally and beyond was located and presence nationally and beyond was located right in the middle of that very same neighborhood." "USC was an isolated, beautiful school right next to the LAColiseum and on the other side were the slums of LA." "Basically watts." "Everyone was warned not to go down on that side of the Coliseum." "At the University of Southern California, they have a living legend, and at homecoming, that's all they wanna talk about." "The name of the legend is O.J. Simpson." "When you saw him on campus, it was like, "wow!" "There's O. J!"" "And you might go up and wave and say, "way to go, O.J.,"" "and he'd give you a big smile, and you felt like you were a million dollars." "You felt fantastic." ""O.J. Simpson said"hi"to me!"" "(Chuckles) Yeah." "Hey, O.J., how are ya?" "How's it...?" "Working hard." "I hope you're gonna be smiling Saturday." "Yeah, in about four days or five." "I plan to." "For most of the USC students, I wager, O.J. Simpson was the first African-American they really got to see and talk to." "Because most of them didn't know African-Americans at all, or any person of color." "We are!" "SC!" "We are!" "SC!" "USC was a football school, it was a Hollywood school, it was glamour and glitz, it was not the University of California at Berkeley." "It was not San Jose State." "Fight, fight, fight, fight!" "It was above and beyond reach of the movement." "O.J. Went to USC in 1967, so he's plucked out of the black community, out of black consciousness, and he's submerged in an all-white university." "And I say this, and I don't say it facetiously, but he is seduced by white society." "USC controls TV, Hollywood, banking, finance, law and medicine in Los Angeles." "The alumni are very powerful, and their whole existence revolves around the success of the football team." "And O.J. Is leading them to glory." "It was that type of school with that type of power and control that could be directed towards him." "The black man has been brainwashed, and it's time for him to learn something about himself." "The word "black" is a part of the times." "We are succumbing to the demands of the black man in the street who says that the negro is dead and the black man is alive." "It was a condition that I was born into;" "the unfairness, the racism, the hatred, the poverty that we had in this country." "You can't balance that with being a football hero." "In the '60s, societal issues were pushing their way into sports." "It has been said that I have two alternatives, either go to jail or go to the army." "There was this engagement of the athlete." "Some major athletes stood up." "Nine top negro athletes meet with Cassius Clay to discuss his anti-draft stand." "They include Bill Russell, Lou Alcindor, and former pro-footballer Jimmy Brown." "Every man in that room was a soldier." "Every man in that room, for nothing otherthan his beliefs and backing another brother, felt that he should be there and the hell with the consequences." "Jim Brown, Bill Russell, Ali, for sure, were race men." "They stood up for principle and damaged their commercial possibilities." "They pointed to the discrimination, not only of all blacks, but of black athletes, of people who were supposedly given entitlement in America." "At the time you were supposed to be satisfied." "Or grateful." "Why would someone that's making money and cheered by 80,000 people be complaining?" "For me, it was really a matter of fairness and what is correct." "The United States has hypocritically put itself up as the leader of the free world, while right here in this country there are 22 million black people who are catching more hell than anyone in any communist country ever dreamed of." "Black men and women athletes, professional and amateur, have unanimously voted to fully endorse and participate in a boycott of the world Olympic Games in 1968." "The movement on the west Coast recently in which Lou Alcindor supposedly said he might not play in the Olympics." "What are your thoughts?" "Well, um- well, this is his prerogative." "I'm not too well enlightened on the situation." "I don't know exactly what they're trying to do, you know." "The whole idea behind the Olympic Project for Human Rights was to escalate the relationship between elite athletes and the civil rights movement." "Let me say that I absolutely support this boycott." "I would also like to commend the outstanding athletes who have the courage to make it clear that they will not participate unless something is done about these terrible evils and injustices." "O.J. Was approached because he was the biggest name in collegiate athletics at that time." "He was also a world record-holding track star." "That's O.J. Simpson..." "So here we got two for one." "...and Lennox Miller... when I asked him, I said we were trying to get black athletes to understand they have a role in the current civil rights movement, his response was, "I'm not black." "I'm O.J."" "What they think is right, I guess, they must follow their beliefs." "Well, uh, right now I don't wanna be involved in it, because, uh, I'm not in track." "You know, I'm running track, but when it... when it comes to Olympic time, I'll be in football, so I have no comment on the matter." "O.J. Was saying, "I want to bejudged not by the color of my skin," "I want to be judged by the content of my character and." "Most of all, the caliber of my competence." "I think I'm the greatest football player that this country's ever seen." "That's all I wanna be judged by." "Don't tell me I've gotta do this because I'm black."" "I think football is a great sport." "It teaches a person an awful lot." "I would say there's less prejudice in sports than any other field anywhere, because, uh, it just... you're accepted as what you are, you know, an athlete and what you can do," "and I think this is good for anyone." "Simpson rushed for 1709 yards in 1968, more than any other back in history." "His durability is almost as legendary as his speed and moves." "Simpson scored 22 touchdowns." "He carried a record 355 times and proved himself nearly indestructible." "He was in a different world than the rest of us." "There was an O.J. Cult." "It was building, building, building." "When you bring a student athlete in there on a visit, they wanna see O.J." "The community leaders, for speaking engagements, they wanted O.J." "They wanted a role model." "They wanted the young black kids to see." "When I was 16 years old, I made an all-starteam down in Los Angeles and they had a banquet, and while we were eating, the guy who was running the whole show, he says," ""Okay, I wanna introduce the guest speaker tonight, O.J. Simpson."" "And I was like, "wow!" I said, "O.J.'s here." "This is unbelievable."" "O.J., when he walked up, he said," ""First of all, before I start, is Ron Shipp here?"" "I put my hand up." "I was like, "Is this-?" "Is this for real?"" "And he goes, "Are you the brother of Michael Shipp?"And I say, "Yes."" "And he goes, "Hey, everybody, I just wanna tell you about, uh, Michael Shipp, his brother, we played against each other, he's a great guy, so on and so, Ron, if you're anything like your brother, you know..."" "and, like, he made me an instant hero in that room." "I mean, I fell in love with the guy right then." "This is the most incredible human being." "Here is the star of our show, Bob Hope." "I don't have to tell you it's a pleasure to be here at OJU." "But it's wonderful to be here at USC." "You haven't had a riot, a demonstration or even a sit in." "Are you sure this is a college?" "I have some very sad news for all of you." "Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis." "I tried to talk to O.J. Before the show, but I guess he has something on his mind." "He kept referring to me as Mr. Heisman." "RFK, RFK, RFK!" "Pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs!" "O.J., you've had quite a season." "Well, I have gained a few yards." "Afew yards?" "You've gobbled up more real estate than Howard Hughes." "When you think of 1968, what do you think of?" "1968, I think of winning all the games, getting O.J. Famous, everybody on campus thinking it's the greatest thing on earth." "That's all we thought about." "There was nothing else going on." "Several European newspapers today condemned the International Olympic Committee for sending home two militant negro athletes from the United States." "The two, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who ran first and third in the 200-meter dash, were banished after they raised clenched fists in black gloves during the playing of The Star Spangled Banner." "Uh, with your bad self!" "Say it loud!" "I'm black, and I'm proud!" "I didn't believe in the national anthem, but I stood up anyway, because I didn't want no static, but those days are gone." "Right on." "Brother Tommie Smith, Brother Johnny Carlos and Brother Harry Edwards join the ranks of Brother Muhammad Ali, because we want black people who are concerned with us first and with sports second." "Yeah!" "Say it loud!" "I'm black, and I'm proud!" "At about, uh, 10 o'clock this morning, we were notified that, uh, a Heisman Trophy winner comes back to USC and, as you all know, it's O.J. Simpson." "(Applause)" "Thank you." "Well, I..." "I don't know quite what to say." "I'm, uh, certainly proud, and I'm very happy, and I'm..." "I'm taking it as a team award and all the other guys did as much if not more than I do, for me to get the award, and I'll be glad to see all the guys," "'cause I know they're just as happy as I am." "As you can see, the Heisman Trophy award ceremony is over, and O.J. Simpson, number 32, the University of Southern California, has been beset by autograph hounds." "Mrs. Simpson, I wonder if you'd be good enough to come over." "Your tears only registered your pride, and it's a very great pride, and you should enjoy it, because this is a very great young man." "O.J., the congratulations of all of us to you for a truly remarkable season and more importantly foryour impeccable character." "Thank you, Mr. Cosell." "So that's the story." "The Heisman award proceedings, number 32, O.J. Simpson." "Perhaps the greatest running back in the history of college football." "When I met him, I was quite taken with him." "This is kind of a warm June night in 1969." "Howard Cosell took O.J. And me to Bachelors III, which was Joe Namath's bar." "He was telling a story about being at a teammate's wedding with his wife sitting at a table of mostly, as he said, negroes, and you overheard a white woman at the next table saying," ""Look, there's O.J. Sitting with all those niggers."" "And I remember in my naiveté, saying to O.J.," ""Gee, wow, that must have been terrible for you."" ""No, that was great." "Don't you understand?" "She knew that I wasn't black." "She saw me as O.J."" "And-And really, at that moment, um, I thought he was fucked." "Our first guest today is one of the greatest running backs I've ever seen." "I met him when he was still in college at Southern California, and he's not only a hell of a football player, he's a hell of a guy." "The winner of the Heisman trophy, the finest college football player in the country last year, the Buffalo Bills' great rookie, O.J. Simpson." "(Applause)" "Thank you, Joe." "Now, with all that money you got for signing with Buffalo," "I wanna know if you're gonna help me out in some business interests." "(Laughs)" "How's business?" "Oh, it's pretty good." "I, uh, I'm under contract with..." "I don't know if I can say it." "I'm here." "Yeah." "Well, I'm under contract with Chevrolet and RC Cola, and I'm working with, um..." "what network is it?" "(Laughter)" "ABC." "And, uh, they're keeping me pretty busy." "The pitch to Chevrolet was that this would be the first national black spokesman." "You've got a black market." "He's not gonna be a negative in any way to the white market, but you're gonna get a lot of brownie points just for stepping up." "O. J?" "It's a real satisfaction to me to be able to introduce a great ballplayer like you to an equally great group of Chevrolet salesmen." "My pleasure, Chris." "At the time, athlete endorsements were virtually non-existent." "And forthem to sign him, a black man, a football player, was ground-breaking." "They tell me that the Chevrolet selling team is the greatest in the country." "I believe that." "That's what made perfect sense." "O.J. Simpson was the counterrevolutionary athlete." "White America is looking for somebody who can erase the threat of these seemingly angry principled black athletes who are going to create a revolution in sports." "O.J. Made people feel good." "It was clear once you spent some time with O.J." "That the Carlos, you know, fist pump, and those kinds of, uh, situations were not gonna be, you know, present in... in dealing with him." "Hejust gave you that confidence that he understood what this was about." "I'd like to welcome a new member of the ABC sports commentary staff." "It is O.J. Simpson." "Uh, well, Jim, I'll be doing basically sports work with the, uh," "ABC radio networks and the TV nextworks- networks." "I hope..." "O.J. Was very, very rough and needed a lot of coaching in the early years." "It's pretty interesting, and I'm really looking forward to it." "We obviously wanted him to be able to speak proper English and eliminate slang, and he didn't ever take offense at that." "It was, "Thank you." You know?" ""Okay, I got it."" "He realized that his Horatio Alger story was based on him being a pleasing person to white people." "I really had the sense that he was enormously self-conscious of who he was and who he needed to be to get over." "That there was this character, O.J., which he was creating." "What does O.J. Stand for?" "(Laughs) Oh, Joe." "(Laughter)" "Come on, tell it." "Tell me." "Orenthal James Simpson." "Good." "(Laughter)" "Now, that's a nice name, Orenthal." "Yeah." "(Laughter)" "It's a good name." "You..." "You never got in any arguments over that, did ya?" "No, no, I had, uh..." "I had some pretty good friends, pretty big friends, and they were the only guys who could tease me about it." "Well, in your movie career, uh, motion picture industry, are they gonna call you Orenthal James or-?" "They're gonna call me O.J." "(Laughs)" "I was taken by O.J. As a character, as somebody to write about, that somebody was so self-aware and so obviously ambitious." "The question in my mind then and still now is where did this imagination come from?" "Where did he begin to write this novel about O.J. Simpson?" "Everybody looks at San Francisco now, "Oh, it's this cosmopolitan..." "Oh, you know, everybody loves everybody gooshy goosh."" "It's not." "It wasn't like that, man." "Potrero Hill was predominantly African-American." "Public housing, the old barracks from the navy." "When the navy left, the city turned 'em into low-income housing." "It was a rough area." "The Simpsons lived at the top of a big hill." "Carmelita, his younger sister Shirley had a room, and Melvin and O.J. Had a room." "We crawled around on the floortogether before we ever learned howto walk." "Four months apart." "I'm born in March, he's born in July." "We'd spend a lot of time at each other's house." "We're a close-knit family." "The mother worked at night, so they were responsible forthemselves, and sometimes he would open the refrigerator and therejust wouldn't be nothing in there, and I'd say, "well, come on, let's go to my house and eat dinner."" "O.J.'s mother, my aunt Eunice, worked the graveyard shift at San Francisco General Hospital." "She was a provider, she was steady, but if you're in a single-parent situation, you know, there's never enough money." "(Police siren)" "I mean, we were poor kids, you know." "We would steal cars, we would break into somebody's house, take all the women's purses and stuff like-You know." "We would be called criminals." "From the time we were 10 years old, you know, we were hustlers." "You know, you'd go to the football game, scalp tickets, and everybody had their own technique." "Yeah." "I would..." "I can recall crying in front of a cat, you know." ""Oh, I need it." (Laughs) "Please let me have that ticket." You know?" "(Laughter)" ""I wanna see..." "I wanna see Hugh McElhenny play," you know?" "Cats break down, give you the ticket," "I would go on the other side of the stadium and sell it." "Why didn't I think of that?" "(Laughter)" "Did you ever see him in any fist fights?" "O.J. Didn't fight." "No?" "No." "O.J. Was boisterous." "When you say he was boisterous, did you ever see him, uh, talk himself out of a..." "a fight situation?" "I've seen O.J. Fight- Talk himself out of a lot of situations." "There was this one incident at school." "Myself, Al Collins and O.J., we were all in the bathroom shooting crap." "We were cursing and talking loud, and I was shaking the dice, and, all of a sudden, these big wingtip shoes slide in the circle, and I looked up, and it was Coach McBride." "We were all on the football team." "We're like, "Okay, Mr. McBride, we're busted." "Let us go to class."" "He's like, "No." He's gonna take us to the principal's office." "O.J. Stays in back of the pack." "I could hear him," ""Oh, come on, Mr. McBride." "You know we're gonna be suspended."" "So we get in the principal's office." "Coach McBride says, "I caught these guys in the bathroom shooting dice."" "And then he turned and walked out." "So O.J. Turns and walks away." "Dean Smith says, "Simpson, where you going?"" "He says, "Oh, I was just helping Mr. McBride bring these guys down."" "(Laughs) And Dean Smith let him go." "(Bell rings)" "Self-preservation." "It was just that kind of smooth talk that O.J. Would do in all kinds of situations." "Do you think he was shown a little preference because of his football ability?" "Oh, yes." "You said you had seen Simpson talk himself out of lots of situations." "Oh, yeah, talked himself... with me." "When we were younger, Al Collins used to stutter, and he never was good with talking to girls." "Marguerite was the nice girl from the other side of town, but Marguerite liked Alan, and they wound up going steady." "There was some party, and O.J. Came and got me." "I thought we was going straight to the party, but we pull up in front of Marguerite's house, and he tells me to get in the back, and I'm, like, in shock, like, you know," "I seen her with... you know, walking with- with Alan." "We go down to where the party is, and Alan spots us, and he starts shaking his head and, "No!" "No way!"" "He is furious, and Al is a big guy." "And he grabs the car, and he's rocking it, rocking the car back and forth, just rocking it." "And Marguerite gets out of the car, she says, "Alan, stop it."" "And he stops." "And we were like, "No, he didn't."" "(Laughs) How could O.J. Keep getting out of these situations?" "He stole his best friend's girl." "Later on, you see the three of them together." "Alan went to USC also." "They were as thick as thieves." "Everywhere he went, A.C. Was with him." "Football really was what brought us together." "We were really braggadocious, you know." "We were like, "I'm gonna be a pro football player,"" "and O.J. Said something that really struck me." "He says, "Man, let me tell you guys something." "One of these days, your children are gonna be fighting over who wants to be O.J. Simpson."" "He knew that he was going to be somebody." "He was self-assured." "I'll just..." "I'll just put it that way." "O.J. Has always wanted to be a hero." "If it was looking at Burt Lancaster on The Man on the Flying Trapeze or Burt Lancaster playing Jim Thorpe, he always wanted to be a hero." "An American hero." "The Buffalo Bills select as their first choice in the first round, halfback O.J. Simpson, the University of Southern California." "It was the last place you'd wanna be." "It was just like being sent to Siberia." "There was some players that said, "Oh, Mr. Hotshot."" "He understood that people around him was envious what he was getting and what he was doing." "Stand by and go wheneveryou're ready, O.J." "(Chuckles) well, there was never much doubt about missing him." "Uh, that was O.J. Simpson." "O.J. Is now a professional football player." "The Buffalo Bills is his home, and the question is how many professional defensive tacklers is he going to get by?" "So what kind of an attitude must O.J. Simpson have to play professional football?" "Well, he's gonna have to be strong-willed, uh, in many different ways, because he will have a lot of people picking at him, he'll have a lot of... we had a couch, John Rauch," "which I've considered the worst coach that we ever had." "Blocking, he will have to block, because other people are ball carriers also." "He tried to make O.J. A receiver, more or less." "What we call tosses, quick, uh, opening plays." "And O.J. Could not catch a ball." "He couldn't catch a ball if they paid him to catch a ball, which they was." "They was paying him. (Chuckles) They was paying him a lot." "O.J. Hated Buffalo." "He hated the weather." "It's a blue collartown." "Hard working, blue collar, factory-working people." "O.J. Was nothing of that." "And plus, we was on a losing team." "The first couple years of his pro career were very frustrating for him, and they were disappointing relative to the huge expectations that everybody set for him." "I mean, they were saying he was a bust." "If it had have stayed the same as it was when he first got drafted in here, he would have been a nobody, I honestly believe that." "He'd have been a nobody." "Best thing happened to O.J. Was John Rauch got fired, and Lou Saban took over." "Lou Saban was a person who believed in the run game first, the pass game second." "I tell you, if Lou Saban hadn't have came in, we wouldn't be doing this story right now." "'73 was the year we opened the new stadium." "So we had a 80,000 seat stadium, and they brought in all these young offensive linemen." "Coach Saban built the team to run." "When I got there during exhibition season," "I saw him doing things that..." "I said, "wow." "Homeboy's pretty bad."" "Lou Saban started selling them on the idea that we can get 2,000." "You can get 2,000." "We can do this." "You can get it done." "What's more, you gotta get it done." "And in that first game, we turned out the lights and started it and never looked back." "First game I ever played in the NFL, O.J. Got 250 yards." "O.J. Simpson could run sideways faster than most men could run forward." "And he hit the line, and he'd go" "(whistles) that quick, then up the sideline." "He was amazing." "I've been around a lot of good ballplayers, but I've never been around anyone that was as breathtaking or as captivating as he was." "He would, like, glide." "He never really picked his feet more than a couple inches off the ground, so he was, like, slithering through a hole." "When he'd hit a hole sometimes he'd turn sideways and kind of leap through it sideways." "Then if he broke open into the open, then you'd start seeing the knees go up in the stride." "That's when he was buttery." "He's the one who sucked me into being a rabid Bills fan." "Let's hear it for the Bills." "Let's hear it." "Come on!" "Let's go!" "Let's go, Bills!" "And once we got to the seventh game, it was a Monday night game, O.J. Went over a thousand." "Everybody said, "Hey, we have a shot at this."" "Two thousand yards in 14 games." "That was like somebody breaking Babe Ruth's home run record." "That was unheard of." "What was going through my mind at the time is he might have a chance of breaking Jim Brown's record." "I neverthought that he would go 2,000 yards." "Why are you so much better than everybody else?" "I think..." "I think the offensive line is so much betterthan everybody." "Hey, you guys!" "We're gonna turn it on." "All of a sudden, we got a nickname:" ""The Electric Company."" "And, wow, this is pretty cool." "The nickname came from the PR director of The Bills." "There used to be a cartoon called The Electric Company, and his son watched it all the time." "He said, "Hey, dad, why don't you call 'em 'The Electric Company'?"" "They turn on the juice." "The Bills they got that Electric Company" "Montler, Foley, Big Joe D" "They turn on The Juice They turn on The Juice" "They cut him loose They turn on The Juice" "You know I love to see my Electric Company" "Turn on The Juice Turn him loose" "O.J. Just couldn't be stopped that year." "Throw that switch, boys Turn the power on" "There were times when the quarterback would only throw six passes in the entire game." "There goes The Juice There goes The Juice" "The entire offense was O.J. Simpson." "There goes The Juice 30, 40..." "Nobody actually thought he was gonna go for 2,000." "With only, uh, two games to go, he was still 400 and a few yards short." "Go, Juice!" "Come on, Juice!" "During the games, I never took a minute off from the offense." "Do you want The Juice to put a move on you?" "I never made it to the bench." "Turn on The Juice" "Yeah" "I didn't wanna miss any of it." "Turn on The Juice" "It was the most exciting thing that I'd ever seen." "Turn on The Juice" "Yeah" "when we got to New York, that last game, he was going for Jim Brown's record." "With 60 yards needed, and everyone knew that The Jets didn't want him to get the record." "I was actually there." "The Jets had no chance of making the playoffs." "The only interesting thing about that day was whether O.J. Was going to break 2,000." "It was a really snowy, cold day." "Hm, a little bit similar to today." "So a lot of people were worried that he wouldn't have a lot of rushing yards because of that, a lot of slipping in the snow." "He was nervous that day." "We had a little chat, and I told him, I said," ""Hey, homes, this is just another week for you."" "I think he knewthat "This is gonna make or break me."" "He knewthat in orderfor him to write his name in the book, he had to be exceptional." "He was living a very comfortable life, but he wanted to live an exceptional life," "and this was his exceptional feat." "I rememberjust about every play in that game." "Every time Simpson got the ball, everyone was rushing to their, uh, notepad to write it down." "And the announcers kept counting it down." "Well, gentlemen, we are coming upon it, and, uh, The Juice should break the National Football League rushing record in this next series." "Simpson running left, Simpson breaking loose, and there it is!" "All right!" "All right!" "He needed four yards, he got five and this crowd, his whole team is gathering around and congratulating him, hitting him on the head, there isn't a person sitting down." "He got the 1,863 pretty early in the game." "And they said, "Okay, now we're going for the 2,000."" "And now it's forthe 2,000, Floyd." "More than 100 yards, O.J., O.J. Cuts inside," "O.J. Gets wide, this is on!" "Now a race he's at midfield and he's inside Jets territory at the 43 yard line." "100 yards." "How many games did he get to 100 yards?" "Eleven?" "Once he got over 100 yards, a different excitement started to hit the game." "Well, he might do this." "He might actually hit 2,000." "You had Jets fans who were basically rooting for O.J." "Because they wanted to be part of history, and I think, you know," "I was basically a little kid, but I think I felt that way." "Who cared if The Jets won?" "Everybody loved O.J." "O.J., he's got five yards, and O.J. Running left," "O.J. Five more." "Maybe more." "I don't know." "They did it." "They did it." "Yeah!" "And when he did it, he was on my shoulder." "I knew how important it was." "I contributed to that also." "The defense has to give the ball to the offense." "I felt it." "It was mine, too." "Right after the game, there's "Gotta get O.J. To the interview,"" "and he said, "I'm not coming in unless you bring in all the guys."" "And we were in a tiny room." "We could barely fit in that room." "He brought in all the offense." "He refused to go in that room without us." "O.J., you brought 'em all with you." "Yeah." "Hey, they did thejob, all of you." "I want you to meet the boys." "Here." "Mike Montler, our... our... our center." "Jim Braxton, Bob Penchion, Joe Ferguson." "Didn't throw many passes this year, but ball-handling is the thing." "(Laughter)" "Donnie Green, (laughs) Bobby Chandler, Paul Seymour," "Dave Foley, a former Jet." "(Laughter)" "All right, all right!" "(Chuckles) This is a guy, through the long winter wasn't supposed to play any football this year." "He had a heart problem, but you came back, and you see what we did." "JD Hill, "Crackback" Hill, my main man Reg McKenzie." "He was the most generous guy you'd ever meet." "When we broke the record, he bought us a gold wristband." "And on the back of it is, "we did it." "The Juice. 3088."" "He didn't say "2003", he said "3088", because that's how much the team rushed." "I hope to stay in the, uh, league long enough for, uh, you know, 'til all these guys get old so no young back can get behind 'em and break my record." "'73 was like a rebirth of his celebrity." "I was 22 years old, I thought, you know," ""This is like being on a team with Babe Ruth."" "Mentally, I think he was ahead of, uh, a lot of people." "From watching how he handled himself, how he operated, my whole demeanor changed." "I began to wanna be like O.J." "He was Baryshnikov." "When somebody is that great at something, when we see those people, they are special." "They just can do stuff that other people can't do." "You expect it of yourself." "You hear the crowd, but you don't hear it." "I mean, you knowthey're cheering, but that's the way it should be." "When I'm in the open, I'm running, this is how it is supposed to be." "This is correct." "This is the natural state of things." "I know whenever I've done it, my feelings have always been, uh, that's nothing." "Uh, this is nothing yet." "Yeah, I'm gonna do it again." "Orenthal James Simpson had that shine." "The sun hit him, and there was this thing about him." "Because he really was that great." "He really was that great." "Football has been my vehicle to come out of the ghetto, uh, to give everything I've got." "I think I have a lot more to offer." "There's a lot of things I need as a person." "You know, I need, uh..." "I need that recognition." "I think that, uh, what..." "what is driving O.J. Simpson is that need to be number one, that need to be liked." "That need to be said, "Hey, that's O.J. Simpson."" "When I walk down the street, I want people to know me." "Let Hertz put you in the driver's seat" "Let Hertz take you anywhere we had done a survey asking the customer base what was the most important attribute of the rental car experience?" "And the most important attribute was speed of service." "So we went to the agency, and they showed a storyboard of a businessman with a briefcase running through the airport." "Our marketing guy said, "Frank, it doesn't work." "That's not realistic to think a businessman's gonna do that." "We need somebody that connotes speed."" "And I said, "Like what?" He says, "Like O.J. Simpson."" "Juice comes off the blocks, immediately goes into the lead." "Steve Smith running in second place." "Right now it's Mark Gleason, but here comes Hancock." "He moves past Gleason." "O.J. looks back, sees Smith running at his shoulder, steps on it a little bit, and The Juice puts him away." "It was one of the clients who said," ""Did you see the ABC program The Superstars?" "O.J. Just lit up the screen." "His personality came out, and he just made everybody smile."" "You gave him about a yard and then you took a look at him." "What's happening?" "Well, I was out there cruising." "I figure I'd coast it on in." "I saw Steve pull up on me, you know, and my ego got a little ruffled there." "I said, "I'd better get out in front again."" "I called him, and his first comment was," ""Hertz is the number one rent-a-car company." "If I'm ever going to do anything in advertising in a big way, it's always gonna be for the number one brand."" "When you're in a rush, take it from O.J. Simpson." "There's only one superstar in rent-a-car:" "Hertz." "The first ad was filmed in Newark Airport." "He was very professional, he was anxious to make sure that he did things correctly, that his diction was appropriate." "Others claim to be fast, but nobody has more to do it faster." "More pros to execute the toughest performance standards." "More cars, more locations, first with every good idea to speed up service, like the Number One Club." "Before you get there, your form's filled out, car's preassigned." "Go, O.J., go!" "Rent a Ford fast from Hertz, the superstar in rent-a-car." "I thought it was perfect." "I mean, it just made sense." "You're trying to portray speed of service, and you've got the fastest guy in America running through the airport and a little old lady yelling, "Go, O. J!"" "Go, O.J., go!" "It was perfect." "It tested so well that they decided to use him for the print work, promotional work, and they did the right thing." "He made that company successful." "He became the image forthat company." "We started in September of '75." "By two years of the campaign running, O.J. Simpson was the star presenter of the year for Advertising Age." "There was never a story that was written about O.J." "That didn't mention Hertz." "Coming or going on a business trip, you've got no time to waste." "I can see him right now flying through the airport." "Whether it's picking up or dropping off" "I was proud." "It made me want that." "Go, O.J., go!" "It gave me hope." "There you are with super-speed" "This is an important moment." "The young black kid seeing a black man running on television." "That's all he sees." "He says, "He looks like my uncle Reggie."" "You know it." "That's something I could do." "I wanna be like O.J. On television." "Hi." "Ever need to rent a car fast?" "Watch." "You're in the limelight." "We like seeing you." "You look like us." "It's kind of like when I first saw black people brushing their teeth on TV." "I mean, we always knew we brushed our teeth, but it was, like, a big thing." "Like, "Come see!"" "That's what happened with O.J. Simpson." "Those were heights that we had not reached before, so he was a pioneer." "You're a black man in America, you're fighting our war." "If you make a success for yourself somewhere, you've opened a door." "Fortunately, because of the riots of the early '60s, some doors were opened to me." "If I were to have looked at myself in any other way except a man, my brother could walk into a room and know he's the only black guy in the room." "I walk in a room, and I don't care." "I don't count the blacks or whites in the room, and in '68, when I signed to work for some white companies, you know," "Chevrolet Motor Division, I walked in the room, and I never thought that I was the first black guy to do it." "I never even gave that any credence." "For us, O.J. Was colorless." "None of the people that we associated with looked at him as a black man." "O.J. Portrayed success." "Success, I mean, from nowhere." "And I think people want to be successful." "O.J. Was the first to demonstrate that white folks would buy stuff based on a black endorsement as long as it was not pressed as a black endorsement." "And the way they did that was to remove black people totally from any scene that O.J. Was in." "It was Fred Levinson who said," ""Guys, we're going to be showing a black man running through an airport in 1975."" "I said, "when you see the commercial with a black guy running through an airport, a little different than seeing a white guy running through an airport."" "So he came up with the idea of putting in various characters who would see O.J. And endorse him by saying, "Go, O.J., go!"" "Go, O.J., go!" "Go, O.J., go!" "Go, Juice, go!" "Rent a Ford from Hertz." "The superstar in rent-a-car." "Right." "They bought the notion that you could erase the black character, the culture." "This is what made O.J. Marketable." "He's African, but he's a good-looking man." "You know, he almost has white features." "He wasn't the typical black look, African look." "What white America got out of it was they could point to somebody that had "made it"" "and demonstrated unequivocally that we are more than willing to notjust accept you, but to embrace you." "What O.J. Got out of it was money, fame, celebrity." "Hey, hey, hey!" "What you got to say?" "I always tell everybody, he was the guy of the '70s." "I look back at those days, there was Muhammad Ali, Hank Aaron and O.J. Simpson." "And O.J. Was the most popular of all of them." "Hollywood" "I didn't see them running through airports." "Hollywood swinger when you're a star running back, you have to maintain a certain image." "Aw." "I'm'a tell ya, I dug O. J..." "I got a chance to see how he lived, how he handled stuff." "I'd never been that close to that type of success before." "Hey, listen, Hollywood city, yeah" "They'd have 3-4,000 fans standing around the bus just to get a look at him." "He would stay on the field and sign every autograph." "I've seen O.J. Sign autographs for hours." "I said, "How in the world do you put up with this?"" "He said, "Man, I wanted this."" "O.J., tonight we're gonna change your image." "Flip, you won't be the first who tried." "Hollywood, Hollywood swinging when I first met O.J., he was a huge star." "I'll shave one side with the leading double-edged blade." "I was friends with his wife Marguerite's sister." "I can't tell." "Both sides feel the same." "They lived up in the hills, in Bel-Air." "Marguerite felt like she was a single mother while O.J. Was out being O.J." "Tonight, O.J., we're gonna be sophisticated." "Sophisticated." "We gonna have a ball, Orenthal." "I can dig it." "Cool." "Right on, O.J." "Hollywood" "The scene is this, here is three poor black kids, never had a thousand dollars in our pockets." "Now he got a brand-new drop-top Cadillac, we're driving down Rodeo Drive." "Women come up, throw their arms around O.J. And just lay it on him." "Notjust women, white women." "Fine white women." "What you got to say?" "It was that kind of world, man." "Hollywood, Hollywood swinging" "Do you feel, like, any kind of pressure in some ways to..." "You know, people expect that you're gonna be a hero so you always have to... well, I found that" " I thought that maybe my problem would be that I would have to tearthat down." "You know, I would have to, uh..." "You know," "I..." "I found that I was becoming a trapped- you know, getting trapped within the image other people have of me." "You know, my image was dictating what I did and who I was." "I even had a manager at one point, I was gonna do something and he said," ""You can't do that." "O.J. Would never do that."" "I said, "Hey, wait." "Wait a minute." "I'm O.J. Simpson, you know?" "(Laughs) And I'm'a do it."" "Yeah, 'cause I would think that someone would like you to be a spokesman." "You know, to get out there." "All the time." "Yeah?" "I've had a lot of pressure on me to go into politics." "I was pulled into it once ortwice in the black movement, when I was in school." "I think they tried to use us, and in many cases, it... it hurt guys." "I felt that with Harry Edwards." "It hurt Tommie Smith, it hurt John Carlos." "Standing on his platform," "I thought they should've been standing on their own platform." "I say if I'm gonna be standing on the platform," "I'm gonna be speaking for O.J. (Laughs)" "When did you first meet Mr. Simpson?" "1970." "Okay, and under what circumstances?" "I met him, uh, on a tennis court." "Would you be able to describe Mr. Simpson's basic personality as you knew it?" "Very personable, very outgoing." "We did business together, and then we would, uh, socialize together." "We were at Bob Kardasian's mansion in Beverly Hills." "O.J. Is playing tennis, and everybody's having a good time." "I'm with black power, get it?" "(Laughs)" "I don't wanna be around these people, all right?" "'Cause they're all phony to me." "I said, "O.J., look around you, man." "These people don't care nothing about us." "Just a few years ago, these guys woulda drove down Fillmore in their Rolls Royce and they wouldn't have even spit on us."" "I said, "Nowthey're acting like we're their long-lost brothers."" "I said, "Man, the only reason we're here is we are jocks, and you're O. J..."" "And he looked at me, he says, "Mm-hm, yeah."" "He says, "I understand what you're saying,"" "and he rubbed his tennis racket." "He says, "But I am O.J.," and ran off on the field laughing." "And I was, like, I mean, I was furious." "Because I say, "He's lost." "He's lost his identity." "He doesn't know who he is any longer."" "I think he'd been brainwashed." "Let me read you something that he said to me." ""That sort of thing hurts me even though it's what I strive for, to be a man first." "Maybe it's money, a class thing." "The negro is always identified with poverty." "But then you think of willy Mays as black, but not Bill Cosby." "So it's more thanjust money." "As black men, we need something up there all the time for us, but what I'm doing is not for principles or black people." "No." "I'm dealing first for O.J. Simpson, his wife and his babies."" "O.J.'s quest was to erase race as a defining factor in his life, and that was the basis upon which white society not only accepted him, but embraced him." "Now, there are problems with that, because what enabled O.J. To be O.J. And not be black was that so many negroes and black people stood up, made the sacrifice, paid the price." "They're the ones that set the table for O.J. And what he was saying was," ""Okay." "We may not have arrived, but I have arrived, and as far as I'm concerned, everybody else can get here the same way that I did, and when they get here, they can do what I do."" "He was so privileged, he was so accepted, he was so embraced that he was immune from the reality that he could find in the mirror every morning that he was a black man." "No matter how far he runs and how long he runs, when you look in the mirror, that black man is gonna be right there with you." "Every day." "We werejust sitting around the house once and, uh, he says," ""Joe, do you think you could go back?"" "And I was like, "Go back where?"" "He said, "You know, go back to the projects, hanging out?"" "I said, "Yeah, man." I said, "I could go back tomorrow."" "Potrero Hill. (Laughs) Hasn't changed a bit." "We didn't have Dr. King and these other bougie folks as role models." "Our role models was pimps and players." "Those are the only people that we looked up to, because they had cool things." "They'd beat a ho down right there on the street in front of everybody so that all the women would know it, this is the kind of treatment you're gonna get if you don't bring me my money." "Your perceptions are shaped by the men that are in your lives." "Mama was Mama." "We knew she loved us, but the reality is" "I didn't wanna be like Mama." "Mama's a woman." "I want to be a man." "He had to deal with his father from time to time." "Sometimes, I guess his father came by to take care of the monthly payment or whatever." "One day, we went overto his dad's house." "We knocked on the door." "He kept looking at me, and when his dad opened the door, he was in a bathrobe, which is not a crime, but then his dad kinda opened the door more, and there was a guy in the back in a bathrobe too," "so it was obvious that his dad was gay." "We left and on the way back, we were quiet." "Because there was so much tension, we got to this certain point, and we both bust out laughing." "Calvin came to me, and he was like," ""Man, did you know O.J.'s dad is a punk?"" "I was like, "Man, shut up." "I don't wanna hear that."" "Back in our day that was the worst thing in the world." "That you could everthink about an African-American man being a homosexual." "Did you evertalk to O.J. About this?" "No." "Never?" "Mm-mm." "I felt like that issue was enough for him to deal with himself." "Think of O.J. As an American man, a poorAmerican man, tough American man, who's recreating himself in ways that people would accept and push." "O.J. Simpson may be playing the last game of his brilliant football career tomorrow when the Buffalo Bills meet the Minnesota Vikings." "All year, O.J. Has hinted he may hang up his cleats for a movie career." "He could not wait to get out of Buffalo." "He was away from the glamour." "He was away from all the Hollywood and all that stuff." "He got attention here, but it was a different kind of attention." "It was not Hollywood attention." "Lou Saban said today that he's detected a change in The Juice." "He hasn't diminished one whit as a competitor, but he's an intelligent man, and he's thinking about the whole of his future life." "There are certain opportunities outside of football that I can't, uh..." "I just can't overlook too... too many more years." "You know, I came into the league, I thought the world was mine." "I had a few bad years, and I realized then that" ""Hey, you know, when you're hot you're hot,"" "so there's opportunities that have come to me with ABC, with the movies that I would like to, uh, take advantage of and, uh, the only thing I wanna do right now is play..." "Get the best possible year I can so if I do retire..." "I..." "I will feel that I gave it my all and I, you know, uh, went out the best." "That's your own meretricious way of saying you want my job." "Well, you gotta explain meretricious to me, Howard." "(Laughs)" "(Chuckles)" "I always felt that there was more underneath O.J. Simpson than just the momentary superficiality of his pleasantness." "He had goals that he wanted to achieve, and he internalized those things." "There was something driving him, and I always felt that he was looking past a football career, which was going to definitely come to an end." "We are T-minus 18 seconds from liftoff." "We are T-minus 15 seconds." "Would you and your men please follow me?" "Gary, what the hell is this?" "This is an emergency." "Please follow me now!" "One of the most intriguing films now being put together in Hollywood is Capricorn One." "James Brolin plays the first astronaut to set foot on Mars, but the picture's scene-stealer will probably be O.J. Simpson." "It basically came from the studio that they wanted O.J. Simpson." "I thought there were worthy African-American actors who had paid their dues as actors, who had shown their talent." "My first choice was either Robert Hooks or Bernie Casey, so my reaction was less than enthusiastic." "I had seen Towering Inferno." "What?" "Damn it, man, you shoulda sent a man up there." "How do you expect her to hear a phone call?" "She's deaf." "I thought he was not gonna frighten Daniel Day-Lewis." "O.J. Was a celebrity of enormous stature, and somebody who had not shown the chops to play the part." "How uptight do you get making a picture like Capricorn One where you're working in the company of actors of... of real stature and- and you'rejust a football star trying to be an actor?" "No, I don't think, uh, it's given me that... that feeling." "It's obviously given me the feeling that," ""Hey, I've still got a lot to learn."" "I think, uh, you never stop learning in anything, and I..." "I realize I'm still just a babe, you know, in the woods." "My goal was to see if I could make this guy work for what I wanted." "Came time to do his last scene." "Water." "Tiny says signs for water." "He's a guy who's parched and delusional." "Dry river bed." "Signs." "And so ratherthan him acting somebody who was desperately thirsty- ...more sign." "I put appliances on his face that made it difficult for him to move and difficult to talk, and itjust made him sound like he was in desperate trouble." "(Sniffs) Elizabeth, there's no water." "(Sobs) There's no water. (Sobs) I don't want to die. (Coughs)" "And, uh, he was pretty good." "Elizabeth." "You know, at the- at the..." "what could I say?" "He was a charming, terrific guy." "He was a positive guy." "He tried very hard, and it was clearthat he saw a future for himself in film." "The Daisy was a private club in Beverly Hills, and the only people that could get in it were either rich, famous or beautiful." "All the celebrities used to go there." "And really beautiful girls." "And you could get in even if you were underage, no problem." "Jack Hanson started the disco, and he knew every Hollywood star." "Jack was a former USC guy." "One day he said, "You chum around a bit with this Simpson guy." "Could you bring him by, you know, and introduce him to me?"" "He was married to Marguerite at that time." "But as we're sitting there, this gorgeous little surfer blonde is waiting tables at lunch hour." "O.J. Goes, "wow, who's that?"" "Jack had Nicole come over and said hello." "And she didn't walk 10 feet away, and he looks right at Hanson and said," ""I'm gonna marry that girl."" "She was 18 years old, she had just graduated from high school." "She was just like my little sister." "She goes, "I met this man, and his name is O.J. Simpson."" "They went out, and I waited up for them." "She got home, it was, like, 2 o'clock in the morning and herjeans were ripped." "And I went, "what...?" "What happened?"" "And she goes, "well, he was a little forceful."" "And I go, "Nicole, why would you let him, first date, be a little bit forceful?"" ""Well, Dave, don't be upset." "I think I really like this guy."" "That was, you know, the start of it." "About two days later, she went back to work." "She said," ""O.J. Came in." "He wants to get an apartment for me and also a car."" "And I went," ""Nicole, think about this." "You know, he's married and has children."" "And she goes, "But I think I really like this guy." It was that fast." "Eighteen years old." "I mean, it was too young." "She was quiet, nice, didn't say too much." "She wasn't like she was distant or anything." "She was just a shy person." "And Nicole was a doer." "Whatever Nicole put her mind to, she could do." "She actually wanted to be a photographer, and she was always an artist." "Honestly, the connection's pretty obvious." "I mean, she's drop-dead gorgeous." "She was hot." "My sister was really a beautiful girl." "We didn't know who he was." "We were girls in the Brown house." "We didn't grow up with football." "We went to the beach." "So when Nicole came home with him, we were like, "who are you?"" "They had a real love affair, these two." "When they were together, it was just..." "it was love." "And that's what makes this thing so sad." "(Crowd cheering)" "I'm ready to retire." "Forthe last couple of years" "I've gotten very busy on the off season." "Mainly, because early in my career..." "I had those rough years in Buffalo." "I sort of told myself then" "I would, uh, put my energies in something that was gonna sustain me and last." "I knew then that I would have trouble adjusting to not being a football player." "So, I said," ""Hey, I better start preparing myself for... for... for, you know... now." "(Laughs)" "I wanna tell you that overthe years" "I've heard your applause, and I appreciated your cheers." "And I want you to know that I already know it's what I'm gonna miss most." "Thank you all, very much." "(Crowd cheering)" "(Birds chirping)" "(Bus approaching)" "Growing up in Brentwood was really a wonderful experience." "It's very quiet." "It's very affluent." "Very safe." "Very white." "Burglaries were very rare." "Violent crime almost nonexistent." "You could leave your door unlocked." "Never have to worry about anything." "I graduated the academy in 1975." "And then transferred to west L.A. 1978-79." "West L.A., the whole division, Bel Air, Brentwood, all... it's loaded with stars." "And I'd sit back and go," ""Man, am I really getting paid for doing this?"" "When I first got there, O.J. Had just moved from around Mulholland overto Rockingham." "O.J. Simpson living in Brentwood was really an anomaly." "He'd be one of maybe three black people in the entire community." "Los Angeles is unlike other places." "If you're a celebrity, you have no color." "People enjoy having you in their neighborhood." "Especially if you're a celebrity like O.J." "Where everyone's husband worshipped him as a sports hero and couldn't wait to shake hands." "Once I found out he was living on Rockingham," "I decided I'd go by there, you know, and let him know..." ""Hey, you know?" "O.J., I'm here."" "This is where I work." "O.J. Was great." "He'd always referred to the LAPD as "the boys." You know?" ""How's crime today?"" ""Hey, Shipp, what's going on in my area, man?"" ""Is you keeping the peace?"" "You know, stuff like that?" "And I'd be like, "Hey, man, everything's good."" "70-80 percent of the people in the city of Los Angeles, were thinking LAPD does a greatjob, we don't have crime here." "They thought out in the Valley or west Los Angeles," ""Hey, man, they're great." They smile." "They wave." "They're always around when you need them." "Well, that wasn't how other parts of the city were being treated." "On January 3rd, 1979, two members of the Los Angeles Police Department shot and killed Eulia Love at her home, in a dispute over $22.09 utility bill." "She died on her front lawn before the eyes of her own children." "There is no single event that had a more profound impact in LAPD history up to that point and time than the shooting of Eulia May Love." "This is where Mrs. Eulia Love stood the day the shooting took place." "There was an officer here, an officer there." "She held a knife in her hand, there was a scuffle, the knife was knocked out of her hand, she reached for it, and as she threw it, the officers opened fire." "This was a big deal." "This is a woman who's had a tough time." "And she was desperate." "So, there was a lot of empathy going out to her from the community." "Once again, we have a member of the black community... dead... under circumstances that are highly questionable at best." "It has been determined that the evidence does not warrant the filing of criminal charges." "This was a justifiable homicide, uh, committed by the officers in their own self-defense." "As far as LAPD was concerned, it was just an event." "And everybody was supposed to accept it." "This was on the lips and minds of everybody in the community." "The people gonna getjustice, and it's gonna be in the street." "It didn't help that you had a police chief, who behaved poorly, and, in many ways, irresponsibly." "And I've commented on the media squeezing out the last, uh... tear of emotion in this situation, where they talk about a $22 gas bill." "It doesn't make any difference, but it was, uh... a $69 gas bill." "Gates was Gates." "He's going to be fully supportive of his officers." "I guess they don't think I have any sympathy for anyone, other than police officers, and that's simply not true." "I have great empathy and sympathy for Eulia Love and her family." "Deeply sorry that it happened, but it did happen." "I... (Clears throat) Was a big fan of Daryl..." "Francis Gates." "Gates introduced the swat model of law enforcement, introduced the D.A.R.E. Program to all of law enforcement." "So he was an innovator." "But he was also a controversial guy." "GATES:" "We have officers out there doing the job." "Attempting to make good judgment based on the information they have, protecting themselves and protecting the people of the city of Los Angeles, that we will go to hell for." "He loved LAPD." "He loved his officers." "And there were times that I believe that his love for his officers... and the law enforcement mission... conflicted." "O.J. Simpson and Elizabeth Montgomery are two police detectives who have a problem." "They're falling in love, and it's breaking all the rules." "But you are a married man, and your conduct is supposed to be exemplary." "Would it make any difference if I was a white cop?" "It's a bittersweet story of two people caught between their emotions and their actions in "A Killing Affair"." "Sunday at 3:00 on channel 9." "Life for a black person... in a way, unfortunately, is different than for white people." "And especially for black people who attain great success." "Is there pressure from your community foryou to really walk the straight and narrow?" "I know that you are currently dating a white woman." "I wouldn't be asking this question if we were living in different times, but we aren't, and there seems to be... this sort of dichotomy here." "How do you answer it?" "Well, I rebel against images because... then, um... you know, people tend to expect things from you." "I" " I think I created an image by being me." "When I get into these arguments with... people of the bla- people of my community, the black community," "I say, "Hey, I..." "I've accepted Jesus Christ"" "and, uh, I try to do unto others as, uh... you know, I would have them do unto me." "And afterthat, hey, my life is mine." "And I..." "I do what is morally right and acceptable to me." "I am not prejudiced in any form." "Obviously, I got a white girlfriend." "(Laughs)" "I admired his celebrity status." "We thought he had accomplished quite a bit." "To move from an athlete... to... a position of celebrity, and loved by all the people, notjust black folk." "(Gospel singing)" "I invited O.J. Here, early on in the '80s." "He didn't come as often as I thought he should." "But he did come to church." "I think he was very in tune with... who his mother wanted him to be." "She wanted him to be honest, to be religious." "Just to rise above a lot of the things that he saw growing up." "His mother was a staunch Christian." "And she had embedded within him the tenets of Jesus Christ." "I would talk to him about having achieved money and fame." "But all that came from God." "And there are times when you should... respond to how good God has been to you." "Now, some days, depending on his mood, he would agree." "But he was not out there... publically... fighting forAfrican-Americans." "I think each person who is in the limelight has an obligation... to make things better for the last, the lost, the least, the left out, and the looked over." "And I thought he should have done more." "If we, as Black people, do not take on the responsibility... to do something for ourselves, we really should be scorned in the eyes of the world." "In my circles, there were not a lot of people who were preoccupying themselves with getting to O.J." "Or believing that O.J. Could be turned around, or someday was gonna come to his senses and embrace all of the things that have the values that we had, in terms of really, really doing something demonstrative for the Black community." "O.J. Was just one of those things that you just kind of dismissed, "Oh, that brother's a lost cause."" "His voice was mute... on any issues that related to Black people and our salvation, police brutality, all of those things." "He was just a non-entity." "(Applause)" "I don't know that he felt that he was sacrificing what other people thought he was." "But you're sacrificing who you are... who you are raised to be." "How does one sustain that over that period of time?" "How does one bend one's soul to that degree of denial?" "(Sirens wailing)" "It's easy to tell while laid out on the ground, while he's bleeding to death." "Is that what makes you happy?" "(Indistinct chatter)" "Did you hear?" "Did you see what was going on?" "Did he see everything happening in South Central?" "Yeah." "Did he want to take that home with him?" "Did he want that to be who he was?" "Who he identified with?" "No." "He stayed in Brentwood." "When you live in South L.A.," "I mean you live here, this is where you breath, this is where you occupy your space," "I'm not sure if, you know, a lot of people even know where Brentwood is." "That's just the reality... of Black America and white America." "Two totally... separate worlds." "(Orchestra playing)" "He's somebody who learned how to live with, be totally accepted by a white world." "(Orchestra continues playing)" "Underneath that, he learned all of the indignities of the Black world." "Although it's impossible to believe that he's that brilliant an actor." "I think he was always kind of on when he was in a white world, and he weren't when he was in a Black world." "Which makes him the right soul for Coalhouse walker." "He very much wanted to be cast in E.L. Doctorow's "Ragtime"." "And he worked hard on trying to get that part." "He saw the part as being something that he could go into a new dimension as an actor." "Let's go to your acting career for a moment." "Why did you want the role of Coalhouse walkerJr?" "Well, first of all, it, um... it was the only part thus far that I've ever actively went after and didn't get." "So, I'd consider it my only failure in film." "(Laughs) Thus far." "(Birds chirping)" "Good afternoon." "I wonder if you might be able to help me." "Uh..." "Uh... what do you want?" "Well, I'm looking for a young woman of color called Sarah." "Uh... who are you?" "Oh, I'm sorry." "My name is Coalhouse walkerJr." "When I read the book, I could identify with this guy... so much..." "He was a Black man in... at a time when you were supposed to know you were Black." "You were supposed to know you had a place." "Would you please wait around the back?" "I was raised in the sports world where you're only, uh, judged by your abilities... and, uh, you know, what you have to give." "(Playing piano)" "Who is Coalhouse?" "Well, he's a guy who created himself." "And destroyed himself..." "ultimately." "(Angry chatter)" "He was a guy among other things who was very prideful and suffered." "Suffered for his pride." "Mr. Walker, let me give you some advice." "You spend the money on your wedding." "Build yourself a home and a family where you can find some comfort." "And just forget that some damn white man caused you offence." "I can understand exactly what he felt." "When he walked in a room, he gave no credence to the fact he was Black and he wasn't supposed to say things or be treated any differently." "And, uh..." "Uh... that's the way I've tried to look at my life." "So, I felt I was the right person forthat role." "I felt that I was today's Coalhouse walker." ""Just forget it"?" "Is that it?" "I've spent my whole life forgetting." "You're a young man." "You better start learning now." "Learning what?" "How to be a nigger?" "You know, there was some tragedy in your life... in the last 10 years." "You lost a child." "I wanna talk about how it changed you." "The baby drowned in a swimming pool." "On Rockingham, there." "He was away." "You know, he was always gone." "Four, set!" "I don't know how much it changed me." "I've always tried to live my life to the fullest." "And, uh..." "I used to be so busy." "And I was on the road so much, that in a sense it partially cost me a marriage." "When I lost my daughter..." "I was gone." "When my first daughter was born, I was gone." "(Crowd cheering)" "When you lose a child, it's very hard." "Three weeks before Aaren drowned, my son drowned... in a pool, that Boys Club in San Leandro, California." "So, the tragedy affected us both." "It still affects me." "So, I know- how it affects him." "He didn't bring it up, and we didn't talk much about it." "Hey, O. J!" "I think it's the single most horrible thing in the world." "(Crowd cheering)" "I think what you learn in the streets, is howto bury things." "And he blamed Marguerite." "He got rid of that memory when he got rid of that wife." "Hejust compartmentalized it." "And got 'em out." "If anything, I made up my mind that I would be around." "And, uh... it's nice to be loved by everybody." "But there's some people that love you a little more." "So, I guess if anything," "I..." "I just want to be a little more loving and be there a little more to the people that have, uh, have chosen to share their lives with me." "And now by the... authority committed unto me as a minister in the church of Jesus Christ and according to the laws in the State of California, it gives me great delight, O.J. And Nicole, to pronounce you husband and wife." "(Applause)" "("Uptight (Everything's Alright)" Plays)" "We love "Juice" like my brother." "I'm thrilled he's my partner, and we're just... totally knocked out that he finally took the step... ("Jump (For My Love)" plays)" "They had a great wedding." "Of course, they had amazing music." "And it was all, you know, Christal champagne, all you could drink." "Where are the drugs?" "No, I'm just kidding." "It was a great party." "And they made a really strong, gorgeous couple." "I just felt that they were the ideal couple." "Because it seems like to me, from what I saw, it seemed like they just had so much fun all the time." "I'm married!" "I don't believe it!" "(Laughing)" "I'm married!" "I really don't believe it." "(Laughing)" "Nicole was funny, and she was fun to be around." "She was a very good friend." "When Nicole came into my life at... what for any athlete is very difficult time, it was at the end of my career," "I was also going through a divorce at the time and, uh..." "All my life, I wanted to be a father." "I never really thought about being a husband." "And I thought I had given up... the opportunity to watch my kids grow until you came into my life and made this house a home, brought my kids in." "You brought love into my house." "(Cheering)" "He was really proud of her." "And she had definitely taken over." "I mean, she was running the show at Rockingham." "Rockingham, it was his Graceland." "It was all of their Graceland." "We never said, "I'll meet you at O.J.'s house."" "It was always, "I'll see you at Rockingham."" "It was what brought all of us together." "It was a special place." "I mean, you never knew who was gonna be there." "He gravitated toward celebrities." "In any field." "And that's the glue that bonded him to Los Angeles, and also made Rockingham that castle." "You'd have the greatest athletes in the world show up." "The most interesting politicians, you know?" "The entertainment world." "And everybody always had a wonderful time because it was "The Juice"." "I've always had a large what I call "family"..." "A large circle of friends, and you need 'em more, I guess, in your life." "At my house, I mean, I have to be successful to pay for the soft drinks and the beer that the guys drink at the house on the weekends." "He flew a flag at Rockingham every day." "He loved America." "He loved the red, white, and blue." "He loved that feeling that you get, you know, on the Fourth of July, and seejets fly over." "During the Olympics, when he carried the torch." "That was a big thing to him." "That was one of the things we talked about for years after." "How perfect the world was then." "I want to say to, uh... the Hall of Fame members here," "I mean, as a kid, I watched these guys and, well, I must have done something good or something right to be here, and I just want you to know that I'll never let you guys down, man." "I'll live up to the honor of being in this Hall and being on your team." "(Applause)" "Thank you very much." "(Applause)" "The most unique aspect of O.J. Simpson is that you're one of the few people who've not only been successful in athletics, but that success has really carried over to life afterfootball." "(Crowd cheering)" "Well, it's real exciting for me to be back here." "You know, on the field where I had so many thrills, and to experience these Buffalo Bills fans, and, believe me, Howard, they're in rare form tonight." "Well, he certainly tried to be a commentator." "Peyton following Matt Suhey." "It's a testament to walk..." "walter's conditioning." "This guy works out harder than anybody in..." "He very much was involved in corporate America and being on boards." "I think he was trying, very intelligently, to parley his fame into wealth." "By the '80s, O.J. Really was a businessman." "His newfriends were all super wealthy, powerful white men." "And I think really the reason he surrounded himself with all these big, successful entrepreneurs is because he saw himself as one, too." "I've always been, sort of, an inquisitive person." "And I have friends who do a lot of different things." "And I've made it a point to find out what the people around me were doing." "He called me a lot." ""Now, Frank, I have this opportunity for HoneyBaked Hams."" "Or "Frank, this friend of mine is doing some storage things in California."" "I didn't always know those answers." "But I guess I enjoyed the fact that he trusted me enough to do that." "I introduced him to the business world." "I took him places... where I think very few Black men had ever been." "The Pine Valley Golf Club." "The number one club in America." "I got him into Arcola." "He was the first black member of the club." "Oh, yeah, by a long shot." "This one time, he brought Sidney Poitier." "And, of course, the whole club was circling around the two of them." "Even the bigots thought that was terrific." "They loved him." "Because hejust fit in." "He could schmooze around and get ingratiated, 'cause he was "The Juice"." "Street-smart, this man was an Einstein." "He could cunningly and calculatingly figure out exactly what these white people were thinking about, but he was also that way with Black people." "It was almost magnetic, they were just drawn to it." "And I don't care who was there, when he got to the room, it was, "The Juice is here."" "Here's the man whose smile is more dazzling than all his golden awards." "Sportsman, actor, all around wonderful" "Mr. O.J. Simpson!" "(Applause)" "I always told him he had delusions of grandeur." "He thought he could do certain things in business that he wasn't capable of." "AUDIENCE:" "Three!" "One day he was gonna run Paramount or 20th Century, warner Brothers..." "Now, I mean, he believed things like that." "Ladies and gentlemen, another winning performance from Mr. O.J. Simpson!" "There's something deep-seated... that I think a lot of people like myself have to face up to about what created this complex character." "It wasn'tjust him, it was part society." "(The Naked Gun theme plays) (Siren wailing)" "We were looking for a celebrity... and I..." "I don't think we wanted an all-white cast anymore, as we did forthe Police Squad TV show." "This was something that, you know, kinda looked better... for us." "He was still in the public eye, but yet he was economical, because I don't think he was in demand for movies." "Police!" "Throw down your guns!" "O.J. Was fine for Naked Gun." "There was nobody better." "(Gunfire)" "(Groans)" " (Sizzles)" " Ahh!" "Oh, no!" "Naked Gun surprised me... (Screams)" "Howfunny he was." "He's a funny man." "I mean, he was always a very funny man." "And he was always a selflessly funny man." " Nordberg!" " Hiya, buddy!" "Hey!" "The doc says I should be on my feet and as good as new in a week!" " And back on the force." " Nordberg, that's wonderful!" "Whoa!" "Oh, Frank!" "Everyone should have a friend like you!" "(Nordberg screams)" "("I'm Into Something Good" plays)" "I used to take a lot of cops overto O.J.'s house, and I would never tell them who we were going to meet." "And I just loved looking at the expression on my partner's face when they looked and saw O.J. Opening the door, and it was just like looking at..." "You know, 'cause some of these guys, you know, macho cops." ""Hey," you know, "I'm LAPD"." "And you could see them melt like little kids around this guy." "Everybody loved O.J. Simpson, all the cops." "If you asked him for an autograph, you asked him for whatever," "I mean, he was just really, like, your best friend." "Now, let's take a look at today's black culture in the city of Los Angeles." "The most important point that should be considered in a law-enforcement setting involving blacks is the matter of respect." "Everyone should be treated in a respectful manner." "Okay, 4-23, you see that, uh, male black." "He's walking on the north side of the street there on your right side." "Slow down." "That's one of the suspects there." "(Police radio chatter)" "People who have been abused by the police have no regard forthem." "They don't believe that the police comes to protect them, comes to serve them." "That would be an unfortunate error in judgment for you to conclude that all persons of a particular group are similarto the few you have contact while you are working." "We're sorry if, you know, it's ourjob too." "That... that we've had to do this." "We just can't let you go." "Look how I look." "I'm light, bright, but damn sure not white." "Okay?" "But the reality is, when I'm stopped by the police, you know, they treat me like a nigger." "Okay, let's roll, and let's be careful out there." "In 1978, Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates apologized after saying some Hispanic officers don't advance in the ranks because they are, quote, "lazy", and now an NAACP official is calling a comment by Chief Gates," "quote, "so horrendous that it's laughable."" "It all started when he first defended controversial choke holds." "A number of African-American suspects had died after being subjected to a choke hold, and Gates was asked about it, and he said the problem was that they didn't respond the same as normal people." "The chief needs some time off to remove his foot from his mouth and LAPD's choke hold from the necks of black people." "When I started covering the police department, you could feel the residue of that comment." "In fact, police officers used to refer to the cars, which normally people would call black-and-whites, they called them "black-and-normals"." "And they would call them that in front of a reporter, by the way." "So it's safe to say that it was a sort of easy, call it racial insensitivity, call it racism, within the department." "I moved to LA in 1988." "I had a really good friend who lived there, and she said," ""I have to give you the black man's guide to survival in LA." "Whatever you do, don't fuck with LAPD."" "(Police dispatch chatter)" "(Police dispatch chatter)" "In Los Angeles it was a day filled with tension in many communities, because of the current wave of gang warfare." "I feel like a prisoner on the streets." "This city has vowed to stop gang violence, but as police hunt the people responsible, they must follow a trail of bodies." "We're gonna do whatever's necessary, and I told my people we're gonna wage a war." "Operation Hammer, that was the belief that we overwhelm the community with warrants where we believe that we had violent criminals, we could rid the problem." "Ladies, down on the ground!" "Put your hands down, kneel overthere!" "Over the past week or so, Chief Gates, how many arrests have you made?" "Well, in the last month we've made, uh, about 3,000 arrests." "Uh, just in the last weekend we made, uh, 1,400." "Youjust have a culture of officers who felt that, uh, the only way the world will survive is if we neutralize these individuals as soon as possible." "Hands down, man." "And in the process of doing that, they debased and demeaned the community." "You understand me?" "There was no conversation with the community about" ""How should we deal with this?"" "It was just hammer, hammer, hammer." "We have a war." "We are going to be successful." "Whatever it takes, we will do it." "I'd just put the kids into bed, and the next thing I know, they just came in with guns and they were saying, "Get down", and they grabbed me by the back of my head," "and he threw me on the floor, then they kicked me, and they hit me on my back, and they said, "Get down, bitch."" "And then the kids were just hollering' and screamin'." "And the next thing I know they were just tearing the place up." "1988, 39th and Dalton." "Not the best police practices." "Not the best way to manage a, uh... a warrant service." "Everything was destroyed as police batted and rammed their way from room to room searching for drugs." "Much of what they found were screaming mothers and children." "This is my bedroom over here, but they even broke all the mirrors and stuff out of the bed." "They went in and literally destroyed the apartment where supposedly a lot of drug activity was going on." "All this resulted in three quarters of an ounce of rock cocaine seized along with six ounces of pot." "You wouldn't go to Beverly Hills and do that, even if you thought there was a..." "a mafia hangout." "Even if you thought it was legitimate." "I called my insurance, and I told them what happened." "He said he had never heard of the police doing this." "When you don't live in the community, you don't think of 'em as human." "In my wildest dreams, would have neverthought the police of the city of Los Angeles would treat someone that way." "They started kicking me." "What they tell ya?" "They didn't tell me nothin', they started kicking me and hitting me on my ribs and stuff." "Chief Gates, we're proud of you, we're proud to wearthe 'PD blue." "(Applause)" "You'd go to the power of LAPD back then." "They pretty much could do what they wanted to do." "Yeah." "Hi, I'm O.J. Simpson, and this season on HBO," "I'm gonna be high-stepping right into your living room." "All right, we'll do it again." "When O.J. Was at SC, in my generation you didn't have thejerseys you could go buy, so I would take my T-shirts and write "Simpson", and I'd put, you know, like, you know, his number, 32, and, "Okay, I'm O.J."" "Hi, I'm O.J. Simpson, and this season on HBO," "I'm gonna be high-stepping right into your living room." "I just thought, "One day, I wanna meet this guy."" "Okay, what's the next one?" "And it was through Marcus Allen." "Follow me through Training Camp, and I guarantee that I'll" "Hey, Juice, I did hear my name." "Hey, man, this is my spot, Marcus." "Well, I've got the ball now." "I'd been marketing Marcus for a few years." "And I told him, uh," ""O.J. Ever needs a manager, let me know."" "Training Camp is a time to show what you can do." "It's a time to show off your skills." "You can prove yourself as a man." "Blah, blah, blah." "I did public appearances, endorsements," " TV commercials..." " (Clears throat) ...autograph signings, basically everything encompassing his image." "This week in Training Camp..." "This week in Training Camp..." "This week in Training Camp..." "No." "The big thing that has always been in everybody's head is image." "Image is everything." "Never do anything that is going to harm his image." "Thank you guys." "I remember he had a... a little hundred-yard dash with Marcus Allen one day." "And he had bad knees, O.J., from all the running." "And he beat fuckin' Marcus." "I couldn't believe it." "It's something inside of him." "He wanted to win, no matter what it took." "Chopping through that swing." "And look out." "(Applause)" "When he first started playing golf, he violated every rule." "Okay." "He's gotta work on his balance a little bit." "I played with O.J. And this otherfriend," "Little Joe Kolkowitz." "O.J. Had the worst form of anybody on this planet when he swung a golf club." "One day, on the first tee, he hits this big drive, and it hooks into the trees, heavy stuff." "So we go down the fairway, we're waiting and waiting 'til Joe goes after him." "All of a sudden, he finds his ball after a place where we probably went over." "He sees the ball sitting on a tee, and he says to O.J.," ""You can't do this shit, man."" "I go, "Juice, come on."" ""Do you know what the odds of the ball landing on a tee in this area...?"" "He totally was not going to confess to the whole thing." "He definitely cheated." "Yes." "Yes." "What he'd do, he had a ball in his pants, and he'd drop it out and then," ""Hey, you guys, come on over here."" "You know, "Here's my ball."" "And he did that to the point where finally a bunch of guys got together, and they hired a caddy." "We called it The Juice Patrol." "And so he'd follow O.J. Around in another cart," "(Laughs) So he wouldn't cheat." "It was funny." "It was, you know, it was like you couldn't get mad." "It was very hard to get mad at him." "One of the things you pride yourself in in being a golfer is you don't cheat," "but people made a joke out of it, because they so badly wanted him to understand the rules and regulations of this part of society that didn't tolerate that type of behavior." "And yet he had that amazing charm that you'd somehow let him get away with certain things." " (Applause)" " Juice!" "Juice!" "Juice!" "Juice!" "Touchdown!" "Wheneveryou went somewhere with him, like, doors would just open, and, you know, people would pick up checks." "I'd say to him, "Hey, Juice, how are we going to get in..." "somewhere?" "We don't have any tickets."" "He would go like this..." "He" " That's his ticket." "I think he became entitled." "I certainly felt bedazzled by O.J. And Nicole and their lifestyle, and I was very charmed by him," "but I always did sense that part of it was not sincere." "The other side is my better side, I think." "Turn the other side for me." "And I did feel that he took advantage of that." "And if you allowed him to, I think he would, uh, use you." "All right, we're set here." "My kissable lips, ooh." "While he was married, his integrity was..." "I mean, uh... not as I would have it." "I will put it that way." "He was an incorrigible womanizer." "He just never stopped." "He cornered me a couple times and tried to make, uh, sexual, you know, advance and, you know, I kind of pushed him off." "I think O.J. Felt entitled to anything O.J. Wanted, and I think that he really needed that adulation from other women." "She knew he had affairs, and it drove her crazy." "Most of their big fights were about his affairs with other women." "He went out of his way to almost rub it in her face." "He'd be in Las Vegas at a show and be holding hands with another woman." "She would be watching TV, and, I mean," "I don't know how she put up with it." "He was pretty darn brazen." "I think he even blamed his affair with Tawny Kitaen on the fact that Nicole got fat when she got pregnant." "And he didn't wanna have sex with her." "Something as superficial and cold as that." "ª... on the hammock, take a little swing. ª" "Look!" "See the trees?" "I told him, "Man, you're breaking the laws of God, and nobody does it with immunity." "You're gonna pay for it, man." "One day everybody's gonna know everything that you've done, man."" "(Police siren)" "When you hear a call come out, and the 911 operator puts out on the call that she can hear the woman being beaten in the background," "that... that's serious." "When I got there," "I saw an electronic buzzer system, so I pushed the button." "Almost simultaneously, a tall, female blonde came running out of the bushes." "She's wearing nothin' but a bra and sweatpants, covered in mud." "And she kept yelling," ""He's gonna kill me!" "He's gonna kill me!"" "When that gate opened, she ran up and just put her arms around me and clasped on me." "She was so wet and cold that you could feel her shivering to her bone." "And I said, "well, who's gonna kill you?"" "She said, "O.J."" "She says, "You guys have been up here eight times before." "All you do is talk to him, you never do anything." "He's gonna kill me."" "Her face had already swollen." "She actually had an imprint on one side of herface and her forehead." "So I said, "Do you want him arrested for beating you?"" "She said, "Yes."" "About that time, O.J. Simpson came right up to the fence, and he started yelling," ""I don't want her in my bed anymore." "I got two other women." "I don't want her in my bed anymore."" "He's got a receding hairline, so you can see his forehead, and this vein was popping out, pulsating, and it was right up his forehead." "I told him, "I'm placing you under arrest for beating your wife." "You're gonna have to go get dressed so I can take you tojail."" "He turned around and went back in the house to get dressed." "Suddenly I saw a Bentley pull out of the other driveway." "(Cartires screech)" "So I said, "Back up." "He's trying to get away in a car."" "And we backed out of the driveway, and I never caught him with that car." "I never found him." "(Marching band music)" "Downtown Los Angeles, little ocean haze." "There is no smog today, everybody's takin'it easy." "Here at the 75th Rose Bowl game, score 7-3." "1989, Trojans were in the Rose Bowl." "I was privileged enough to..." "to have sideline passes and that was actually the first time I'd ever been to a Rose Bowl game on the sidelines, 'cause when I was a walk-on at USC," "I never got to play." "(Crowd cheering)" "I was just having the time of my life." "All of a sudden, one of O.J.'s really, really good friends came up and tapped me on the shoulder." "He said, "Hey, man, uh, O.J. Had a problem last night, you know, and, uh, he really needs to talk to you."" "(Crowd cheers)" "(Referee whistle blows)" "It's over." "(Crowd cheers)" "When I called, he said, "Hey, man, I had a little riff." "Boys had to come out." "Right now I feel like I'm a fugitive."" "And he explained to me that they had an argument, and she got real physical with him, and he had to defend himself and grab her and hold her..." "The way he- he told me the story, I'm thinkin'," ""Hey, man, no big deal." "You know?" "Um, you didn't hit her." "You know, you said she was aggressive, and you were trying to stop herfrom... from beating you up." "Um, no big deal."" "And..." "And when I got to work the next morning, it was a big deal." "I got a call from downstairs, "Someone wants to talk to you,"" "and there's Nicole in the lobby." ""Hey, Nicole, what's up?"" "You know, she... she goes, "Did you hear about what happened?"" "I said, "Yeah, I did hear what happened."" "And she told me it wasn't the first time." "Showed me the pictures from the past beatings, and I looked at those pictures and my heartjust... just, like, dropped." "I was like, "Man, this guy is a typical batterer."" "The '89 thing, the way I saw him act in Hawaii that Christmas convinced me that, um, boy, there was something really, really wrong." "He freaked out about Nicole sitting their little son next to a homosexual in a restaurant they were at." "I mean, hejust freaked." "And they fought all the way back." "The next day I got a call that, uh, he freaked out on New Year's Eve, and he beat the hell out of her." "Nicole knew that I used to teach domestic violence for the Los Angeles Police Department." "And she asked me," ""O.J.'s dad is gay." "Do you think this is why he beats me?"" "And I was like, "l..." "I, you know, I don't know, but a lot of that stuff has to do with their self-esteem."" "O.J. Simpson that night definitely got preferential treatment." "Had that have been anybody else, you or me, we'd have gone tojail." "I did place him under arrest." "I tried my best, but couldn't get to him." "But when you tell someone they're under arrest, they are under arrest." "If he flees, then, he's a fleeing felon." "But the unique thing about O.J. Is it was O.J." "Where can he go?" "Where can he hide?" "Where can he run to... on the face of this earth?" "Where can he go?" "(Police dispatch chatter)" "(Police sirens)" "(Helicopter blades)" "Nowthe story that might never have surfaced if someone hadn't picked up his home video camera." "I can rememberthat moment like it was yesterday." "I was laying in my bed, and I called out to my wife." "I said, "You gotta come see, you can't believe this."" "How will the police justify this one?" "How will they get out of this one?" "Police say the man, 25-year-old Rodney King, was involved in a high-speed chase, wanted as a parole violator." "The police department says there will be no comment until its investigation is complete." "As yet, no charges have been filed." "This is what happens when you take away a tool that would have ended this in 10 seconds." "Choke hold." "Look how this thing looks." "You can't justify that." "I was the captain at watts at the time." "Atten-hut." "The next day, we had a training day." "I remember standing in front of all of the troops, and I told them," ""The LAPD will never be the same again."" "Oh, it was devastating, because there's gonna be a belief that if these guys do it, everybody else does it." "Those guys driving down the street in the black-and-white do that." "And that's just not the case." "But that visual image, folks rememberthat, and they will take it to their grave." "That home video showing a black motorist being beaten by a white Los Angeles policeman has triggered investigations now by the FBI, the district attorney there, and the police department itself." "The media didn't give LAPD a break on this one." "They showed that tape over and over and over." "I mean, it wasn'tjust in Los Angeles." "It was all overthe world." "(French-language newscast)" "I was embarrassed for Los Angeles." "The real significance wasn't what you saw on the tape." "That tape became exhibit one for every mishandled abuse and excessive force incident that anyone had ever experienced." "This is an aberration." "This is something that should never have happened." "We had in place all of the procedures that would keep it from happening." "Those procedures fell down because of human error." "And we will deal with that human error." "I believe things like that do happen from time to time, but they are anomalies." "That's not what happens all day, every day in the thousands of contacts that occur." "I don't believe it." "I'll never believe it." "Daryl Gates started out saying it was an aberration." "And we say, "Darryl, don't you remember Eulia Love?"" "(Cheering)" "I think the thing that's most shocking about the King incident isn't even what happens to King." "It's the fact that all those officers go back to their police divisions that night, none of them knowing that a video tape exists." "They all file their reports and not one of 'em says, in any document, that they saw anything go wrong." "That suggests to me a culture in which this wasn't perceived as something wrong." "In Los Angeles today, four men were arrested, photographed, and fingerprinted." "They were policemen, charged with assault with a deadly weapon in the beating of a black motorist." "Named in the indictment:" "Officers Laurence Powell, Ted Briseno and Timothy wind and their supervising sergeant, Stacey Koon." "The FBI will investigate whetherthe federal civil rights of the victim, Rodney King, have been violated." "Astory is not a story unless there's conflict." "Do you really wanna say this is a felon speeding on the freeway underthe influence of a hallucinogenic andlor alcohol, or do you wanna say he's a "motorist", and he was stopped by these racist cops?" "How do you knowthese cops are racist?" "They are not racist." "The furor is only growing with the revelations of police communications over their in-car computer terminals." "An earlier message from the Powell-Wind unit referred to a previous call as "'right out of Gorillas in the Mist."" "Has there been times that we've been brutal, uh, used excessive force?" "Absolutely." "The racist part is really tough to choke down for me." "During my 38 years there, I didn't see it." "Civil rights organizations say the Los Angeles police department has a history of brutality and misconduct that goes back a quarter of a century, including one incident that sparked the watts riots." "We want effective law-enforcement in the city of Los Angeles." "You take an oath to protect and serve, but when you come to the black community, all you do is abuse!" "Hey, hey!" "Ho, ho!" "You can only take so many shots publicly before your reputation is so soiled that it can be manipulated over and over again." "That will always be included in the argument to demonstrate how brutal and insensitive and racist the LAPD is." "It's like you can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again." "We're outraged, we're disgusted, and let's close this one with," "No more!" "No more!" "No more!" "No more!" "No more!" "No more!" "It comes to Latasha Harlins, coming to the counter with what she was going to buy in one hand, money in the other." "Altercation," "walks away, is shot in the back of the head." "Latasha Harlins really hit home, because my daughter was the same age as Latasha Harlins." "Rodney King didn't touch me as much as Latasha Harlins, because this girl was killed." "She was a little teenage girl buying some orangejuice." "Mm-mm." "That- that could've been my child." "Up until Saturday morning," "Soon Ja Du was a Korean grocer in Los Angeles." "Now she's an alleged criminal, facing a first-degree murder charge." "Well, at this time, she's looking at a maximum of 30 years to life." "According to witnesses and a security camera video tape," "Harlins never tried to steal thejuice." "Instead, investigators say Du angrily confronted the girl and then shot her with a .38 caliber handgun." "I hope and I knowthat justice will serve itself, and she will get what she deserved." "Soon Ja Du had no respect forthat young woman." "The way they beat Rodney King, okay?" "Her shooting Latasha Harlins..." "It's the same people, okay, that are being victimized." "The recommendation of the people was maximum state prison." "I think that the death of Latasha deserved that." "The court decided otherwise." "Mrs. Du is placed on formal probation for five years on the following terms and conditions." "Mrs. Du is to perform 400 hours of community service." "Get the cameras off!" "No cameras!" "Get the camera out of my face!" "The judge called for peace." "She said..." "How can you have peace when...?" "When this is going on?" "What?" "This woman killed a child." "She killed a child and not getting any jail time?" "I..." "I..." "I haven't gotten overthat, really." "Wake up, Los Angeles!" "Wake up!" "Let not her blood be in vain!" "Latasha was killed, ourfamily was killed." " Yeah!" " That's right!" "Racism is not the Korean killing her, racism is the courts system..." " That's right!" "...that allows her to kill her." "Karlin must go!" "Karlin must go!" "Chanting "Karlin must go", angry protestors stormed through security checkpoints at the courthouse in Compton." "(Overlapping angry yelling)" "They are still outraged over Judge Joyce Karlin's decision not to send Latasha Harlins' killer to jail." "They are willing to go tojail to get their point across." "In the community, you go tojail for selling crack for 20 years, 20 and 30 years." "How you gonna kill somebody and get probation?" "What kind of sense does that make?" "What kind ofjustice is that?" "39th and Dalton," "then Rodney King, then Latasha Harlins." "Three defining issues in different ways, but the tension in the environment and the disrespect shown to Black life was the theme." "ESPN presents..." "Sports Look with the personalities and cover stories making news in the world of sport." "Now, here's your host, Roy Firestone." "When you live your life so publicly and, uh, really almost with such ease, uh, it's hard to believe that there could ever be any rocky time." "The reason I'm bringing that to light now is not to dredge it up again, but more or less talk about how things can get distorted to such a point that you are portrayed as the bad guy." "Um, New Year's Eve, you had a little bit too much to drink." " There was some" " Uh, you know, that's..." "You know, actually, you know, my wife and I have been togetherfor 12 years and it really..." "when I look at it, it wasn't really that big of a fight, it's just that because of, uh, it being New Year's Eve..." "Right." " Because it's three o'clock in the mornin', just finished a big party, uh, it got a little verb..." "it... it got a little loud." "(Laughs)" "Here's... here's my point, the point I'm making, Juice..." "Yeah." " Is that it got to such a point that you were portrayed in the press for a while there like a wife beater." "Yeah, well, and that bothered me." "Obviously, it bothered my whole family." "I mean, uh, you know, the day after this was over, you know, we looked at, say- you know, we had a fight, we were both guilty." "No one was hurt, was no big deal, and we got on with our life." "I had always suspected that they had violent fights." "The day of my wedding I found out that Nicole and O.J." "Were not going to be attending... and he said it was because" "Nicole was having very bad cramps from her period." "I thought it was a lie." "It was always Nicole's fault." "I mean, even the '89 thing." "When I cornered him sitting on a golf cart," "I listened for nine holes, everything that she did wrong to create what had happened." ""You think that she's bruised up, you should have seen my face,"" "you know, the... the whole pity thing that he always went through." "I think anybody that knew them..." "it was over." "Then it was a matter of when would Nicole have the fortitude to just completely walk away." "She said, "Ron, if it wasn't for the kids, I'd be out of here."" "And then I get a call from O.J." "He says, "You gotta help me here." "You... you gotta help save this marriage." "You gotta talk to Nicole, tell her I'll never do it again."" "I saw her start to soften, because by this time," "O.J. Is just doing everything with the kids." "And they're just having a great time, he's taking them here, he's taking them there." "She's looking at me goin'," ""Hey, Ron, he's really changing." "He's really changing."" "When it turned toward the domestic violence, that was one that nobody wanted to hear." "The police didn't wanna hear it, most certainly Hertz didn't wanna hear it," "NBC didn't wanna hear it." "Nobody wanted to deal with that." "Back to you, Bob." "(Laughing)" "When we heard that, I thought that was it." "That's... it's over." "You know who called me to tell me that it was a false arrest?" "Nicole." "Nicole called me and said," ""Frank, it didn't happen that way."" "They'd had a terrible argument, but he wasn't abusive." "They just overreacted." "I certainly understand how she got involved with him, and I could understand how hard it would be to leave that." "There was a lot to leave." "Especially if it was to go back to your parents' house in Laguna Beach and start over." "O.J. Was the income producer for the family." "For not only just Nicole and O.J." "But for Nicole's father, and mother, sisters..." "He was the... the money man." "Nicole told me that she felt her family would side with O.J." "And that... and that disturbed her a great deal." "Nicole was like the trophy to him." "You know, something that..." "that he possessed, that he wanted control of, you know?" "And "You better do what I say," but, you know," ""You better go along with this program."" "I..." "I totally believe he was concerned about his image." "What kind of public reaction did you get, and what kind of corporate reaction did you get, Juice?" "Surprisingly, so supportive it was unbelievable, you know?" "So supportive, you know?" "Uh, most of the people that I work with know us real well, so they can see first-hand that there was, uh, you know, that, hey, our relationship was as strong as... not only as it's ever been, but as strong as anybody's I know." "So nobody dropped you from any contracts?" " No." "No." "No." " See, the one thing that... anotherthing people don't realize about O.J." "Is he is extremely, uh, well-involved in the business community." "And he doesn't wanna do this, 'cause it's embarrassing to him, but he is one of the owners of HoneyBaked Hams, uh, Ramada Inns, a couple of Ramada Inns, three Ramada Inns," "very involved, of course, with Hertz." "And when something like this happens, it takes a toll, it takes a bite out of it, but, you know, it boun... you bounce back from something like this." "Once they really, really got back together, you know, I mean, we were still friends, you know," "I still know the guy and everything, but, you know, he kinda had that, uh, attitude," ""I'm back." "I knew I'd be back."" "You know, "Hey..." "Don't worry about it."" "You know, "Everything's fine."" "This is where O.J. Simpson performed community service as part of his sentence for beating his wife, Nicole." "For part of his punishment, Simpson went golfing." "He spent his 120 hours of community service organizing a celebrity tournament." "Prosecutors in the case say they wanted him to go to jail." "Can you imagine if every time he did something violent like that that a report would've been made?" "When I got to the station, I checked the computer, there would have been eight previous domestic incident reports on file." "Then I would have put that in my report and sent it on to the prosecutor, that most likely that would have been filed as a felony." "Because it would have shown that a slap on the hand is not going to cure this from happening again." "And that's why I hung onto the report." "I don't have a garage full of reports," "I have one report, one, that was O.J. Simpson's report because I thought that the case might be mishandled, and I needed proof that it actually happened," "and I thought he was gonna kill her." "Acontroversial case involving four Los Angeles police officers goes to court today." "The officers face charges stemming from the videotaped beating of a motorist." "The case has already raised accusations of officially-sanctioned racism and brutality." "At issue is the use of force." "The question is whether theirforce was justified by King's behavior before the camera rolled." "I don't think that that should have been prosecuted." "Those officers had about two seconds to make up their mind to do something, and they did what they thought was right at the time." "When is too much?" "When is not enough?" "Should they go to trial?" "Definitely not." "On film, what you see was illegal." "There had to be a prosecution, and if there isn't a legitimate reason for this, there's jail time involved with this one." "I was fairly new to LA, so I'm thinkin'," ""Hey, we got 'em- we got 'em cold." "This time we'll getjustice."" "And there were people who had lived in those communities a long time, and they were saying," ""well, you know, maybe." "I hope so." "But it's not a done deal."" "In a brand-new courthouse in a distant LAsuburb called Simi Valley, the city's drama is putting a little town on the map." "The defense had the trial moved from Los Angeles county to this bedroom suburb." "This area is notably more white and conservative than LA" "It was a horrible decision." "It was the worst possible decision." "And a lot of LAPD officers live in Simi Valley." "The idea is that you get a representative cross-section of the community, that's what the sixth amendment talks about, and that people come in with different life experiences, because you really do need the people to come from different walks of life" "so that you get a complete understanding of the testimony." "Completely in fearfor my life, scared to death that if this guy got back up, he was gonna take my gun away from me." "Cases involving charges against police officers are rarely slam dunks." "Even when they're on videotape." "Do you believe that the actions of your officers up to this point were having any effect on Mr. King?" "None at all." "This was a managed and controlled use of force." "It followed the policies and procedures of Los Angeles Police Department and the training." "Now, as the defense presents its case, civil rights lawyers like Johnnie Cochran worry that convictions are far from certain, because the prosecutors seem to lack experience dealing with cops." "Somebody with some experience has to stand up and say," ""Look, you can't get away with this." "This isn't right, and we're not gonna let it happen."" "The prosecution's strategy seems to be to let the violence of the videotape speak for itself." "But nobody is certain anymore what that tape is saying to thejury." "I had been telling my people at Time Magazine," ""There's something going on." "We need to pay attention." "There's a story here beyond this trial."" "I just sensed there was this unrest." "The day started like any other day, but it really wasn't." "We were waiting forthe verdict to be handed down in the trial of the four white police officers that were charged with beating Rodney King." "Sergeant Koon, how are you feeling?" "No comment." "I got up that morning and I said," ""I gotta go out there and see what's going on."" "So I got on the freeway and started looking for Simi Valley." "It's a all-white town." "I only saw white people out there that day, and they wasn't that kind to me when I was asking for direction." "I wanted to be there to witness it, and I guess I thought that my being there was gonna change something." "Title of accordant cause:" "We the jury, in the above-entitled action, find the defendant," "Laurence M. Powell not guilty of... (Gasps, shocked reactions)" "(Bleeped cursing)" "Man, you got to be kiddin'." "We thejury, in the above-entitled action, find the defendant Theodore J. Briseno not guilty of the crime of assault by force likely to produce great bodily injury with a deadly weapon." "This 29th day of April, 1992, signed by the court." "Title of accordant cause:" "We the jury, in the above-entitled action, find the defendant, Timothy E. Wind, not guilty of the crime of assault by force likely to produce great bodily injury with a deadly weapon." "I was sitting in the bureau the day of the verdict, with all of my white colleagues and friends." "We the jury" "And every time they said, "Not guilty"..." " the defendant, Stacey C. Koon, not guilty what I heard was, "Fuck niggers." "Not guilty." "Fuck niggers."" "No justice!" "No peace!" "No justice!" "No peace!" "I was at Parker Center when the acquittals were announced." "And I recall some high-fives and some fist-pumping in the air, and, I mean, there were clearly some people who felt that the public misunderstood them, that the media misunderstood them, and that the jury got it right." "Well, first, all your reaction to what has happened." "Very happy." "(Chuckles)" "(Angry shouting)" "I'm glad the LAPD are out there protecting me..." "I wanted to believe that the system would work for black people in general, even though I knew often it doesn't, but this time, it should work." "And it didn't." "And all I felt like," "I just wanted to smack somebody white." "You're guilty!" "Your skin color determines what degree ofjustice you have these days." "I don't think the community's gonna take this lying down." "I don't think this is gonna be good." "No justice in America, not for the blacks!" "Thejustice is forthe other man, not forthe brother man!" "Pastor, your reaction after that first verdict was read?" "Our reaction was almost universal, utter pain." "Justice!" "Justice!" "Rodney King did not have a choirboy's record, but Rodney King had the flesh and blood of decency and humanity in his heart." "What they were beating is every Black person in America." "Don't lay down for this shit!" "We had an understanding that the night of the verdict we would assemble at First AME Church." "We'd been meeting with the mayor to get ready." "I said Beverly Hills, 'cause this is some fucked-up shit that happened, man." " This is history..." " We're going to westwood..." "Brentwood, whitewood." "All that." "We were gonna send out groups of young men to walk the streets and keep everything in order." "(Police sirens)" "I had spent weeks talking to Black clergy, gang members, and they were very upfront about what they believed would happen." ""Yeah, there's gonna be violence."" "So we had everything prepared." "We had the copter fully fueled." "It seems like the only people that didn't know that there would be a riot was the news media and the LAPD." "You're looking at a live picture here at Normandie and Florence." "There has been a mini-riot at this location." "There's now been a tactical alert." "Officers have been ordered to stay out of this general area." "We're gonna try to get you more information on that." "Even before the verdict," "Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates was criticized for preparing for unrest in the event four of his officers were acquitted." "But when the rioting began, where were the police and firefighters?" "(Angry shouting)" "My most striking memory is of members of the police commission desperately trying to find Gates." "Which is just shocking, if you think about it in retrospect, that the verdicts in the Rodney King case were coming down and the chief was not at Parker Center." "Gates had driven to this house in ritzy Brentwood to campaign against a police reform initiative." "Fighting police reform, that's what he was doing." "He abandoned his post and left his troops in a shameful state." "(Angry shouting)" "The LAPD response was tepid." "All of the media gets on the police department, the people are screaming," ""we have an occupying force."" "Well, gee, we don't wanna look like an occupying force, so maybe we'll just sit here until it blows over." "That type of crap goes on." "And we were furious." " Fuck the police!" " Fuck 'em!" "Fuck 'em!" "Chaos at this particular location." "To see the very start of the violence was very troubling." "What made it really troubling was there was no police presence." "There's a van coming under attack." "They're pulling the driver out of the van, and they're kicking the driver and beating the driver." "We captured what essentially became the bookend to the Rodney King beating." "There's another driver, badly beaten." "In the case of Reginald Denny, we had black gang members beating a white man." "Oh, look at that." "Terrible." "And there's no police presence down here." "They will not enterthe area." "That was the most disgusting thing I've seen in my entire career." "Two blocks away we had a platoon of metro division." "We could have cleared that intersection in a minute." "But the commander there didn't wanna release 'em to do it, because of imagery." "We're on live television." "We're seeing a dark day here in Los Angeles." "The LAPD is nowhere to be found." "So we're sitting there in our uniforms watching this poortruck driver get his head beat in." "Nobody's doing a damn thing about it." "We're screamin'." "Nobody would even move on it." "How are you this evening?" " Angry." " Angry?" "The jury is trying to tell us we didn't see what we saw." "(Cheers, applause)" "We've been the victims of police brutality in this town for too long!" "(Cheers, applause)" "We didn't come here tonight to mourn." "We came here tonight to say who we are." "(Cheers, applause)" "And we ain't gonna take this business lying down." "(Cheers, applause)" "And we ain't gonna tear up our community to be proving their point." "(Cheers, applause)" "Mark Brown, Channel Seven waved at the monitor and said," ""The city's on fire." "It's on fire."" "And I looked at him and said, "My God."" "I had no idea it was right across the street." "Literally." "The gas station was on fire." "What I didn't anticipate personally and professionally was the response of the community." "I went on the streets, and western Avenue was in flames." "And this crowd is gathering, and the police have now come, and there's one guy, and he's screaming his head off," ""Burn, baby, burn!" "How you like me now, Mr. Policeman?"" "And I felt his pain." "I just didn't get it." "I just didn't understand burning down your own community." "I didn't get what it proved." "Here are people who feel like they have no stake, nobody's paying any attention to them." "This is the only way we can get any attention." "(Angry chanting)" "As it got darker, a crowd began to gather out in front of the police department." "It got increasingly unruly." "Someone grabbed me and tore my shirt and said something about, you know," ""You fucking newsmen." "Why do you tell lies?"" "It is the most physically-frightening situation that I've ever been part of." "(Angry shouting)" "(Helicopter blades)" "Guy pulls up, and he goes," ""Mike, whatever you do, don't go to the command post." "Go to the police station down the street." "Because it's very violent out there."" "I looked at him, and I thought, "what a coward he is,"" "get in the car, make the first turn, and the car gets lit up by gunfire." "So I go, "Okay." "Now I know what he's talking about."" "So I took my .45 out, I put it on my lap," "I took a big gulp of Copenhagen, stuck it down my mouth, turned off the lights and drove as fast as I could to the command post." "Hindsight, the overall management could've been done much better," "but once it got away from us, we were cooked." "(Helicopter blades)" "911 Emergency." "Yeah, can you send someone to my house?" "What's the problem there?" "Well, my ex-husband, or my husband, just broke into my house, and he's ranting and raving." "Now he's just walked out on the front yard." "Has he been drinking or anything?" "No, but he's crazy." "Is he black, white, or Hispanic?" "Black." "What's he wearing right now?" "Black pants and a golf shirt." "You said he hasn't been drinking?" " No." " Did he hit you?" "No." "Do you have a restraining order against him?" "No." "What's your name?" "Nicole Simpson." "Your address?" "325 Gretna Green Way." "Okay, we'll send police out." " Thank you." " Uh-huh." "When Nicole first decided to leave O.J., she came to me." "She said, "I wanna move out" and at that time," "I was doing real estate." "And then we had to sell O.J. On the idea." "He was obsessed with controlling Nicole." "I said, "Look, O.J., we'll get her a lease."" "He goes, "Three months."" "I said, "we'll get her a year lease." "You know?" "It'll be right nearby." "You can go to therapy and see if you can work things out." "But she needs her space."" "He really didn't wanna do it." "I think forthe first time she felt free." "It was like she just came into that sense of self, that she was really ready to do life for her and her kids." "She responded great to being divorced." "She was really enjoying her life, going out and not being Mrs. Simpson, being Nicole Brown." "She wanted to pursue her photography career, and she wanted to have a normal life again." "It was a beautiful day, and we skied down to the bottom of the mountain." "And everybody's gathering on the deck, having a great time." "I looked across the deck, and I said, "wow."" "I said that, "That is absolutely the most stunning woman" "I've ever seen in my life." "I have to find a way to introduce myself to her."" "So I did." "When I got back to LA several months later, we spent more time together." "Her and friends came by Mezzaluna one night, and we're having a good time, and, all of a sudden," "I see the Bentley come screeching up to the front of the door." "He comes in, walks straight over to our table, slams his hands down, looks me straight in the eye and says," ""I'm O.J. Simpson, and she's still my wife."" "I was sort of love-blind, so I didn't get up, I didn't run, I didn't back down," "I just stood my ground from day one." "And that's when she started to open up to me." "She told me about years of abuse at his hands." "He would beat her and lock her in closets at hotels because she asked where he was at when he was out cheating on her." "She was told howto look, told how to wear her hair, told howto dress, told where to be, what time to be, how to be, everything for O.J. Simpson." "Kind of a reverse slavery thing." "Uh, very, very odd." "You know, "That's, uh, that's my property,"" "and he always said, "That's my booty."" "The two sides of O.J., the O.J. That everybody sees on TV..." "And when the Cowboys brought in their big back, that they didn't make good tackles on them, so the coach was on their cases to make better tackles, as my family throws snowballs at me." "Incidentally, uh..." "That's not the O.J. That there was behind closed doors, certainly not with her, and she told me that." ""Don't ever be left alone with him, 'cause you don't know what he's capable of."" "He had her followed, and he would plant people in our group that would call him and tell him where we're going every night." "He would either show up or have a spy planted there at the club so they could watch her every move." "He never relinquished control." "He never would really let go." "He would tell me that Nicole tried to get him back, that she was actually taking golf lessons at Riviera." "And he had a girlfriend, you know, Paula." "And he seemed enthralled with her." "O.J.'s personality had totally changed, and I didn't think it was just the divorce." "Because his womanizing didn't change." "He was truly the mostjealous person I ever met in my life." "He was as jealous as he was a good football player." "I saw the anger," "I saw the rage in his face on several occasions." "At me, in particular, and at her." "There was an incident where we went overto Roxbury, a hot club at the time in LA, and we get in, and she's dancing." "Maybe 20, 30 minutes go by, and I see her coming back towards me." "She goes, "O.J.'s here." And I go, "Ha." "Great." "Again."" "You know, she goes, "Let's just get out of here."" "And I say, "I couldn't agree more."" "So we drive back to her house on Gretna Green." "We go inside, and, uh, we became romantic." "We were off in a private area in one of the living rooms, and the next day he came over and pushed in the back door, confronted both of us, and he wanted to talk to her alone." "She was trembling, standing next to me, holding my hand, shaking." "And she said," ""Keith, I think you need to leave me alone with him for a couple minutes."" "I could hear him screaming at her," "I could hear him using disparaging terms about her and me." "They walked out, and he was O.J. Again." "Shook my hand." ""Sorry, dude." "No hard feelings."" "You know, "I'm a very proud man."" "And he walked out the house." "And she turned to me, and she was white as a ghost, and she said," ""Oh, my God, Keith." "He watched us."" "And everything changed from that point on." "We realized we weren't safe anymore." "We realized that nothing was off limits." "I think she knew O.J. Was always a presence." "She hated it." "She couldn't even explore being single again and... and free and having fun, because everybody was still being manipulated by O.J." "When he found out that she had been with Marcus, that's- that was a real issue." "It's a time you look the competition right in the face and say," " "Look, I'm betterthan you."" " No, I'm betterthan you." "You may be younger, but you ain't better." "Yo, who started?" "And don't be taking my number either." "Besides, I'm better lookin'." "I'm tired of you trying to be like me." "I remember going with O.J. To watch Marcus play at USC." "He was kinda like a mentor to Marcus." "They were extremely close." "Extremely." "You know, Marcus got married at O.J.'s house." "I think she always festered a crush for Marcus." "And he was the only person in her life that was as famous and as strong as O.J." "And so I think she felt in a way that she was safe with him." "O.J. Said, "Marcus, we're 'SC guys." "We don't do that to each other." "What the hell's wrong with you?"" "He was a younger version of O.J." "He was almost like the newer, bigger, better version." "I had no- no idea whatsoever, uh, that they were carrying on some kind of affair." "I was a bit stunned." "Did you ever have a romantic relationship with Nicole?" "No, I did not." "No kind of sexual or romantic involvement did you ever have with her?" "None whatsoever." "I really do not wanna talk about that at all." "Sometimes I'll try to sing, but I'm not gonna do it." "Tonight I got this tequila in me." "The girl I came here with said to me," ""Is this a blues place?"" "I said, "Oh, no, no, no." "This is rhythm and blues."" "(Laughs)" "Speaking of that lady I was talking about..." "There she is." "With another shot of this tequila." "Now, watch her..." "Yeah, that's right." "Now, watch her sing." "I don't know if..." "Oh, my God." "(Laughs)" "That's right." "We're live right now all across America, and she is my woman." "(Laughs)" "I'm taking her tequila." "That's why I'm not singing tonight." "When they initially got back together," "I was the first person she told about it." "He had told her, "I'm changed." "I'm a new man." "Let me prove this to ya."" "She said, "we're gonna date first, and I'm not giving up my house, and we're gonna see how it goes."" "That was how they tried to reconcile." "She said all she really ever wanted was her family." "It's almost like she risked everything to have that unit back together." "911 Emergency." "What is the...?" "Can you get someone over here now, to 325 Gretna Green?" "He's back." "Please." "Okay." "What does he look like?" "He's O.J. Simpson." "I think you know his record." "Could you just send somebody over here?" "Okay." "What is he doing there?" "He's just-All this again." "Could you just send somebody over?" "Wait a minute." "What kind of car is he?" "We were filming another Naked Gun movie, and it was the first time I can remember him being just in one of the foulest moods ever." "And he said, "It's just Nicole bullshit."" "First of all, he broke the back door down to get in before..." "Okay." "Wait a minute." "What's your name?" "Nicole Simpson." "Okay." "Is he the sportscaster or whatever?" " Yeah." " Okay." "Thank you." "My ex-girlfriend approached him on the movie set and said some very disparaging things about Nicole and myself, so I knewthat O.J. Was gonna take it out on Nicole." "Wait a minute, we're sending police." "What is he doing?" "Is he threatening you?" "I..." "He's fucking going nuts." "You're gonna hear him in a minute." "He's about to come in again." "Okay, just stay on the line..." "I don't wanna stay on the line." "He's gonna beat the shit out of me." "Wait a minute, would you?" "Just stay on the line, so we can know what's going on 'til the police get there, okay?" "(Nicole sighs)" "It wasn't until years later that I actually sat down, and I had even listened to the 911 call." "I knew different voices for Nicole, and she wasn't mad, she definitely wasn't drunk." "She's terrified." "And that was heartbreaking." "That was heartbreaking." " Okay, Nicole." " Uh-huh?" "Just a moment." "Does he have any weapons?" "I don't know." "Okay." "He went home, and now he's back." "The kids are up there sleeping, and I don't want anything to happen." "Okay, just a moment." "When you hear O.J.'s voice, what do you hear?" "Rage." "Is he inside right now?" " Yes." "Yes." " Okay, just a moment." "All units, a domestic violence at 325 Gretna Green Way... (Indistinct shouting)" "O.J., the kids are sleeping." "Is he upset with something that you did?" "Oh, a long time ago." "It always comes back." "Has this happened before or no?" "Many times." "Okay." "The police should be on the way." "It just seems like a long time because it's kind of busy in that division right now." "When she left him for good, she called me, and she's like," ""Yep, this is it, Robin."" "She said, "This is it." "I'm done." "I'm done."" "She goes, "I don't even..." "I have no feeling for him whatsoever anymore." "It's just over."" "She was free, and she was happy without him, and I think he knew it was really over." "The day she changed, it was like a light switch." "He spiraled, from that day on." "Everything was different." "Who he was, that persona, everything was gone." "She wasn't chasing him anymore and it... it spun him out." "We all believed that right toward the very end when, uh, they had split up, after Mother's Day, that Nicole was not seeing Marcus again." "I absolutely believed that she was." "And O.J. Told Nicole," ""You ever see Marcus again, I will kill you."" "This was obviously "I'm..." "I'm gonna get back at you, O.J." "I don't care what it takes, I'm gonna humiliate you."" "If she did it, it was more for her own personal rebellion, it was more for her saying to herself," ""I'm gonna date who I want, I'm gonna go where I want," "I'm gonna be friends with who I want." "I'm free." "You have lost me, O.J. Watch me run."" "I think there was something about her that was almost unattainable to him." "Something that he couldn't quite control." "And I think that that was part of the attraction." "And I think, in the final analysis, that's what got her killed."