Los Angeles : A Pot Of Culture And A Mecca For The Film Industry And Skateboarding Culture

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

This incident triggered massive riots in Los Angeles areas. Tupac was aware of the violence and saw no change from decades ago; racism was alive and thrived in the streets of America.

Throughout police history in the United States and around the world there have been numerous incidents of reported police brutality and other forms of corruption including taking bribes, theft, sexual deviance, and many more. In our present time corruption has decreased significantly from what it once was decades ago but still exists. One of the most publicized cases of police brutality, if not the most, was the beating of Rodney King. Most people have heard about the case and seen the video of the brutal beating that took place in Los Angeles on the night of March 2, 1991. The video shown to the public contained officers appearing to beat Mr. King while he is on the ground while

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

When the judge, Bernard Kamins, who was Caucasian declared three of the four (also white) officers not guilty the public saw his decision very racist. The riots began in the evening after the judgment, and grew over the next two days, but they would continue for several days. Angry Los Angels residents went out to the streets to show their fury. “These people are angry and they have every right to be!” said a man to the news cameras during the destruction. Authorities failed miserably to control the people. As time went by the madness did not decrease but enlarged.

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

African Americans in Los Angeles and throughout the United States have experienced racial oppression for centuries. (Background about racial oppression by the LAPD). Rodney King was an African American motorist who inspired positive police reforms after he had a brutal conflict and was beaten by four members of the LAPD. Rodney King’s encounter resulted in a social and legal compromise because the incident made people aware of police brutality, gave African Americans a voice against police abuse, and resulted in reforms to the way that the LAPD responds to communities of color.

When Rodney King was beaten by Los Angeles police, it changed racial relations forever, but how does this tie into the trial of the famous football play and actor, Mr. Orenthal James Simpson. Unbeknownst to many, these two seemingly unrelated cases have much more in common than what meets the eye. To understand the two cases, the reader must first examine the background of each case separately, then compare and contrast the cases. In order to truly realize how the two cases compare, the reader must first learn the background of each case.

In Anna Deavere Smith’s “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” there are a lot of characters who have different thoughts of what happened and why it happened. The LA uprisings happened after the video of a black young man being severely beaten by four white policemen was released to the media for everyone to see. During the uprisings people were getting shot by stray bullets and businesses were being destroyed, especially Korean stores. It was said to be one of the worst riots in U.S. history.

In 1992 the city of Los Angeles was one of our nation’s largest cities. It had an estimated population of over 9 million.1 The city had been in a deteriorating state for several years. There also had been tension growing between the citizens and the police for nearly the last 30 years. This had a lot to do with riots that occurred in Los Angeles back in the 1960’s.2

In 1992, a series of riots broke out in the city of Los Angeles. After footage of four police officers using excessive force on an African American man, Rodney King, a jury acquitted the four officers of their wrongdoing. The verdict sparked an outrage in the city, the incident was not the only point which played a role in the riots. However, after Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old girl, was shot in the back of the head by a store owner. As a result, the people of Los Angeles responded in anger over how African Americans were being treated by other races. The Rodney King verdict can be considered as the start of the riots instead of Latasha Harlins’ murder because it remained in the hands of the police, consisted of a large group of White American men, which displays an abuse of power in the race.

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

"They had a long record of humiliating people, black people, pulling them over and doing what they called 'proning' them on the ground” Karl Fleming (2005). Cops at the time did not care, they found something wrong with the way you look, you got arrested, no questions asked. If you tried to resist arrest, it was going to go bad for you. During the early nineties, there was a rap group coming from Compton, California, N.W.A., that wrote about how hard their life was dealing with all the gang violence and the whole police thing. Some white people did not care for that type of music and when performing, cops tried to arrest the members of N.W.A. because they weren’t allowed to say the things they were rapping about. "So many people who didn't grow up black and poor couldn't understand why it happened. You can live in a different part of L.A. and never understand that frustration. But if you listen to 'F— tha Police,' you hear where they're coming from". John Singleton (1992). Many of the rappers talked about how life rough during those times even before the whole Rodney King incident. On April 29, 1992, felon, Rodney King, was chased by four cops by car because he did not want to pull over while in his

The riots were started by the people who now had distrust in the police, because even when caught on tape, they could get away with such brutality. Although many people believe the riots were caused simply by King verdict, but in reality, these extensive cruel actions were a justified protest to the social injustice and inequality in which people live. The media, however focused more upon the matter of prejudice and thus did not portray the riots as an anger from the African American people finding out that the four Los Angeles policemen were found not guilty and were only facing excessive force