Students Decry Police Actions : Demonstrations: Black protesters at Cal State Northridge say they identify with Rodney G. King. They also call for chief’s ouster.

More than 130 black Cal State Northridge students gathered Wednesday to protest what they said is a pattern of Los Angeles police harassment of blacks and to call for the ouster of Police Chief Daryl F. Gates.

Many students at the rally organized by the school’s Black Students Union said they identified with Rodney G. King, a black man whose beating by police March 3 was captured on videotape. And many said they believed they could easily have been in King’s position.

“Rodney King took a beating for you and me,” Khalfani Magee, 21, an industrial engineering student, told the crowd that had gathered outside the student union for more than two hours. “He took that beating for me, too, because it could have been me.”

Keynote speaker Joe Hicks, an American Civil Liberties Union newspaper editor, said he has noticed two reactions among the hundreds of people who have called the ACLU in the wake of the King beating.

“All these affluent, upper-middle class white folks are outraged, but if you talk to brothers and sisters in the community, they’ll say to you, ‘What’s the big deal? We knew this all along. When did you get hip to this,’ ” Hicks said.

Hicks read a long list of names of blacks who he said had been killed by Los Angeles police officers in recent decades, and he said police officers regularly beat people as they had beat King.

“The only thing different about Rodney King was that somebody had a video camera there,” he said, saying that the city has paid out nearly $11 million to victims of police brutality.

Hicks said Gates’ resignation would not mean the end of racial attitudes that lead police officers to automatically suspect that blacks are involved in criminal activities.

“We can’t let Chief Gates be a diversion,” he said. “We have to keep our eye on the prize. We need to reform the way they think.”

Karen Brannon, 23, president of the Black Students Union, told the crowd that racial prejudices are not limited to the Los Angeles police.

While house hunting for her mother in Lomita when she was 19, Brannon said she was arrested by Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies summoned by the homeowner after Brannon stood outside the door and inquired about renting his house. Later, she said, she saw a police report stating she had been inside the house.

Charges of attempted burglary and trespassing were dropped when she agreed not to sue the city for wrongful arrest, she said. “It’s not just African-American males being affected by this racism,” she said. She also said she and her black friends are often followed in department stores by clerks who assume they are thieves.

The rally was calm and free of loud chanting and signs. As the speakers spoke, students in the back quietly shared their experiences over police harassment.

“To the police, a black youth is probable cause,” said Alex Tutt, 22, a psychology student. He said he has been stopped by police as a criminal suspect many times.

Malcolm Nottingham, a 22-year-old English major and pre-law student, said: “I fear getting pulled over by the police. If I see a police car near me, I will detour my whole route to avoid him seeing me. If you ask any black man out here, they’ll tell you that they are afraid of the police.”

Both Tutt and Nottingham said they have been stopped several times and forced to stand at their car with their hands over their heads, or lie on the ground while police officers searched them and their cars. Other students told similar stories.

“Some kids grow up thinking that the police are their friends, but not us,” Tutt said.