Rodney King Research Paper

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So what could cause the city of angels to look like the ninth level of hell? On March 3, 1991, paroled felon Rodney King led police on a high-speed chase through the streets of Los Angeles County before eventually surrendering. Intoxicated and uncooperative, King resisted arrest and was brutally beaten by police officers Laurence Powell, Theodore Briseno, and Timothy Wind. Unbeknownst to the police, a citizen with a personal video camera was filming the arrest, and the 89-second video caught the police beating King with their batons and kicking him long after he was capable of resistance. The video, released to the press, caused outrage around the country and triggered a national debate on police brutality. Rodney King was released without…show more content…
According to History.com on March 15 Sergeant Stacey Koon and Officers Powell, Wind, and Briseno were indicted by a Los Angeles grand jury in connection with the beating. All four were charged with assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force. Though Koon did not actively participate in the beating, as the commanding officer present at the scene he was charged with aiding and abetting. Powell and Koon were also charged with filing false reports. Because of the uproar in Los Angeles surrounding the incident, the judge, Stanley Weisberg, was persuaded to move the trial outside Los Angeles County to Simi Valley in Ventura County. On April 29, 1992, the 12-person jury, which included 10 whites and no African-Americans, issued its verdicts: not guilty on all counts, except for one assault charge against Powell that ended in a hung jury. The acquittals touched off rioting and looting in Los Angeles that grew into the most destructive U.S. civil disturbance of the 20th century…show more content…
The first rocks started to fly as the four LAPD officers who beat Rodney King and the jury who acquitted them were leaving the courtroom in suburban Simi Valley. Subsequent to the acquittal, on the afternoon of April 29th 1992, thousands of people began pouring into the streets of Los Angeles. In a few hours rioting spread across the LA metropolitan area. Conditions rapidly approached the level of civil war. The police withdrew from the main areas of fighting, ceding the streets to the insurgent poor. Systematic burnings of capitalist enterprises commenced. More than 5,500 buildings burned. People shot at cops on the street and at media and police helicopters. Seventeen government buildings were destroyed. The Los Angeles Times was attacked and looted. A vast canopy of smoke from the buildings covered the LA Basin. Flights out of LA airport were cancelled and incoming flights had to be diverted due to the smoke and sniper fire. The rioting was the single most violent episode of social unrest in the US in the twentieth century, far outstripping the urban revolts of the 1960s both in sheer destructiveness and in the fact that the riots were a multiracial revolt of the poor. In the initial phase of the LA riots, the police were rapidly overwhelmed and retreated, and the military did not appear until the rioting had abated. The New York Times
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