Cool, I’ll get a job. I still had K&F Sound Productions, but with me not really being at Morehouse anymore business wasn’t
coming in like it used to. So my mother was saying, “If you want your own apartment and a car, I’m not going to fund them.
Particularly when you’re not a great student.” What it forced me to do was go out and look around at options. The police department
was hiring. They had a program called “Community Service Officer,” kind of a prerequisite to recruits if they wanted to go
on into the department. I started out there. The pay was decent, you worked for the city so you got “bennies,” benefits. It
was consistent work, and you didn’t have to have a college degree.
I was intrigued with law enforcement as a child because I’d often been exposed to it; growing up, there was always a police
presence, always somebody providing security, looking all tight, precise, competent, calm, responsible. When I was younger
and we’d go places with my dad, there were these police escorts. I played with plenty of sirens in my day. Like that last
little tour we took in Georgia, in the last week of March 1968, me and Dad and Martin. The cops might take me out and show
me all the gadgets in the police cruisers.
Meanwhile Isaac was becoming a political animal, working in different campaigns, like Walter Mondale for president, the Andy
Young mayoral campaign, helping Uncle Andy get elected in 1981. Uncle Andy was a veteran of the system now; I also wanted
to help that process.
The man heading the department at that time, J. D. Hudson, was in the group of the first black policemen in Atlanta, which
my grandfather was instrumental in making happen, so there was a connection. When I stood on the carpet before him, he was
anxious to take me under his wing.
But he never let on then. “Are you going to shape up, Dexter King?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes sir.”
* * *
I started out as a police department community service officer assigned to the identification section/crime scene unit working
in a support role for those who were photographing and lifting fingerprints from crime scenes. I was then reassigned to the
SIS (Special Investigations Section), which included the organized and vice crime unit, the intelligence section, major crimes
unit, and narcotics. As a practical matter, I later decided to switch from the Bureau of Police Services to the Bureau of
Correctional Services, which was a relatively simple administrative change in that both were under the Department of Public
Safety.
The police investigator who was doing my background check seemed befuddled—“You’re Martin Luther King’s son?” He didn’t get
it. A lot of other people had that look on their faces too. “What’s the motivation here—what’s your story, King boy, like
you think you can just come in here and get a job here because of who you are? You here to blow the whistle, wear a glass
shield?”
The investigator turned out really cool in the end. He overdid his job in terms of talking to neighbors, friends, and everybody.
They gave me no special treatment. If anything, it was the opposite. After he went through the background check, I think he
gained a newfound respect because he saw I was serious, wasn’t looking for any favors. I was ready to cut it, do the job,
go through the rigors of whatever that meant I had to do. Eventually my cousin Vernon started working as an officer too, assigned
to court detention.
The academy was near the prison farm. The physical training was no problem. I’d played sports. The training we went through
for corrections was not nearly as intense as for police. We had to go through it only as it related to arrest techniques and
firearms training and awareness of laws and basics. It was not the full-blown extensive training that a police officer goes
through, but I’d just started out on this other road. I wanted a taste before a bite, before I went the way of the late Tom
Bradley, former police officer turned mayor of Los Angeles, and joined the regular force. A lot of it had to do with J. D.
Hudson being supportive, working with me.
I started off on late-night watch. I don’t care who you are, how famous—whatever as a rookie, you work graveyard shift. It
so happened that I got a nine-to-five assignment soon after that, working Monday through Friday; I couldn’t ask for more,
but from the grumbling I heard secondhand, some of my coworkers could. I was “J.D.’s famous boy,” they said. King’s son. Coon’s
son. I heard it all, one way or another. It crossed my mind that resentment might make an officer slow backing me up. I didn’t
dwell on it. Just do the job.
It got to the point where I’d done all I could do there; the next step was to pursue promotion to superior supervisory officer,
like sergeant, lieutenant, so forth and so on, and maybe I could have risen through the ranks. But as far as change to correct
some of the systemic injustice, I saw ceilings. That had to come from a political or legislative standpoint, from someplace
beyond me.
But it was good exposure. Corrections was run like a paramilitary organization, like any law enforcement and public safety
agency. I learned chain of command, discipline, process. It was the closest I could get to military training without being
military, which would’ve been opposed to what my dad was saying. I’d always had a curiosity about the military. By exploring
a career in law enforcement, I’d decided to act on my own curiosities for a change. It had a cost. I’d come by the King Center
on Auburn Avenue after work, still in uniform, sidearm on, to see Mother. Some people, board members—on one occasion in particular,
Gerry Allen, now deceased—would say, “How can you come in here, in this building, with a weapon?” I thought about the plastic
toy guns, and Daddy.
This happened not once, but time and time again. Some people seemed to take pleasure in repeating the same line with the same
grave tones and the same half-hidden smug smile.
For whatever reason, I was able to separate that this was a job; it didn’t make me not my father’s son. That’s always been
a subconscious consideration of each of my adult acts, although I’m not clear whether I’d faced that reality then. I never
had to use my sidearm. I was trained to do it, and I didn’t see it as diametrically opposed to nonviolence, as long as the
greater good prevailed.
Sometimes an inmate would step up to me and say, “If you didn’t have a badge and gun…” Typically, once they understood that
I didn’t hide behind a badge and gun, the inmate changed in demeanor. Many officers did hide behind that badge and gun. Made
them tough guys quick. I saw it happen. And sometimes you had to be tough. Make no mistake.
Working in that environment did much for me in terms of learning about the criminal justice system, seeing society through
that lens. When you were going to a crime scene or to a domestic situation, you were learning how to communicate, developing
skills to use. When criminal, near-criminal, or violent things are happening around you, you have to be up on your toes. You
have to think quickly; what do you do? A lot of thinking on your feet. Ultimately for me, the streets weren’t the answer.
I ended up at the Bureau of Corrections. I was assigned to the prison farm, then the jail, then ultimately to the transportation
unit, which handled mostly prisoner transport. It was interesting, instructive, especially when I was in the prison or jail
bringing in offenders. I took on another personality, dimension, and dynamic with my coworkers and with the prisoners. The
conversations I engaged in were from both sides of the bars, from a crazed inmate who challenged me for “screwing up my world,
got King’s face looking at me from the other side of these bars,” to some bystander at the King Center who said, “Aren’t you
Dr. King’s son? Why are you wearing that uniform and badge, carrying a gun. Don’t you preach?”
A fellow officer once asked me, “Why are you here? Trying to take my job? You a spy?”
Funny thing was, the prisoners were supposed to be the enemy, but in more cases than not, they were my defenders. They saw
I wanted to be fair. If a real crazy came into the lockup and started cutting up, and stepped to me, the prisoners would most
often take care of it. “Don’t want to mess with him, fool. He looks out for us.” I was firm, but fair. Even if the guy was
a lunatic, they would “sane him up,” as they called it.
One crazy they didn’t manage to “sane up.” This hostile inmate almost bit my thumb clean off. He was strung out on drugs,
had shot his girlfriend. I was transporting him from court over to jail; he barricaded himself in a corner, and it took four
or five of us to get to him. Dope had turned him into an animal. The way he was acting, he wasn’t on heroin or cocaine, it
was methamphetamine or crack, probably. I reached down to lift him; he growled like a dog, his neck snapped his head toward
me like a striking snake; next thing I know, I’m in Grady Hospital with an IV in my arm for a week. The doctor said, “If a
rabid dog had bit you, we would’ve given you a shot, sent you home. But a human bite is the most deadly there is.”
The injury was not that major—a chunk of thumb just hanging there by a sliver of skin. He’d chomped down good. They’d covered
it up with a balloon wrap, put an IV in my arm, then my arm in a sling. I looked like a casualty of war. I remember the face
of the inspector when he came by to get an incident report, how shaken he was by what he saw.
The same prisoner, when I took him to court a few weeks later, was sober, apologetic, down off his high—he was out of his
mind at the time of the bite, didn’t know what he was doing.
Initially some fellow officers felt awkward, until they got to know me. One of them said, “It’s like trying to run Hell while
watched by an angel.” I said, “I’m no angel.” Most of them were very supportive.
This was before things got really bad with the drug scene. You had a lot of people there on traffic charges. DUI was big at
the time. Mothers Against Drunk Driving had by then mounted an effective legislative crackdown. You had situations where you
had somebody on DUI in the same environment with somebody charged with armed robbery or murder. The lockup is no place for
the faint of heart, I can tell you with some authority now. I would never want to be in jail on the side of the bars my dad
used to be on. There is little about it that strikes you as noble when you’re in there. Maybe after you get out you can look
back on it that way, but jail is no place for the good. The good can’t stay that way long in jail.
One of my high school football teammates came in on a murder charge; he had murdered his girlfriend, whom I also knew. I had
to handcuff him, take him in, process him. It was bizarre—the way he looked at me, the way there was nothing to say but the
formal language of incarceration.
Another time, a cop I knew came in on a rape charge. Occasionally you would see people you went to school with, women who
came in on prostitution. You were like, “No, I can’t believe it, she was an honors student!” “Oh no, not her!” “Oh no, not
him!” I’d talk to them. “What happened, why did you do it?” What I found was that even with people who’d committed the most
heinous acts, more times than not, they didn’t know what they were doing. They snapped. There were a few occasions of premeditation.
But I’d say the vast majority had just lost control.
Then there were some there just out of ignorance. They needed guidance and help. I had experiences with people who would come
back after they got out of jail and thank me. They’d say, “Hey, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.” I did my
job, never crossed the line, but if they said, “Please, tell me who do I need to talk to?” I’d always answer. Part of their
problem was fear of the process. Some had never been incarcerated. I’d say, “These are your rights. You can talk to the public
defender. Your warrant was incorrect procedurally.” My job was to make sure their rights were kept; that their rights were
protected while in custody.
I tried to treat them all like human beings. Some appreciated it. One guy was going to hang himself. I talked him out of it
just by listening; that was all it took to get him to face the next day. I often got the feeling if somebody had just listened
to them beforehand, so many crimes could’ve been averted. In that case, it was a white guy who’d broken up with his girlfriend.
He wanted to hang himself. Jail is depressing. I said, “Hey, it ain’t that bad. It’s not worth dying over. Don’t give the
people who put you down the satisfaction of seeing you live down to their opinion of you.” Maybe he heard me, but anyway,
he lived, walked out of jail later on, giving me the thumbs-up sign. Just my taking time to hear his story was half the battle
of his gaining self-control. It wasn’t what I said so much. Most people, if you give them an ear, that solves half the problem.
That helped me to develop a better sense of dealing with people on the edge, and bolstered my own confidence.
It was rewarding and challenging.
However, I was just an officer, a private, so to speak, and had to make a choice. Was I going to take the examination to be
promoted or not?
I was there because I wanted to learn; you can’t affect a thing unless you know it, how it works. You have to get in there
and see it. I never want to seem like a guy talking about things from afar, so I’d worked hard and learned a lot. I’d been
there and done that, I know security issues, the criminal justice system from a practical level. I got what I needed out of
it. A lot of what I needed came from the head of the bureau, who was both a mentor and a father figure.
J. D. Hudson was a stern man. Not a big man, but a presence— his voice, his way, and his manner. He came from college—the
College of Hard Knocks. Hudson was an ex–police captain and homicide detective whom Maynard Jackson brought in to run the
Bureau of Corrections, under the Department of Public Safety. There had been a lot of pernicious racism in the department,
so Maynard broke it up and created a separate Bureau of Corrections with jurisdiction over the prisoners, because there’d
been everything from suspicious prisoner deaths to contraband being sold, guard to prisoner, to officers beating false confessions
out of people. Maynard put Director Hudson over the operation and said, “Clean it up.” Hudson was no-nonsense. He reminded
me of my grandfather in some ways.