Rodney King Trial Analysis

Though sparked by the Rodney King verdict, there were many other causes of the riots that erupted on the streets of Los Angeles on April 29, 1992. The Los Angeles riots in 1992 were devastating. The obvious issue portrayed through the media was black versus white. If you did not live in Los Angeles or California chances are you did not hear full coverage of the story, you heard a simple cut and dry portrayal of the events in South Central. If you heard one thing about the riots, it was that there was a man named Rodney King and he was a black male beaten with excessive force by four white Los Angeles police officers on Los Angeles concrete. The media portrayed the riots as black rage on the streets due to the

riots started the afternoon of April 29, 1992, when four white Los Angeles Police Department officers were acquitted in the brutal, videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King. Los Angeles was rocked by widespread rioting and acts of arson. The verdict was an unethical climax to a year of political uproar and national outreach, and the reaction to it prompted Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley to declare a state of emergency and request assistance from the National Guard as chaos spread from the city’s mostly black south side to downtown Civic City Center. In one of the many outbreaks, looters ran wild and drivers were pulled from their cars and attacked at an intersection in Central Los Angeles. Truck driver Reginald Denny was delivering sand to a cement plant when he drove into an intersection of the Los Angeles riots that had begun a few hours before.

The beating of Rodney King from the Los Angeles Police Department on March 3, 1991 and the Los Angeles riots resulting from the verdict of the police officers on April 29 through May 5, 1992 are events that will never be forgotten. They both evolve around one incident, but there are two sides of ethical deviance: the LAPD and the citizens involved in the L.A. riots. The incident on March 3, 1991 is an event, which the public across the nation has never witnessed. If it weren’t for the random videotaping of the beating that night, society would never know what truly happened to Rodney King. What was even more disturbing is the mentality the LAPD displayed to the public and the details of how this mentality of policing led up to this

For decades racial discrimination has been a reoccurring issue that has shaped the relationships across the country. Riots, in the case of the L.A. riots, are a form of venting and a negative form of freedom of expression. Almost immediately after the jury`s decision to seize the officers of charges that included assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force towards King, riots broke out across Los

When Rodney King was beaten by Los Angeles police, it changed racial relations forever, but how does this tie into the trial of the famous football play and actor, Mr. Orenthal James Simpson. Unbeknownst to many, these two seemingly unrelated cases have much more in common than what meets the eye. To understand the two cases, the reader must first examine the background of each case separately, then compare and contrast the cases. In order to truly realize how the two cases compare, the reader must first learn the background of each case.

On March 3, 1991 Rodney King led the Los Angeles police on a high speed chase. Once the chase was over officers pulled King out of his vehicle and began to brutally beat,taze and stomp on him. The recording of the video taken by a witness standing on the other side of the street was locally broadcasted then nationally broadcasted.The reasons that police officers acted the way they did was because “Rodney King was driving while intoxicated and when officers attempted to arrest him, the large belligerent man resisted that arrest.” (Blue Knights with Lt. Dan Marcou ) It was already said that King had a criminal record of second degree robbery and out on parole so the officers were aware of who he was by now. I also believe that racial profiling was another factor that caused the police officers to act they way that they did. As stated by Connie Rice a lawyer and civil rights activist , “The LAPD at the time was almost an occupying force, partially biased against people of color.” (Sastry & Bates) Personally, I do not believe that the officers acted in an appropriate matter because instead of pulling him from his car and brutally beating him they should've just gone up to him and arrested him. I understand that he was seen as a threat during this time because of the high speed chase but there were other ways that they could have handled the situation. The use of forces that could have been appropriate for this situation were verbal commands, maybe a bit of empty hand control with the soft empty hand technique and if he resisted then that is when the use of less lethal force would of been used. Also they found out that in the first three seconds of the film were cut of and showed that “Rodney King rising up from the street to charge one officer in a clear-cut violent assault. In self defense, that officer struck King with his PR-24.” (Blue Knights with Lt. Dan Marcou.) Now with this new information I believe that the officer had a right to defend himself however not to the extent that they all went. Hitting King ith the PR-24 would have caused him to fall and during that time they could have arrested him instead. According to Biography.com, “The United States Department of Justice filed federal civil rights charges

When the judge, Bernard Kamins, who was Caucasian declared three of the four (also white) officers not guilty the public saw his decision very racist. The riots began in the evening after the judgment, and grew over the next two days, but they would continue for several days. Angry Los Angels residents went out to the streets to show their fury. “These people are angry and they have every right to be!” said a man to the news cameras during the destruction. Authorities failed miserably to control the people. As time went by the madness did not decrease but enlarged.

During the times of the riots, the Los Angeles Police Department played a significant role in the uprising of the event. After the video went viral of the four police officers brutally beating King, they were found not guilty of their crime. As there was specific evidence displayed for the jury, they still acquitted all four officers. Less than three hours after the verdict was announced, protesting and rebelling occurred. The verdict regarding the four police officers sparked the riots as Los Angeles citizens were not satisfied with the jury’s decision. Citizens were shocked by the response and did not agree with making police brutality seem acceptable. In an interview, Jody David Armour, a criminal justice and law professor at the University of Southern California, said, “there was ocular proof of what happened. It seemed compelling. And yet, we saw a verdict that told us we couldn't trust our lying eyes. That what we thought was open and shut was really “a reasonable expression of police control' toward a black motorist” (Sastry). From Armour’s own experience, he believes the police and the jury did not make the correct decision. The majority of the people who lived in South Central Los Angeles at the time did. People should feel protected by the police, however, no one within the city did. How can they when police officers are getting away with harming their own citizens?

On April 28, 1992, several riots erupted throughout Los Angeles, California due to the unjust trial when several officers were caught on video brutally beating Mr. Rodney King on the street. Thousands of African-Americans were unhappy with the decision of the court allowing the four officers to get off with no charges. During the LA Riots, over 55 people were killed, 2,000 were injured, and 7,000 were put into police custody. It was nearly $1 billion in damages done to property and 4,000 buildings in the city were burned. The three days of the LA Riots will be remembered in history because of the police brutality, national reaction to the violence, and the people's

The shooting of sparked a nation-wide movement not only demanding justice for Mike Brown, but also protesting the racial discrimination deeply embedded in the criminal justice system as well as various institutions in the larger American society. Furthermore, jfdkjfjdakljk something about international recognition. Similar protests and riots have been springing up in other cities since 1960s, and police killings of unarmed black men happen once every 28 hours (Kahle, 2014). However, Michael Brown’s killing has led to the most sustained uprising against police violence in at least two decades, centered among the African American residents of Ferguson, and has rallied significant nationwide support as well as international attention (Kahle, 2014; Taylor, 2014). The killing of Michael Brown is by no means an isolated event, and presence of racial tensions, especially in the St. Louis area, was already present long before. The large-scale pushback that the killing of Michael Brown has set in motion, then, seems to have been the last straw, prompting the eruption of decades of pent up frustration at a racist and oppressive system. That being said, what are the previous straws that have slowly pushed the black community in Ferguson to the breaking point? What are the factors that have caused these tensions to boil over and erupt into such a large-scale upheaval? This paper will explore some of the

Rodney King was a black motorist who was beaten and arrested by four white police officers in Los Angeles on March 3, 1991. The policemen were unaware of being filmed until, George Holliday, captured the beating on videotape from his apartment window and released it to the press (Alexander, Jacobs, and Seidman, 2000). This incident was not a shock to individuals living in the Los Angeles County as it was common to be victimized by policemen. The difference in Rodney King’s case with other

One of the first recorded videos to bring light to the issue of police brutality was the severe beating of Rodney King in 1991. Rodney King became involved in a high-speed pursuit with the Los Angeles Police Department, after stopping his vehicle Mr. King was dragged out and excessively beaten by four white officers, all caught on videotape, however, when tried for their actions all four officers were acquitted. As a result of the court’s ruling, a six-day riot in Los Angeles transpired, where over 1,000 people were hurt and at least 50 killed. Decades later America continues to face the realities of Police brutality towards individuals of color in the country, and as the use of portable phones and cameras increase, more videos of innocent black men beaten and killed begin to surface. Since the shocking video of Rodney King’s excessive beating, many fatalities have occurred due to excessive and lethal force.

This paper will cover the events that took place within the first five days in south central Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict .

African Americans in Los Angeles and throughout the United States have experienced racial oppression for centuries. (Background about racial oppression by the LAPD). Rodney King was an African American motorist who inspired positive police reforms after he had a brutal conflict and was beaten by four members of the LAPD. Rodney King’s encounter resulted in a social and legal compromise because the incident made people aware of police brutality, gave African Americans a voice against police abuse, and resulted in reforms to the way that the LAPD responds to communities of color.

The Rodney King incident was presented as a case study of how failure to institutionalize some of the contextual themes concepts can result in malfeasance. Research incidents of other criminal justice malfeasance and, by using the five contextual themes as a guide, identify administrative concepts that could have prevented these situations.