Business as Usual on the Beat : Police: After days of anxious waiting for the King verdicts, Westminster officers return to routines while sorting out feelings.

WESTMINSTER — Officer Van (Woody) Woodson cruised around the east end of town on a quiet Saturday shift filled with routine traffic stops and what cops call “unable-to-locate” incidents. It was hard to believe it was over.

“Every day we talk about it, it has been looming over us,” Woodson said, searching his beat for any reaction to the verdicts in the Rodney G. King federal civil rights trial. “I think it would have been a shock no matter how the verdicts had come out, just all the anticipation.”

Earlier, as Woodson and his fellow officers heard the verdicts being announced on television in the briefing room at 7 a.m., nobody said anything. And out on the streets the rest of the day, nobody did much of anything either.

People who were awake when the verdict was announced seemed oblivious.

Four middle-aged men tossing a basketball on a schoolyard court waved as Woodson passed. Dozens of families diligently labeled wares for garage sales, joking about whether the officer had time to stop and shop.

Later, Woodson would be dispatched to an emergency call of “somebody’s dead”--but it turned out to be nothing. An advisory of a “fight” with “six subjects” came over the radio, but that, too, disappeared in the few minutes it took for officers to get to the scene.

The police scanner in Woodson’s car, which would have broadcast news of any disturbance in Orange or Los Angeles counties, offered only blurbs about two stolen cars.

But when two cops met on the street, the trial was on their lips.

“I think everyone’s kind of down because of this decision,” said a Huntington Beach officer who was taking his lunch break in a Westminster parking lot.

“Wild. Everyone in our department just kind of sat around and shook their head,” Woodson replied, shaking his head again.

“I think they’ve got a good chance on appeal,” the patrolman offered.

In a chance meeting with another fellow cop, their cruisers parked side by side, Woodson and Jairo Valderrama joked about the controversy.

“Can you believe that?” Valderrama asked. “How about Stacy Koon? Can you imagine him in jail?”

“He’ll have to write another book in jail,” Woodson suggested, shaking his head yet again.

Quipped Valderrama: “I heard it was a lousy book anyway.”

With time to reflect, Woodson still could not figure out exactly how he felt about the verdict.

“Not being there (at the King beating), it’s hard for me to judge what happened,” said Woodson, who has lived his entire life in Southern California. He started his career at the Los Angeles Police Department, stationed near the flash point of last year’s riots, at 77th Street.

“I don’t get too uptight about the verdicts or the whole Rodney King thing,” Woodson said. “I just do my own thing, try not to think about it too much.”

Still, Woodson and the rest of his department remained on alert Saturday, with all vacations canceled. He was prepared to work overtime if, like last spring, Westminster decided to beef up its patrols at trouble spots.

But he was not up to defending or condemning the jury’s decision in the celebrated federal trial.

“I know about fear,” Woodson said, recalling his final day on 77th Street patrol, when he discovered a dead body behind a firebombed church. “I know about fighting people. I know about PCP.

“I don’t know what to make of these people,” he sighed. “I sympathize with every cop, just about.”

Enough talk.

Back to the station, seven hours into the shift, to take a report on a custody battle. Back to the street, to cite a driver whose sedan whizzed through a four-way stop sign. Back to normal.