1992 Police Brutality

Though sparked by the Rodney King verdict, there were many other causes of the riots that erupted on the streets of Los Angeles on April 29, 1992. The Los Angeles riots in 1992 were devastating. The obvious issue portrayed through the media was black versus white. If you did not live in Los Angeles or California chances are you did not hear full coverage of the story, you heard a simple cut and dry portrayal of the events in South Central. If you heard one thing about the riots, it was that there was a man named Rodney King and he was a black male beaten with excessive force by four white Los Angeles police officers on Los Angeles concrete. The media portrayed the riots as black rage on the streets due to the

In 1991, Los Angeles police harshly beat African American Rodney King while a civilian videotaped the incident, leading to extensive media coverage

For decades racial discrimination has been a reoccurring issue that has shaped the relationships across the country. Riots, in the case of the L.A. riots, are a form of venting and a negative form of freedom of expression. Almost immediately after the jury`s decision to seize the officers of charges that included assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force towards King, riots broke out across Los

On April 29, 1992, the City of Los Angeles was surrounded in a riot in response to the "not guilty" verdicts in the trial of four white Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers accused of unlawfully beating Rodney King. Six days later, when the fires were finally extinguished and the smoke had cleared, "estimates of the material damage done vary between about $800 million and $1 billion, 54 people had been killed, more than 2000 injured, in excess of 800 structures were burned, and about 10,000 people were arrested."(Khalifah 89) The 1992 riots in the City of Los Angeles were arguably the most devastating civil disturbance in the history of the United States.

On March 3, 1991 Rodney King led the Los Angeles police on a high speed chase. Once the chase was over officers pulled King out of his vehicle and began to brutally beat,taze and stomp on him. The recording of the video taken by a witness standing on the other side of the street was locally broadcasted then nationally broadcasted.The reasons that police officers acted the way they did was because “Rodney King was driving while intoxicated and when officers attempted to arrest him, the large belligerent man resisted that arrest.” (Blue Knights with Lt. Dan Marcou ) It was already said that King had a criminal record of second degree robbery and out on parole so the officers were aware of who he was by now. I also believe that racial profiling was another factor that caused the police officers to act they way that they did. As stated by Connie Rice a lawyer and civil rights activist , “The LAPD at the time was almost an occupying force, partially biased against people of color.” (Sastry & Bates) Personally, I do not believe that the officers acted in an appropriate matter because instead of pulling him from his car and brutally beating him they should've just gone up to him and arrested him. I understand that he was seen as a threat during this time because of the high speed chase but there were other ways that they could have handled the situation. The use of forces that could have been appropriate for this situation were verbal commands, maybe a bit of empty hand control with the soft empty hand technique and if he resisted then that is when the use of less lethal force would of been used. Also they found out that in the first three seconds of the film were cut of and showed that “Rodney King rising up from the street to charge one officer in a clear-cut violent assault. In self defense, that officer struck King with his PR-24.” (Blue Knights with Lt. Dan Marcou.) Now with this new information I believe that the officer had a right to defend himself however not to the extent that they all went. Hitting King ith the PR-24 would have caused him to fall and during that time they could have arrested him instead. According to Biography.com, “The United States Department of Justice filed federal civil rights charges

We are fools to think racism is something of the past. Racism is very much alive in this century as it was in the last century. The Rodney King trial and verdict will forever be identified as a moment in recent history that outraged the diverse residents of Los Angeles County and the rest of America. Not only did it expose the police brutality African Americans endure, but it showed the discrimination of a jury mostly made of white people. My family lived in Los Angeles during the late 80’s and into the 90’s, and they still remember how dangerous walking in the streets was during those years. The police did not only discriminate African Americans, they also victimized Mexican Americans. The Rodney King trial and verdict of 1992 generated riots across Los Angeles after four police officers accused of beating King were acquitted. The verdict revealed the unjust racial treatment towards African Americans and it became a symbol of police brutality and injustice that is still seen today.

The beating of Rodney King from the Los Angeles Police Department on March 3, 1991 and the Los Angeles riots resulting from the verdict of the police officers on April 29 through May 5, 1992 are events that will never be forgotten. They both evolve around one incident, but there are two sides of ethical deviance: the LAPD and the citizens involved in the L.A. riots. The incident on March 3, 1991 is an event, which the public across the nation has never witnessed. If it weren’t for the random videotaping of the beating that night, society would never know what truly happened to Rodney King. What was even more disturbing is the mentality the LAPD displayed to the public and the details of how this mentality of policing led up to this

It feels as if nothing has changed about police brutality over the years. The usual cycle is that juries acquit the police, cops get their jobs back, and brutality happens again. One of the most broadcasted cases of police brutality, was the beating of Rodney King. On the night of March 2, 1991, a bystander named George Holiday, videotaped the moment when five officers used excess force on an African American man named Rodney King, beating him with batons as he struggled on the ground. Also, it was recorded that an officer stomped on King’s shoulder causing his head to hit hard against the asphalt. Holiday sent the videotape to a local TV station and soon sent shock waves around the world, catapulting police brutality and race relations in the United States to center stage. Most viewers who watched the tape revealed the brutal and senseless beating of a hopeless drunk. After debating for seven days over the fate of the officers, on April 29, 1992, the clerk announced the final verdict, the five officers were not guilty.

On March 3, 1991 an African American man named Rodney King became a posterboy for racial tension and police brutality in America. On this day, police officers Stacey C. Koon, Laurence M. Powell, Timothy E. Wind, and Theodore J. Briseno attempted to pull Rodney King over because they suspected he was driving under the influence. Mr. King then lead the officers on a 110 mph chase through San Fernando Valley, California, and finally stopped his car in a residential area. Police officers began beating Mr. King after he got out of his car. Officers tasered, kicked, stomped on, and hit Mr. King with their batons for about 10 minutes.

riots started the afternoon of April 29, 1992, when four white Los Angeles Police Department officers were acquitted in the brutal, videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King. Los Angeles was rocked by widespread rioting and acts of arson. The verdict was an unethical climax to a year of political uproar and national outreach, and the reaction to it prompted Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley to declare a state of emergency and request assistance from the National Guard as chaos spread from the city’s mostly black south side to downtown Civic City Center. In one of the many outbreaks, looters ran wild and drivers were pulled from their cars and attacked at an intersection in Central Los Angeles. Truck driver Reginald Denny was delivering sand to a cement plant when he drove into an intersection of the Los Angeles riots that had begun a few hours before.

The Los Angeles riots of 1992 was one of the largest scale riots in American history. Though the riots started just hours after the infamous not guilty verdict in the Rodney King trial, there were many factors that contributed to the anarchy created by certain members of the Los Angeles community. The media’s coverage of the trial and riots focused on the concept that the black community had reached their boiling point, and was now rebelling in protest of police brutality against them. News broadcasts selectively displayed images of blacks mobbing, looting, and terrorizing Korean-owned businesses, while giving little justification for

In the case of Rodney king, I believe that justice was not served, because 4 officers viciously assaulted King with their night sticks after a car chase in L.A. out of the three men that were caught that night, the police claimed that king was the most “aggressive out of the three men. They also claimed that the force they used on king was “justified”. If you look at the video (recorded by George Holliday) the so called “justified” action didn’t look so justified, it appeared brutal as if they were beating animal. If you watch the video you can see Rodney King on his knee’s imploring the officer’s to stop striking him with their nightsticks, but they refused to do so. That night Rodney absorbed fifty six hits from a night stick and seven kicks from two officers. Nevertheless, the four officers’ that did the beating were prosecuted for assault but were not found guilty, which caused outrageous riots in L.A. I feel if Rodney King was Caucasian he wouldn’t have been assaulted the way he was, because you could never pay a white person to brutally

In the 1996 case Koon v. United States, four white police officers were accused of using excessive force to arrest African-American, Rodney King, igniting claims of racism and police brutality. 1991 was a short 27 years after civil rights had been established and racism was still a prevalent factor in the streets of Los Angeles. Donna Batten states that, “The controversy surrounding each of these actions raised the issues of race, racism, and police brutality in communities throughout the United States” (Batten). The King Beating Trials promoted the idea that race meant people should be treated differently, and tensions rose. Relations between police and civil rights activists were plummeting after receiving national media coverage of police brutality. Megan Condino, author of African American Eras: Contemporary Times, reports that, “there were several well-publicized incidents of police assaulting peaceful demonstrators [and] clubbing and setting their dogs on child picketers” (Condino “Police Brutality”). The strain between police and the people created much anger and distrust during the trial The feelings and tensions across the nation strongly influenced the verdict of the King Beating Trials.

The beginnings of the riots came on March 3, 1991, when Rodney King was stopped and brutally assaulted by police. King was stopped after a high speed chase police after police caught him intoxicated and was subsequently forced out of the car (History.com). From there, police began to unlawfully assault Rodney King, leaving him with a fractured skull, along with a broken cheekbone (History.com). A witness, George Holliday, filmed the officers beating Rodney King; a day after the tape was airing on CNN for the rest of the country to witness (Los Angeles Daily News). Four officers were later arrested and put to trial a year later, however all of them were not pleaded guilty. The verdict angered a massive amount of African

This event may have lead to the bad attitudes towards authority, particularly against the police. Many African Americans felt that this would not have happened if Rodney King had been white. They believed that the only reason why Rodney King was beaten was because he was an African American. When the four white police officers were acquitted by a white jury selected from the suburbs, thousands of people in South Central Los Angeles responded to the verdict with several days of rioting.