rockin'robin

King's beating by police led to 1992 LA riots

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -
Rodney King, whose beating by Los Angeles police in 1991 was caught on camera and sparked riots after the acquittal of the four officers involved, was found dead in his swimming pool Sunday, authorities and his fiancee confirmed. He was 47.

King's beating after a high-speed car chase and its aftermath forever changed Los Angeles, its police department and the dialogue on race in America.

King was 25 and on parole after a robbery conviction in April 1991. In an interview in 2011, he recalled he had been drinking and was headed home from a friend's house when he saw a police car following him and panicked, thinking he would be sent back to prison. So he attempted to flee.

"I had a job to go to that Monday, and I knew I was on parole, and I knew I wasn't supposed to be drinking, and I'm like 'Oh, my God,'" he told CNN.

He realized he couldn't outrun the police, but looked for a public place to stop. "I saw all those apartments over there, so I said, 'I'm gonna stop right there,'" he said. "'If it goes down, somebody will see it.'"

An amateur cameraman caught the scene as four white police officers struck King more than 50 times with their wooden batons and used a stun gun on him.

King said as the officers beat him, they yelled, "We are going to kill you, n***er," although the officers denied using racial slurs.

The video shows King cowering on the ground and attempting to crawl away as he is surrounded by a crowd of police officers. Four of them used their nightsticks to strike him.

King was beaten nearly to death. Three surgeons operated on him for five hours.

The video of the beating appeared on national television two days later, focusing attention on the issue of racially-motivated police brutality.

"We finally caught the Loch Ness Monster with a camcorder," King attorney Milton Grimes said.

Four LAPD officers -- Theodore Briseno, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind and Sgt. Stacey Koon -- were indicted on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force by a police officer.

But following a three-month trial in the predominantly white Los Angeles suburb of Simi Valley, three of the officers were acquitted of all charges. The jury, which had no white members, deadlocked on one charge of excessive force against Powell, and a mistrial was declared on that charge.

Powell's attorney, Michael Stone, said earlier this year the unedited video worked against King and helped prove the officers' case.

"Most of the nation only saw a few snippets where it's the most violent," Stone said. "They didn't see (King) get up and run at Powell."

But African-Americans in Los Angeles exploded in outrage. Rioters ran through the streets -- looting businesses, torching buildings and attacking those who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The violence was responsible for more than 50 deaths and $1 billion in property damage.

On the third day of rioting, King emerged from seclusion to make a plea: "People, I just want to say, can we all get along? Can we get along?"

Rodney King dead at 47 | News - Home

Deafness

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Foxrac

Oh I see, I just want to find out why he is died.

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saywhatkid

Apparent drowning victim.

saywhatkid

For those scoring at home, and saying things like "he resisted arrest" or "he was high" kindly explain how you can justify the resulting action by LEO, from the article above...

Smithtr

I heard it story news

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DeafTim

The dude clearly had a drinking problem...heard he was drinking all day long and smoked marijuana at night accordin to his gf..not surprised to hear something like this. He was a troublemaker and I understand it's sad he passed away..we all aint perfect.

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airportcop

Look, there is no doubt the cops gave him the beating of his life but there is more to the video than what the public got to see. More like King fighting back! The officers over did it in a bad way but King wasn't an innocent man by any means. A criminal that had a drinking and drug problem before the cops beat him and he didn't stop after the fact either. Too bad he didn't change and make a real difference. What amazes me was that a jury of mostly non-whites acquitted all of the cops but one!

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Foxrac

in Simi Valley? all jurors are white, except for 1 latino and 1 Asian that acquitted all police officers, also declare mistrial on 1 charge.

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Bebonang

Will you all stop talking about his past? He had his demons and he could not fight his own. The demons beat him to death. But he was good to his words about wanting everyone to please, can we all get along with no violence?. That is his famous remark to the public. His face look innocence with feeling for plea to the world. Whether good or bad, he should not have been beaten by the police anyway. It is wrong and they should just put him in the police car and take him to jail. Simple as that. Why beat him? He is a human being. Enough of that.

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rockin'robin

His past is what has made his present.....as for his words of "Can't we all get along"?...it's my bet he was stoned at the time!...And just becuz he has that "baby-faced" image.....don't let that fool you...He was a drunk and a druggie...

As far as the police "just putting him in the police car and taking him to jail"....the police had to chase him for miles...and his putting other motorists in danger by the high-speed chase...He was running becuz he was drunk and on probation for a prior felony (think it was robbery)...and didn't want to go back to jail/prison....

He was also combative when the Police finally apprehended him...(fighting with the police)...and Yes, they had to subdue him with night sticks as there were no tasers back in 1992....He was a very BIG man...so it took a lot of policemen to subdue him....

I agree, the beat-down was too severe tho'....it should have stopped as soon as they (the police) felt they could be able to handcuff him and get him into the car.

rockin'robin

Police have opened an investigation into the apparent drowning of Rodney King, the man who emerged as a reluctant "countercultural hero" after four LAPD officers brutally beat him in 1991.

King, 47, had been outside his house most of the night, his fiancée, Cynthia Kelly, told Rialto Police Capt. Randy De Anda after she reported finding his body at the bottom of the pool at his California home.

"[Kelly] was inside the residence, had been sleeping and Mr. King had been carrying conversations with her from the rear patio poolside," De Anda said. "She had heard him speaking to her. She got up to go outside to talk with him, at which time she found him at the bottom of the pool."

Click here to view a timeline of the events of Rodney King's life

It has been 20 years since King pleaded for blacks and whites to "get along," but recent cases like the killing of black Florida teen Trayvon Martin prove that the lessons of King's brutal beating at the hands of Los Angeles police have yet to be learned, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other civil rights leaders said.

King emerged as a sort of reluctant, "countercultural hero" after he suffered the beating and a bystander's video camera captured the violence, Jackson told ABCNews.com.

That videotape, when shared with a Los Angeles TV station, sent shock waves around the world, catapulting police brutality and race relations in the United States to center stage and turning King into a symbol of the bitter conflict.

"It was his beating that made America focus on the presence of profiling and police misconduct," civil rights advocate the Rev. Al Sharpton said in a statement. "History will record that it was Rodney King's beating and his actions that made America deal with the excessive misconduct of law enforcement."

"Rodney King's case was a symbol of police abuse," Sharpton said at a march Sunday to protest the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk policy. "I remember before the tape of Rodney King, we talk about police abuse people thought we were making it up."

Jackson compared King's case, in which his attackers were acquitted, with Martin's case today, in which killer George Zimmerman wasn't initially arrested for shooting Martin because of Florida's controversial "Stand Your Ground" law.

"We seem not to have learned the lesson of the ugliness of racial profiling and police brutality and all the pain it causes," he said.

The wake of the violent attacks on King and the subsequent L.A. riots in 1992 spurred the resignation of LAPD Chief Daryl Gates and an overhaul of the department, including years of federal oversight to monitor racial profiling and police brutality.

What was once a culture of low morale and a code of silence within a police force that had been scandalized even further by the O.J. Simpson murder trial was turned on its head under the leadership of former LAPD Chief William Bratton.

His emphasis on community-based policing and crackdowns on excessive use of force brought murders down to 297 in 2011, the lowest they've been in more than 40 years, according to KABC-TV in Los Angeles.

"The culture of the Los Angeles Police Department has been transformed," Erwin Chemerinsky, a professor and the founding dean of the School of Law at the University of California-Irvine, told KABC-TV.

Bratton has since gone on to advise the police forces of other major cities including London, where he now serves as a consultant to police after he city's spate of riots last year.

But 20 years after the 1992 acquittal of the LAPD officers ignited days of deadly riots in Los Angeles, Jackson said, the shooting of Trayvon Martin shows that race relations are still far from where they should be.

The NYPD, for example, has come under increasing criticism for its stop-and-frisk program, in which it detained more than 685,000 people in 2011, the majority of them young blacks and Hispanics, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. That's up from about 97,300 stop-and-frisk incidents back in 2002.

Jackson said the persistent present-day bias is also reflected by the 8,000 blacks killed in the United States each year.

"It isn't just the police," he said. "Our concern now, of course, is too much racially-targeted violence.

"We had a redemptive moment with President Barack Obama's election," Jackson said.

But contrary to King's "resounding appeal for us to get along," he said, "it seems that we're not."

Rodney King Dead: Police Opening Investigation Into Apparent Drowning - Yahoo!

saywhatkid

So you are saying that retaliation is justified? When the guy is beaten to the point he needs 5 hours of surgery to save his life, don't you think that the LEOs had him under enough control to arrest him?

CrazyPaul

Please remember that the video of police brutality on Rodney King was not showing how it started. The guy who recorded it happened to see the beatings and recorded it with his camcorder so he didn't know how it started. What's more, King admitted that what he did was wrong. In other words, he didn't follow police's instructions like putting his hands up and laying on the ground. He didn't. The video didn't show that, however the cops who beat him were guilty of excessive force which was unacceptable.

It's possible that he drowned in his own pool. I heard that many blacks don't know how to swim. I don't know for a fact.

Jiro

it doesn't matter how it started. what mattered was police conduct in that situation. just because a criminal broke a law doesn't mean it allows police officers to break a law and department policy too. that's why they were found guilty and jailed.

what's up with you and your silly "black" thing?

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rockin'robin

Most all drunks will fight whenever they are being arrested, "resisting arrest", and even when they are on drugs....It's the cause of domestic violence also in so many cases.....So yes, I believe King was fighting in order not to be arrested for drunk driving and having to go back to jail.

And believe once a person is under the influence, he feels "less pain" wnile fighting or being beat up. Alcohol & drugs fog the mind and ease the pain....So, even when he was down, he was still fighting...so the beating continued....

And yes, I believe it was an over-kill (the beating)...guessing the police was very angry that he would not stop resisting arrest.

Jiro

uh.... Sergeant Koon did use a taser on Rodney King. He shot at his back and that's why Rodney King fell down. since you were not aware of this, then that means you are clearly uninformed about this whole situation..... meaning your view and opinion have been sadly tainted by some buffoons to make you think everything is Rodney King's fault.

no..... a beat-down should never ever happen in the first place or at any time. beat-down is illegal. period.

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Jiro

wow. lotsa of contradictions in your post.

Rodney King was fighting back. But police were using excessive force. ok.... so.... many criminals fight back and in many cases, they were under influence. many police officers did not have to resort to beat-down in order to subdue them.

so what would makes a real difference? a proper police conduct and following department policy. none of these officers followed the law and department policy. Rodney King was a scumbag for driving recklessly thru neighborhoods but what police officers did was worse. They're worse than scumbags. They were the reason why LA was a very hostile place to be at that time. And it took Rodney King to change that.

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CrazyPaul

Do black people know how to swim? - Google Search

What's up with those people and their silly "black" thing?

rockin'robin

Well, "Mr. Perfect"....there are and were no "buffoons" trying to sway my opinion....So they did use a taser, he fell down...but kept fighting and resisting arrest....The taser would not have been necessary if he would have just gave up peacefully!....He didn't, and he admitted it.

Would it have been better to just shoot him as he was fighting the police?...And like I said, the beating was too severe, should not have happened, but it did...and resisting arrest with violence is illegal also...you get jailed for that...so it's his fault to begin with....the police's fault for over-reacting with the beating.

CrazyPaul

Obviously you didn't watch King's interview about his new book on TV. He forgave the cops and he understood why he got beaten up. He actually said that it was partly his fault. It doesn't matter what you think. It matters what he thought since he was there. He also said that at least one cop got jailed so he was happy.

Steinhauer

How come nobody is mentioning that King had one of the officer's in a stranglehold when they commenced the beatdown? And the fact he beat a female officer to the ground before that?

just wondering ...

He was probably doing crack and is why he drowned in his own pool.

Frisky Feline

I do not care if he was involved with drugs but did he hurt anyone? sure he had to fight back when cops went too far which was ridilicous.

CrazyPaul

Yes, that pissed other cops off. He shouldn't have done that.

CrazyPaul

He was punching a female officer, so yes he was violent. Read post #23.

rockin'robin

Disagree...he was not fighting back because the cops went too far....he was fighting back to avoid being arrested....he was drunk and disorderly...

Frisky Feline

Ms. Perfect, Don't you remember the Rodney King photos? His face beat and bruised.

Frisky Feline

Lots of cops were all over him and kept beat him for a long while.



Look at some cops standing watching .. what the heck was that?

CrazyPaul

I believe that the cops who did it were racists. They wanted to hurt him so badly. However they deserved jail time.

Foxrac

There is confirmation to your post.
Swimming ability gap between whites and minorities remains | kare11.com
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1550525.html

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CrazyPaul

You know what happens if a good cop tells a bad cop to stop?