Police Violence Thrives Decades After Rodney King Beating

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UPDATED: 10 a.m. EST March 3, 2025

As we speak marks 34 years since motorist Rodney King was overwhelmed almost to demise within the notorious occasion of police brutality. The anniversary drew consideration to how the tradition of police brutality in Los Angeles, specifically, has seemingly gone unchecked within the many years since King’s beating, as evidenced by an unlucky and telling sequence of comparable occasions involving cops within the space.

The horrific footage of King on his fingers and knees being relentlessly overwhelmed by a number of California Freeway Patrol officers might very effectively be the first-ever viral video of police brutality, however, as everyone knows, it was removed from the final. Within the years for the reason that beating, an untold variety of movies equally recorded by bystanders have proven the whole lot from police intimidation to assault to precise killings.

However that’s not the one factor they’ve in frequent with King’s case.

Many instances, regardless of the identical kind of overwhelming video proof from King’s police encounter, the officers accused of mentioned brutality are capable of efficiently declare they feared for his or her lives and acted out of self-defense.

It’s exactly that absence of authorized accountability that has allowed situations of police brutality to stay thriving in Los Angeles.

Case and level: Dijon Kizzee, an 18-year-old Black male, was shot and killed final September after officers stopped him whereas driving a motorcycle for what was being described as a “bicycle code violation.”

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Division mentioned Kizzee was carrying an armful of garments however that he dropped them earlier than he fled, revealing a gun among the many obvious laundry. It was unclear if driving a motorcycle whereas carrying the garments was the purported violation Kizzee was stopped for, however one witness mentioned he posed no menace to the officers.

In December, cops with the identical division Tasered a Black man who approached the deputies asking for assist.

In June, dozens of Los Angeles Police Division (LAPD) officers had been being investigated for “misconduct” towards Black Lives Matter protesters, together with extreme pressure that the Los Angeles Instances described as “officers swinging at folks with batons and firing foam rounds.”

The Guardian described the spate of police violence as a “reign of terror.”

Native information outlet LAist printed information exhibiting space police use pressure on Black residents at “dramatically greater charges” in comparison with their share of the inhabitants. That included statistics exhibiting 27% of police extreme pressure situations had been directed at Black folks, who solely make up 8% of Los Angeles County’s inhabitants.

Past bodily police brutality, officers within the Los Angeles space have been accused of decidedly anit-Black conduct, together with in August when two Black teenagers in Los Angeles County had been held at gunpoint by officers responding to their requires assist regardless of witnesses telling the officers they had been harmless.

To not be outdone, a gaggle of LAPD officers mocked George Floyd‘s notorious police killing by making a crude joke about it by sharing a picture of the unarmed Black man pinned down by Derek Chauvin‘s knee on his neck in Minneapolis final Memorial Day. The picture was accompanied by the message, “You are taking my breath away,” and was reportedly in a “valentine format” days forward of the annual vacation of affection.

On March 3, 1991, King and two passengers had been driving west on I-210 when he was ordered by California Freeway Patrol officers to cease. After main the officers on a high-speed chase, King stopped the car and was the final to exit. As officers reportedly tried to subdue King, they beat him. Your complete act was caught on videotape by a close-by resident.

The principally white jury couldn’t decide if the officers acted excessively, particularly since a small clip of the video was allowable in court docket. On the seventh day of deliberation, the jury acquitted three of the 4 accused officers after not with the ability to decide the destiny of the fourth, prompting the “Los Angeles Riots” to start in April 1992.

That is America.