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Rodney King
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Rodney Glen King (born April 2, 1965 in Sacramento, California) is an African-American man who, on March 3, 1991, was the victim in an excessive force case committed by Los Angeles police officers. A bystander, George Holliday, videotaped much of the incident from a distance. The footage showed LAPD officers repeatedly striking King with their batons. A portion of this footage was aired by news agencies around the world, causing public outrage that raised tensions between the black community and the LAPD and increased anger over police brutality and issues such as unemployment, racial tension, and poverty in the black/African-American community.
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Rodney Glen King (born April 2, 1965 in Sacramento, California) is an African-American man who, on March 3, 1991, was the victim in an excessive force case committed by Los Angeles police officers. A bystander, George Holliday, videotaped much of the incident from a distance. The footage showed LAPD officers repeatedly striking King with their batons. A portion of this footage was aired by news agencies around the world, causing public outrage that raised tensions between the black community and the LAPD and increased anger over police brutality and issues such as unemployment, racial tension, and poverty in the black/African-American community. Four LAPD officers were later tried in a state court for the beating but were acquitted. The announcement of the acquittals sparked the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.
Incident and Arrest
On the night of March 2, 1991, Rodney King and two passengers, Byrant Allen and Freddie Helms, were driving west on the Foothill Freeway. The three men had spent the night watching a basketball game and drinking malt liquor at a friend’s house in Los Angeles. The presumptive evidence, from a blood-alcohol level test taken 5 hours after the incident, when King registered just under the legal limit, is that as King drove his blood alcohol level was approximately 0.19—nearly two and a half times the legal limit in California. At 12:30 AM, Officers Tim and Melanie Singer, a husband-and-wife team of the California Highway Patrol, spotted King’s car speeding. The Singers pursued King, and they claimed the subsequent freeway chase reached speeds in excess of 100 mph. According to King’s own statements, he refused to pull the car over because a DUI would violate his parole for a previous robbery conviction.
King exited the freeway, and the chase continued through residential streets at speeds ranging from 55 to 80 mph. By this point, several police cars and a helicopter had joined in the pursuit. After approximately eight miles, officers cornered King’s car. The first five LAPD officers to arrive at the scene were: Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore Briseno, and Rolando Solano.
Highway Patrolman Tim Singer ordered King and his two passengers to exit the vehicle and lie face down on the ground. The two passengers complied and were taken into custody without incident. King initially remained in the car. When he finally did emerge, he acted bizarrely: giggling; patting the ground; and waving to the police helicopter overhead. King then grabbed his buttocks. Highway Patrol Officer Melanie Singer momentarily thought he was reaching for a gun. She drew her gun and pointed it at King, ordering him to lie on the ground. King complied. Singer approached King with her gun drawn, preparing to make the arrest.
At this point, LAPD Sergeant Stacey Koon intervened and ordered Singer to holster her weapon. LAPD officers are taught not to approach a suspect with a drawn gun. Sergeant Koon felt Singer's actions endangered King, herself, and other officers. Koon then ordered the four other LAPD officers at the scene—Briseno, Powell, Solano, and Wind—to subdue and handcuff King. As the officers attempted to do so, King physically resisted. King rose up, tossing Officers Powell and Briseno off his back. King then allegedly struck Officer Briseno in the chest. Seeing this, Koon ordered all of the officers to fall back. The officers later testified that they believed King was under the influence of the dissociative drug phencyclidine (PCP), although King's toxicology results tested negative for PCP.
Sergeant Koon then shot King with a Taser. King groaned; momentarily fell to the ground; then stood back up. Koon fired the Taser again, knocking King to the ground. King then stood up and charged in the direction of Officer Laurence Powell. Officer Powell then struck King with his baton, knocking him to the ground again. Powell, with three other officers, then repeatedly struck King with their batons, stomped on him and kicked him while he was on the ground for almost a minute and a half. Unseen by the those involved, the lengthy beating was caught on video by a private citizen, George Holliday, from his apartment near the intersection of Foothill Blvd and Osborne St. in Lake View Terrace (the recording starts just as King charges at Powell).
King was taken to Pacifica Hospital immediately after his arrest. He suffered a fractured facial bone, a broken leg, and numerous bruises and lacerations.
Trial of the Officers
The Los Angeles district attorney charged the four officers with use of excessive force. The initial judge was replaced, however, and the new judge changed the venue, as well as the jury pool, citing contamination of the jury pool by the media coverage. The new venue was a new courthouse in Simi Valley in neighboring Ventura County. The jury consisted of Ventura County residents — ten whites, one Latino and one Asian. The prosecutor, Terry White, was African-American. On April 29, 1992, the jury acquitted three of the officers, but could not agree about one of the charges for Powell.
Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley said, "the jury's verdict will not blind us to what we saw on that videotape. The men who beat Rodney King do not deserve to wear the uniform of the L.A.P.D."
LA riots and the aftermath
The news of acquittal triggered the Los Angeles riots of 1992. By the time the police, the US Army, the Marines and the National Guard restored order, the casualties included 53 deaths, 2,383 injuries, more than 7,000 fires, damages to 3,100 businesses, and nearly $1 billion in financial losses. Smaller riots occurred in other cities such as Las Vegas and Atlanta. On May 1, 1992, the third day of the L.A riots, King appeared in public before television news cameras to appeal for calm, asking:
Federal trial of officers
After the riots, the Department of Justice reinstated investigation and obtained an indictment of violations of federal civil rights against the four officers. The federal trial focused more on the evidence as to the training of officers instead of just relying on the videotape of the incident. On March 9 of the 1993 trial, King took the witness stand and described to the jury the events as he remembered them. The jury found Officer Laurence Powell and Sergeant Stacey Koon guilty, who were subsequently sentenced to 30 months in prison, while Timothy Wind and Theodore Briseno were acquitted of all charges.
Cultural impact of the event
The video of the beating is an example of inverse surveillance of citizens watching police. Several copwatch organizations were subsequently organized nationally to safeguard against police abuse, including an umbrella group, October 22 Coalition to Stop Police Brutality.
References to the incident in popular culture began to appear almost immediately, notably with the 1992 film Malcolm X. The video of the beating was prominently used in the opening credit sequence of Spike Lee's film.
The 1994 films Airheads and Natural Born Killers both contain scenes inspired by the King videotape and subsequent events. In Airheads, a crowd begins chanting his name, and the principal characters' failure to recognize it is played for comedic effect. Natural Born Killers features policemen beating Woody Harrelson's character in a manner very similar to the actual incident, and also uses clips of the original video.
Another important reference was made in the film American History X, while being this the subject of discussion in a family meeting, with the main character, Derek Vinyard, played by Edward Norton, defending the overuse of the strength from the police against Rodney King on the basis of King's actions and background.
The riot was the backdrop for the 1997 TV film Riot, which focuses on stories from the perspective of four people of different races - Chinese, Hispanic, white and black. The videogame Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas modeled the 1992 Los Angeles Riots in the game after a corrupt police officer was found not guilty. Mention of Rodney King or the riots that transpired has become a meme for police brutality in music too as exemplified by artists such as Ice Cube, Tupac, Eazy-E, Public Enemy, Lil' Wayne and Sublime.
After the riots
King was awarded $3.8 million in a civil case and used some of the proceeds to start a hip hop music label, Straight Alta-Pazz Recording Company.
In May 1991, he was arrested on suspicion of trying to run over a vice officer who allegedly found him with a transvestite prostitute in Hollywood.
In 1993, King entered an alcohol rehabilitation program and was placed on probation after crashing his vehicle into a block wall in downtown Los Angeles. In July 1995, he was arrested by Alhambra police, who alleged that he hit his wife with his car, knocking her to the ground. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail after being convicted of hit and run. On August 27, 2003, King was arrested again for speeding and running a red light while under the influence of alcohol. He failed to yield to police officers and slammed his SUV into a house, breaking his pelvis.
On November 29, 2007, while going home King was shot in the face, arms, back and torso with birdshot by two thieves attempting to steal his bicycle, but his injuries were characterized as not life threatening.
King appeared on the second season of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, which premiered in October 2008. He also appeared on Sober House, a Celebrity Rehab spin-off focusing on a sober living environment, which aired in early 2009.
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