Rodney King

• Born: April 2, 1965
• Birthplace: Sacramento, California
• Died: June 17, 2012
• Place of death: Rialto, California

American petty criminal

Also known as: Rodney Glenn King (full name); Glenn King

Cause of notoriety: After King was stopped for a traffic violation, his beating at the hands of police was captured on videotape by a witness and received wide news coverage. The police officers involved stood trial; the not guilty verdict triggered the Los Angeles riots.

Active: March 3, 1991

Locale: Lake View Terrace and south central Los Angeles

Early Life

Born in Sacramento in 1965, Rodney King went by his middle name, Glenn, until he became famous in 1992 under the name on his police report, Rodney. King showed considerable athletic promise but began drinking at an early age. Teenage friends described him as friendly and gentle but capable of irrationality after drinking. He dropped out of high school his senior year and found construction work in Los Angeles.

Criminal Career

On November 3, 1989, King was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and second-degree robbery of two hundred dollars from a convenience store. He was sentenced to prison for two years but was placed on parole. During a traffic stop by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) on March 3, 1991, King was beaten and then arrested.

This police activity was caught on videotape by a bystander, George Holliday, who was wakened by the noise and lights and began taping from his apartment balcony using his new camcorder. Holliday repositioned the camera to get a better view, at which point he captured the officers in the middle of beating King. Television stations later edited out the earlier, blurred segment (which probably provided some context for the beatings) and began to air the tape repeatedly. Police dispatch tapes recorded the almost cavalier speech of the officers who carried out the beating. LAPD had previously paid millions of dollars to victims of police brutality.

Legal Action and Outcome

Four LAPD officers were charged with using excessive force in subduing King. On April 29, 1992, a California jury acquitted all four of them, which acted as the flash point for the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The verdict had racist overtones: All the officers were white, and they were acquitted in a court located in the mainly white suburb of Simi Valley.

On that day, the verdict triggered growing protests into the late afternoon and evening. Los Angeles television stations began airing live helicopter coverage of mainly young African American and Latino males breaking store windows, looting, and setting fires. Reginald Denny, a white truck driver caught in traffic caused by the mob, was pulled from his truck and beaten. It was clear to those who watched these events live that the lawbreakers—mainly low-income minorities, many of whom would not normally think of crossing such ethical lines—felt justified by what appeared obvious: the political and economic dominance and arrogance of privileged white authorities. Fires burned for three days, and more looting followed. The civil unrest spread throughout the city, making it one of the worst disturbances in Los Angeles history, comparable to the 1965 Watts riots. The LAPD and the California National Guard finally restored order.

Impact

Although Rodney King’s beating and the attendant trial have been blamed for the riots, the city was suffering from an economic depression caused by the collapse of the aerospace industry and end of the Cold War. The poor—who were largely ethnic minorities—suffered first and suffered most. The repeated vision of white police officers beating a poor black man triggered hostilities fueled by economic stress which aggravated the ethnic divisions and tensions. In south central Los Angeles especially, neighborhoods and small stores had become increasingly ethnically diverse. Much analysis followed, speculating on whether—in the 1990s—racial prejudice or socioeconomic divisions were at the root of the explosive unrest; many concluded that both factors were at fault and that both were deeply intertwined.

The total cost of the riots was estimated at more than one billion dollars. Fifty-five people were killed; 2,387 were injured. Whole neighborhoods looked like war zones. Hundreds of buildings were severely damaged or destroyed. More than eight thousand people were finally arrested.

President George Bush, Sr., and Attorney General William P. Barr ordered the Department of Justice to investigate. A federal grand jury indicted two of the four LAPD officers, and both were sentenced under federal guidelines to thirty months in federal prison for violating King’s civil rights. In a civil suit against Los Angeles, a jury awarded King $3.8 million. African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans began building working partnerships to reduce friction and began applying for federal development grants.

Rodney King continued to have intermittent trouble with the law for minor infractions. The King beating became a watershed case in the use of force by the police. Many police departments, including the LAPD, changed their practices. The image of Rodney King being interviewed during the riots and asking the question on all Americans’ minds—“Can we all get along? Can we all just get along?”—remains a poignant legacy.

In early April 2012, King gave a lengthy interview to the Los Angeles Times in which he reflected on his continued status as a symbol of the issue of police brutality, and unlike in the past, he intimated that he had come to accept that his beating played a role in inspiring significant change. However, as he had still not quit drinking or abusing drugs, he had found it difficult to maintain a steady job over the years and struggled to pay the bills, despite receiving an advance from his memoir The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption (2012). Only months later, on June 17, 2012, King was found dead in the swimming pool at his home in Rialto, California; he was forty-seven years old. In April 2017, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first day of rioting in Los Angeles following the acquittal of the officers involved in King's beating, the country reflected upon the state of race relations, including repeated incidents of police brutality against African Americans nationwide—such as in Missouri, New York, Louisiana, and Minnesota.

Bibliography

Abelmann, Nancy, and John Lie. Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots. Harvard UP, 1995. An examination of urban poverty and ethnic conflict between Korean Americans and African Americans in the Los Angeles riots of 1992.

Cannon, Lou. Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD. Basic Books, 1999. A Washington Post journalist’s investigation of the LAPD and King beating.

Hunt, Darnell M. Screening the Los Angeles “Riots”: Race, Seeing, and Resistance. Cambridge UP, 1997. Combines ethnographic and field research to produce examination of the power of television coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Koon, Stacey C., with Robert Deitz. Presumed Guilty: The Tragedy of the Rodney King Affair. Regnery, 1992. Biography written by the LAPD sergeant who was in charge of the officers who beat King.

Medina, Jennifer. "The L.A. Riots 25 Years Later: A Return to the Epicenter." The New York Times, 28 Apr. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/us/la-riots-rodney-king-south-central-1992.html. Accessed 27 Oct. 2017.

Medina, Jennifer. "Rodney King Dies at 47; Police Beating Victim Who Asked 'Can We All Get Along?'" The New York Times, 17 June 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/06/18/us/rodney-king-whose-beating-led-to-la-riots-dead-at-47.html. Accessed 27 Oct. 2017.

Streeter, Kurt. "The Past Still Grips Rodney King." Los Angeles Times, 23 Apr. 2012, articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/23/local/la-me-riot-rodney-king-20120423-1. Accessed 27 Oct. 2017.