SHAG CARPET IN A SWAT CAR

Lee Zeidman had a lot on his plate coordinating logistics for a memorial service for the King of Pop at Staples Center in Los Angeles July 7, 2009.

Every venue manager has to make decisions based on experience and instinct that can make a difference between a safe and sane event or a debacle. Michael Jackson’s memorial service, planned in less than a week, was prime with problematic moments, from the last minute preparations to the magnitude of the loss, the pain, the blame. But this particular moment iced the cake for Lee, who had been juggling a lot of requests leading up to the final day.

One was an unexpected call from the Los Angeles Police Department the day before the memorial service.

“I slept in the locker room, showered there, because they were rehearsing till 1 a.m.,” Lee recalled of the day before. “I get up in the morning and LAPD calls; ‘we need you down in the loading dock.’ I have the memorial production trucks and a couple circus trucks there.”

That was a side note, the circus was due to move-in the day of the memorial, and while the production crew was awaiting move-out, the elephants – in fact all the circus animals – were already at Staples Center, parading past the entertainment press the day before.

So Lee beelines it down to the loading dock and hears:

“We need room for two SWAT vehicles here.”

“I don’t have room for two SWAT vehicles. Why do you need them?”

“Well, we need at least one.”

“Why?”

“To get the package out.”

“What?”

“The package/the casket.”

That’s how LAPD planned to get Michael Jackson’s body back to Forest Lawn for burial. It was a decoy so the paparazzi would follow the hearse, not the body. Once the hearse left, the SWAT vehicle goes out with the casket. That’s the plan.

Lee made room.

That morning of the memorial, there are about 30 black SUVs, Mercedes, BMWs at Forest Lawn to carry all the family and friends to Staples Center for the service. The first 20 rows were reserved for all those people.

“We were loaded in. We saw on TV the caravan, police escorted, was coming to Staples Center, where they would drop off and leave. The first vehicle in was the hearse. We unload the casket into a holding room. Then 5 minutes, 10 minutes go by and the hearse driver is nowhere to be seen. We can’t get the family in there until the hearse moves out,” said Lee.

He turns to the LAPD Captain who has been imbedded at his side all week and asks, “Have you ever driven a hearse?”

“No, never.”

“Get in that god-damned hearse and get it out of here.”

So he did. And the first six cars came down and they were Michael Jackson’s brothers and family. And they looked at us and said, “How is our brother getting out of here?”

 We pointed to the SWAT vehicle, now a hearse.

“We want to see it.”

We walked them over there and opened up the SWAT vehicle, and they saw metal benches, plywood floor — it’s a SWAT vehicle.

“Our brother is not riding out of here in that.”

I’m thinking to myself, what’s the deal here? It’s a decoy.

They reiterated: “He’s not riding out in that.”

Nearby was this big roll of black shag carpeting, the runner the casket would roll into the arena on. “We told our operations guys to cut a piece of that carpet and nail it down in the SWAT car. They did; we called the family over again and said, ‘what do you think now?’”

“Okay, our brother can leave in that.”

To this day, that is most certainly the only SWAT vehicle with black shag carpeting. — Based on a true story as told to Linda Deckard