Police Violence: The LA Riots Of 1992

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Why does a group of people stand up to a leader or government? A perfect example of this would be the LA riots of 1992. The LA riots sprung from years of rising tension between the LAPD and the city’s African Americans. One day, a man named Rodney King was in a high speed police chase. King did surrender, and he was unarmed. There was video evidence of four LA police officers brutally attacking King after he surrendered and showed no physical violence towards the officers. This soon led to a riot involving the whole city. The Los Angeles Riot of 1992 was the breaking point for human rights, police brutality, and racism. Human rights was a big cause in the uprising of the riot. Throughout the riot, more than 60 people were killed and over…show more content…
The first example is the beating of Rodney King. Rodney king was an African American motorist that had been driving under the influence. When he was pulled over, he refused arrest. He began to run away but four policemen stopped him. The officers beat him very brutality breaking his leg, fracturing a part of his skull, and by breaking his cheekbone. This is a great example of police brutality because instead of holding him down and arresting him, they beat him when that was completely inappropriate. Secondly, there was a total of 10 people who were shot throughout the uprising. It is very well known that once a riot is started it only gets worse, but it is very unnecessary to shoot people. It is proven that the 10 people that were shot, were all shot by officers from the LAPD. This shows police brutality because there are other ways to handle these situations. Instead, the officers were weak and showed that they have authority and decided to use that power for bad instead of good. Shooting people will never solve your problems, they will only make them worse. The final example that shows police brutality is that throughout the riot, there were times where law officials were not available. During the riot, police officers had fled the scene. This left for major destruction and gangs to form. People were stealing, hurting others, and destroying things because policemen were nowhere to be found. Although, at this…show more content…
For example, when Rodney King was beaten, it was because he was black. If he had been white, this would not of happened. The police officers would have simply held him on the ground and put handcuffs on him. This shows that there was racism, and is a big cause as to why the riots started. Another example that shows racism is when the officers were being trialled. It’s shown that two of the officers were sentenced to 30 months in prison, and the other two were acquitted of all charges. This illustrates racism because even though the policemen did something very wrong, two of them didn’t even get charged. If they had been black, the story would of been very different. The final way there was racism that led to this riot was that the African Americans of Los Angeles already felt that they were being discriminated against. In the article, “Los Angeles Riots of 1992” from britannica, it is said that African Americans were already fed up with racism within the city. Black women were getting paid 5% less than white women were. It is said that they didn’t feel like black lives mattered, and that they were being mistreated by white people. This shows that there was racism in Los Angeles and was a breaking point for the

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