Product Code Database
Rodney Glen King (April 2, 1965June 17, 2012) was an Americans victim of police brutality. On March 3, 1991, he was severely beaten by Police officer of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) during his arrest after a high speed pursuit for driving while intoxicated on Foothill Freeway. An uninvolved resident, George Holliday, saw and filmed the incident from his nearby balcony and sent the footage, which showed King on the ground being beaten, to a local news station KTLA. The incident was covered by news media around the world and caused a public uproar.
At a press conference, Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates announced that the four officers who were involved would be disciplined for use of excessive force and that three would face criminal charges. The LAPD initially charged King with "felony evading", but later dropped the charge. On his release, King spoke to reporters from his wheelchair, with his injuries evident: a broken right leg in a cast, his face badly cut and swollen, bruises on his body, and a burn area on his chest where he had been jolted with a stun gun. King described how he had knelt, spread his hands out, then slowly tried to move so as not to make any "stupid moves", before he was hit across the face by a billy club, and shocked with a stun gun. King also said he was scared for his life when the officers drew their guns on him. March 3, 1991: Rodney King beating caught on video CBS News
Four officers were eventually tried on charges of use of excessive force. Of them, three were acquitted; the jury failed to reach a verdict on one charge for the fourth. Within hours of the acquittals, the 1992 Los Angeles riots started, sparked by outrage among racial minorities over the trial's verdict and related, long-standing social issues, overlaid with tensions between African Americans and . The rioting lasted six days and 63 people were killed during it, and 2,383 other people were injured; it only ended after the California Army National Guard, the Army, and the Marine Corps provided reinforcements in an attempt to reestablish control. King advocated a peaceful end to the conflict.
The federal government prosecuted a separate civil rights case, obtaining grand jury indictments of the four officers for violations of King's civil rights. Their trial in a federal district court ended in April 1993, with two of the officers being found guilty and sentenced to serve prison terms. The other two were acquitted of the charges. In a separate civil lawsuit in 1994, a jury found the City of Los Angeles liable and awarded King $3.8 million in damages.
On November 3, 1989, King robbed a store in Monterey Park, California. He threatened the Korean store owner with an iron bar. King then hit the store owner with a pole before fleeing the scene. King stole two hundred dollars in cash during the robbery. He was convicted and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. He was released on December 27, 1990, after serving one year in prison.
King left the freeway near the Hansen Dam Recreation Area and the pursuit continued through residential streets at speeds ranging from , and through at least one red light. By this point, several police cars and a police helicopter had joined in the pursuit. After approximately , officers cornered King in his car. The first five Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers to arrive were Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore Briseno and Rolando Solano.
According to the official report, LAPD Sergeant Koon ordered the four other LAPD officers at the scene—Briseno, Powell, Solano and Wind—to subdue and handcuff King using a technique called a "swarm", where multiple officers grab a suspect with empty hands, to overcome potential resistance quickly. The four officers claim King resisted attempts to restrain him when he stood up to remove Officers Powell and Briseno from his back. Both King and witnesses dispute that claim. The officers would also testify later that they believed King was under the influence of phencyclidine (PCP),Cannon. Official Negligence: although King's toxicology tested negative for the drug.Cannon, Lou (March 16, 1993). " Prosecution Rests Case in Rodney King Beating ". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 1, 2009.
At this point, Holliday's video recording shows King on the ground after being tasered by Koon. He rises and rushes toward Powell—as argued in court, either to attack Powell or to flee—and King and Powell collided in a rush. Taser wire can be seen on King's body. Officer Powell strikes King with his baton, and King is knocked to the ground. Powell strikes King several more times with his baton. Briseno moves in, attempting to stop Powell from striking again, and Powell stands back. Koon reportedly said, "Stop! Stop! That's enough! That's enough!" King rises again, to his knees; Powell and Wind are seen hitting King with their batons.
Koon acknowledged ordering the continued use of batons, directing Powell and Wind to strike King with "power strokes". According to Koon, Powell and Wind used "bursts of power strokes, then backed off". The officers beat King. In the videotape, King continues to try to stand again. Koon orders the officers to "hit his joints, hit the wrists, hit his elbows, hit his knees, hit his ankles". Officers Wind, Briseno, and Powell attempted numerous baton strikes on King, resulting in some misses but with 33 blows hitting King, plus seven kicks. The officers again "swarm" King, but this time a total of eight officers are involved in the swarm. King is placed in handcuffs and cord cuffs, restraining his arms and legs. King is dragged on his abdomen to the side of the road to await the arrival of emergency medical rescue.
/ref>
Holliday, whose video camera was in another part of his residence, was unable to retrieve it until the officers were already in the act of beating King. The footage as a whole became an instant media sensation. Portions were aired numerous times, and it "turned what would otherwise have been a violent, but soon forgotten, encounter between the Los Angeles police and an uncooperative suspect into one of the most widely watched and discussed incidents of its kind".
Several "copwatch" organizations subsequently were started throughout the United States to safeguard against police abuse, including an umbrella group, October 22 Coalition to Stop Police Brutality. PBS.org The ACLU draw connections between this event and the subsequent activities of many organizations designed to oversee police activities. In 1992, these clips were added in the opening credits of Malcolm X. On September 19, 2021, Holliday died from complications of COVID-19.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney subsequently charged four police officers, including one sergeant, with assault and use of excessive force. Due to the extensive media coverage of the arrest, the trial received a change of venue from Los Angeles County to Simi Valley in neighboring Ventura County. The jury was composed of ten white jurors, one biracial male, one Latino, and one Asian American. The prosecutor, Terry L. White, was black. Law.umkc.edu Mr. White was a Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles County with eight years of experience. The District Attorney's office denied that race was taken into account when selecting the prosecutor, and multiple trial attorneys from Los Angeles agreed that race likely played no role.
On April 29, 1992, the seventh day of jury deliberations, the jury acquitted all four officers of assault and acquitted three of the four of using excessive force. The jury hung jury for the fourth officer charged with using excessive force. The verdicts were based in part on the first three seconds of a blurry, 13-second segment of the videotape that, according to journalist Lou Cannon, had not been aired by television news stations in their broadcasts.
The first two seconds of videotape, contrary to the claims made by the accused officers, show King attempting to flee past Laurence Powell. During the next one minute and 19 seconds, King is beaten continuously by the officers. The officers testified that they tried to physically restrain King before the starting point of the videotape, but King was able to throw them off physically.The American edition of the National Geographic Channel aired the program "The Final Report: The LA Riots" on October 4, 2006, 10 pm EDT, approximately 27 minutes into the hour (including commercial breaks).
Afterward, the prosecution suggested that the jurors may have acquitted the officers because of becoming desensitized to the violence of the beating, as the defense played the videotape repeatedly in slow motion, breaking it down until its emotional impact was lost.Cannon, L. (2002). Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD. Basic Books.
Outside the Simi Valley courthouse where the acquittals were delivered, county sheriff's deputies protected Stacey Koon from angry protesters on the way to his car. Movie director John Singleton, who was in the crowd at the courthouse, predicted, "By having this verdict, what these people did, they lit the fuse to a bomb."CNN Documentary Race + Rage: The Beating of Rodney King, aired originally on March 5, 2011; approximately 14 minutes into the hour (not including commercial breaks).
Following a hung jury in Officer Laurence Powell's initial state court trial for assault, a retrial was postponed by Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg, pending the federal grand jury trial of Powell for violating King's civil rights. Judge Weisberg stated "I don't think that's in anyone's best interest, to have three trials on the same subject matter involving the same defendant." Subsequent to his trial by the federal grand jury, the assault charge against Officer Laurence Powell was dismissed in state court.
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 LAPD."Mydans, Seth (April 30, 1992). The videotape was largely thought to have helped inflame the riot. " The Police Verdict; Los Angeles Policemen Acquitted in Taped Beating ". The New York Times. Retrieved December 1, 2009. President George H. W. Bush said, "Viewed from outside the trial, it was hard to understand how the verdict could possibly square with the video. Those civil rights leaders with whom I met were stunned. And so was I, and so was Barbara Bush, and so were my kids."
Within hours of the acquittals, the 1992 Los Angeles riots began, lasting six days. Black Americans were outraged by the verdicts and began rioting in the streets, by the time law enforcement, the California Army National Guard, the United States Army, and the United States Marine Corps restored order, the riots had resulted in 63 deaths, 2,383 injuries, more than 7,000 fires, damage to 3,100 businesses, and nearly $1 billion in financial losses. Smaller riots occurred in other U.S. cities such as San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle, and as far east as Atlanta and New York City. A civil disturbance occurred on Yonge Street in Toronto, Canada when Canadians gathered to protest the acquittal in Los Angeles as well as a local police killing of a black man in Toronto two days prior.
During the riots, on May 1, 1992, King made a television appearance pleading for an end to the riots:
I just want to say – you know – can we, can we all get along? Can we, can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids? And ... I mean we've got enough smog in Los Angeles let alone to deal with setting these fires and things ... It's just not right. It's not right, and it's not going to change anything. We'll get our justice. They've won the battle, but they haven't won the war. We'll get our day in court, and that's all we want. And, just, uh, I love – I'm neutral. I love every – I love people of color. I'm not like they're making me out to be. We've got to quit. We've got to quit; I mean, after all, I could understand the first – upset for the first two hours after the verdict, but to go on, to keep going on like this and to see the security guard shot on the ground – it's just not right. It's just not right, because those people will never go home to their families again. And uh, I mean, please, we can, we can get along here. We all can get along. We just gotta. We gotta. I mean, we're all stuck here for a while. Let's, you know, let's try to work it out. Let's try to beat it, you know. Let's try to work it out.. Retrieved June 18, 2012.
The widely quoted line has been often paraphrased as, "Can we all just get along?" or " Can't we all just get along?"
The federal trial focused more on 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, and they were subsequently sentenced to 30 months in prison. Timothy Wind and Theodore Briseno were acquitted of all charges, but both were soon dismissed by the LAPD for their roles in the beating.
During the three-hour sentencing hearing, US District Judge John G. Davies accepted much of the defense version of the beating. He strongly criticized King, who, he said, provoked the officers' initial actions. Davies said that only the final six or so baton blows by Powell were unlawful. The first 55 seconds of the videotaped portion of the incident, during which the vast majority of the blows were delivered, was within the law because the officers were attempting to subdue a suspect who was resisting efforts to take him into custody.
Davies found that King's provocative behavior began with his "remarkable consumption of alcoholic beverage" and continued through a high-speed chase, refusal to submit to police orders and an aggressive charge toward Powell. Davies made several findings in support of the officers' version of events. He concluded that Officer Powell never intentionally struck King in the head, and "Powell's baton blow that broke King's leg was not illegal because King was still resisting and rolling around on the ground, and breaking bones in resistant suspects is permissible under police policy."
Mitigation cited by the judge in determining the length of the prison sentence included the suffering the officers had undergone because of the extensive publicity their case had received, high legal bills that were still unpaid, the impending loss of their careers as police officers, their higher risks of abuse while in prison, and their undergoing two trials. The judge acknowledged that the two trials did not legally constitute double jeopardy, but raised "the specter of unfairness".
These mitigations were critical to the validity of the sentences imposed because federal sentencing guidelines called for much longer prison terms in the range of 70 to 87 months. The low sentences were controversial and were appealed by the prosecution. In a 1994 ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected all the grounds cited by Judge Davies and extended the terms. The defense appealed the case to the US Supreme Court. Both Koon and Powell were released from prison while they appealed to the Ninth Circuit's ruling, having served their original 30-month sentences with time off for good behavior. On June 14, 1996, the high court partially reversed the lower court in a ruling, unanimous in its most important aspects, which gave a strong endorsement to judicial discretion, even under sentencing guidelines intended to produce uniformity.
King was subject to further arrests and convictions for driving violations after the 1991 incident, as he struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction. In May 1991, King was arrested on suspicion of having tried to run down an undercover vice officer in Hollywood, but no charges were filed. In 1992, he was arrested for injuring his wife, Crystal King. Crystal ultimately declined to file a complaint. On August 21, 1993, King crashed his car into a block wall in downtown Los Angeles. He was convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol, fined, and entered a rehabilitation program, after which he was placed on probation. In July 1995, King was arrested by Alhambra police after hitting Crystal with his car and knocking her to the ground during a fight. King had previously been arrested twice on suspicion of abusing her. 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 vehicle into a house, breaking his pelvis. On November 29, 2007, while riding home on his bicycle, King was shot in the face, arms, and back with pellets from a shotgun. He reported that the attackers were a man and a woman who demanded his bicycle and shot King when he rode away. Police described the wounds as looking as if they came from birdshot.
In May 2008, King checked into the Pasadena Recovery Center in Pasadena, California, where he filmed as a cast member of Season 2 of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, which premiered in October 2008. Dr. Drew Pinsky, who runs the facility, showed concern for King's life and said he would die unless his addictions were treated. King also appeared on Sober House, a Celebrity Rehab spin-off focusing on a sober living environment. During his time on Celebrity Rehab and Sober House, King worked on his addiction and what he said was lingering trauma of the beating. King and Pinsky physically retraced King's path from the night of his beating, eventually reaching the spot where it happened, the site of the Children's Museum of Los Angeles, which is now Discovery Cube Los Angeles.
In 2009, King and other Celebrity Rehab alumni appeared as panel speakers to a new group of addicts at the Pasadena Recovery Center, marking 11 months of sobriety for him. His appearance was aired in the third-season episode "Triggers". King won a celebrity boxing match against Chester, Pennsylvania, police officer Simon Aouad on September 11, 2009, at the Ramada Philadelphia Airport in Essington.
On September 9, 2010, it was confirmed that King was going to marry Cynthia Kelley, who had been a juror in the civil suit he brought against the Los Angeles. On March 3, 2011, the 20th anniversary of the beating, the LAPD stopped King for driving erratically and issued him a citation for driving with an expired license. This arrest led to a February 2012 misdemeanor conviction for reckless driving.
The BBC quoted King commenting on his legacy. "Some people feel like I'm some kind of hero. Others hate me. They say I deserved it. Other people, I can hear them mocking me for when I called for an end to the destruction like I'm a fool for believing in peace."
Police in Rialto received a 911 call from Kelley at about 5:25 a.m. PDT. Responding officers removed King from the pool and performed CPR on him. Still pulseless, King was then transferred to an advanced life support ambulance where paramedics attempted to revive him. King was transported to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, California, and was pronounced dead on arrival at 6:11 a.m. at the age of 47. The Rialto Police Department began a standard drowning investigation and said there did not appear to be any foul play.
On August 23, 2012, King's autopsy results were released, stating that he died of accidental drowning. The combination of alcohol, cocaine, and Phencyclidine found in his system were contributing factors, as were cardiomegaly and Cardiac fibrosis. The conclusion of the report stated: "The effects of the drugs and alcohol, combined with the subject's heart condition, probably precipitated a cardiac arrhythmia, and the subject, incapacitated in the water, was unable to save himself."
Al Sharpton delivered the eulogy at King's funeral. King is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.
|
|
