The Rodney King Riots

The 1992 Los Angeles Riots or South Central Riots were sparked on April 29, 1992, when a jury acquitted three white and one Hispanic Los Angeles Police Department officers accused in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King following a high-speed pursuit. Thousands of people in the Los Angeles area rioted over the six days following the verdict. Widespread looting, assault, arson and murder occurred, and property damages topped roughly $1 billion. In all, 53 people died during the riots and thousands more were injured.

BACKGROUND
On March 3, 1991, Rodney King and two passengers were driving west on the Foothill Freeway (I-210) through the Lake View Terrace neighborhood of Los Angeles. The California Highway Patrol (CHP) attempted to initiate a traffic stop. A high-speed pursuit ensued with speeds estimated at up to 115 mph first over freeways and then through residential neighborhoods.

After two passengers were placed in the patrol car, five Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers attempted to subdue King, who came out of the car last. In a departure from the usual procedure, which is to tackle and cuff a suspect, King was tasered, kicked in the head, beaten with Pr24 batons for over one minute, then tackled and cuffed. The officers claimed that King was under the influence of PCP at the time of arrest, which caused him to be very aggressive and violent towards the officers. A subsequent test for the presence of PCP turned up negative. The incident was captured on camcorder by resident George Holliday from his apartment in the vicinity. The tape was roughly ten minutes long. While the case was presented to the court, clips of the incident were not released to the public. The Los Angeles District Attorney subsequently charged all five police officers with assault and use of excessive force. On April 29, 1992, the seventh day of jury deliberations, the jury acquitted all five officers of assault and acquitted three of the five of using excessive force. The jury could not agree on a verdict for the fourth officer charged with using excessive force.

Rodney King pleads to the rioters to make peace May 1, 1992 in Los Angeles, CA. The riots left more than 50 dead, over 4,000 were injured and cost $1 billion in property damage.

THE RIOTS
The riots, beginning in the evening after the verdicts, peaked in intensity over the next two days, but ultimately continued for several days. A curfew and deployment of the National Guard began to control the situation; eventually U.S. Army soldiers and United States Marines were ordered to the city to quell disorder as well. Fifty-three people died during the riots with as many as 2,000 people injured. Estimates of the material losses vary between about $800 million and $1 billion. Approximately 3,600 fires were set, destroying 1,100 buildings, with fire calls coming once every minute at some points. Widespread looting also occurred. Stores owned by Korean and other Asian immigrants were widely targeted, although stores owned by Caucasians and African Americans were targeted by rioters as well. Many of the disturbances were concentrated in South Central Los Angeles, which was primarily composed of African American and Hispanic residents. Half of all riot arrests and more than a third of those killed during the violence were Hispanic.

August 16, 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots.

POSSIBLE CAUSES
In addition to the immediate trigger of the Rodney King verdicts, a range of other factors were cited as reasons for the unrest. Anger over Korean American shop-owner Soon Ja Du's weak sentence for fatally shooting a black teenager Latasha Harlins was pointed to as a potential reason for the riots, particularly for aggression toward Korean Americans. Publications such as Newsweek and Time suggested that the source of these racial antagonisms was derived from perceptions amongst blacks that Korean-American merchants were taking money out of their community and refusing to hire blacks to work in their shops. According to this view, these tensions were intensified when Du was sentenced to five years probation but no jail time after a jury convicted her of manslaughter. Another explanation offered for the riots was the extremely high unemployment among the residents of South Central Los Angeles, which had been hit very hard by the nation-wide recession, and the high levels of poverty there.

THE AFTERMATH
In the aftermath of the riots, pressure mounted for a retrial of the officers, and federal charges of civil rights violations were brought against them. Two officers were found guilty, while two other officers were acquitted. All four of the officers involved have since quit or have been fired from the LAPD. Rodney King was awarded $3.8 million in damages from the City of Los Angeles for the attack. He invested most of this money in founding a record label, which was unable to garner any success and soon folded. Since the arrest which culminated in his severe beating by the four police officers, King has been arrested eleven times on a variety of misdemeanor charges, including domestic abuse and hit-and-run. King and his family moved from Los Angeles to Rialto, California in an attempt to escape the fame and notoriety and to begin a new life. King and his family later returned to Los Angeles, where they run a family-owned construction company. King rarely discusses the incident or its aftermath, preferring to remain out of the spotlight. Renee Campbell, his most recent attorney, has described King as ...simply a very nice man caught in a very unfortunate situation.

August 16, 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots.