Rodney King Aside

Rodney King drove recklessly to avoid a DUI and initiated a high-speed pursuit (anywhere from 55-115 miles per hour at different points) that found its way off of the Foothill Freeway and into neighboring residential neighborhoods [NYTIMES/Us news]. He was intoxicated and assaulted the five officers who attempted to arrest him when he got out of the car. Immediately after he charged them, they detained him more effectively, cuffed him, and lay him flat on his belly. After this, they spent around another minute beating him with truncheons. The first 10 seconds of the George Holliday tape, which shows King charging the officers, was almost always omitted in police reports because it was blurry and didn’t make for very watchable footage. Because of this, the beatings were mistaken to be completely unprompted and thus representative of many other LAPD misconduct incidents that were actually unprompted. Because of that factor, and because the LAPD had been engaged in widespread excessive force and other misconduct throughout the 1980s, this incident became, in the eye of the public, a symbol of routine LAPD misconduct by way of unwarranted and excessive force more than it would have been otherwise. As a result, when the officers involved in the beating were acquitted, South Central Los Angeles imploded into a week of acute civil unrest.