King Won’t Be Charged With Parole Violation

State officials have decided not to charge Rodney G. King with a parole violation in connection with his run-in last month with Los Angeles police because the parole board is convinced that King was “paranoid and confused” and sincerely believed he was going to be robbed by two undercover vice officers.

Describing King’s behavior in a Hollywood alley May 28, nearly three months after he was beaten by Los Angeles police officers, state parole administrator Rudy Maldonado said Friday: “He’s confused. He’s been through a terrible ordeal. We truly believe he was pretty frightened.”

Meanwhile, the state attorney general’s office is continuing to investigate the incident to determine whether King should be charged with felony assault for allegedly trying to run over one of the officers.

“We are proceeding independently” of the parole agency, said Dave Puglia, a spokesman for the attorney general. “We’re doing additional investigative work on our own.”

Los Angeles police contend that King, after he was spotted with a transvestite prostitute in his car, attempted to run over one of the undercover officers as he fled.

Maldonado said that parole officials are convinced that King believed the undercover officers were robbers, and they noted that King immediately hailed down a marked patrol car after leaving the alley.

“We believe his story that he was in fear of his life and backed out or drove through that alley thinking he was going to be assaulted,” Maldonado said, “and then he stopped a police car and told them the same thing.”

The parole office based its decision not to revoke King’s parole partly on interviews with King, in which they said it was clear he is still suffering trauma and confusion after the March 3 beating in Lake View Terrace.

“He’s very, very paranoid,” Maldonado said. “He’s very confused. He shouldn’t have been where he was. It was a bad situation for him, but if the cops truly believed he was a danger they would have shot him.”

King’s attorney, Steven A. Lerman, applauded the decision not to send his client back to prison on an earlier robbery conviction.

“I’m glad the parole officials, after painstakingly investigating this on its own, have come to an exoneration of this thing,” he said. “We can only hope the attorney general will follow suit and publicly exonerate him as well.”

Lerman also reiterated that he believes police are trailing King, and that the incident last month in Hollywood was part of a “setup” to embarrass his client and weaken his claims against the Los Angeles Police Department.

Maldonado said the parole investigation did not cover that aspect.

“That’s something we didn’t even touch,” the parole administrator said. “But we are basing our investigation on the police reports, our own investigation and the statements by Mr. King. We’re not getting into anything else.”