Commission Recommendations for LAPD A traffic stop made at Foothill Boulevard in Los Angeles, California would change completely the way police officers treated individuals from minority groups. In March 3, 1991 a twenty five year old African American would cause the entire nation to see how police officers treated individuals from minority groups. Around midnight an officer decided to pull over a Hyundai that was driving over the speed limit. The driver of the Hyundai refused to stop which led several patrol cars to pursue the individual for almost eight miles. The driver decided to exit the freeway and stop in front of a residential area. Rodney King who was driving the Hyundai was ordered to exit the car and laydown in the pavement. Once …show more content…
Rodney King thought that the misconduct of the police would pass by as many other misconduct reports that had not been successful due to the lack of evidence. However, Rodney King case was different. A bystander had film part of the brutal beating that Mr. King had received by four officers of the LAPD. A few months later Mr. King filed a lawsuit against the four officers clamming that the officers had use excessive force and had assaulted him with deadly weapons. On the other hand, the four officers alleged that Mr. King had resisted to the arrest, and had attempted to rush over one of the officers. The following three months of trial a sensation of racial tension could be behold by the African American population and the mostly White Police Department. On the final day of the trial, the Jury which was composed of no African American members decided to acquit the four officers of all charges (CNN, 2012). The African American population of Los Angeles did not liked the decision the jury had given and exploded in outrage. Rioters started to destroy the city and attack individuals who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. According to CNN (2012) the three day riots caused more than fifty …show more content…
Chief Bernard Parks, has announce that it was time to move beyond the Cristopher Commission Report (Riccardi & Ravin, 2000). Bernard argue that nearly 80 percent of the recommendation had been completely implemented by the LAPD. However, recent studies have concluded that there is still a long way to go in order for the Police Department to reach its goal. Reports indicate that managers have failed to correct the behavior of officers involved in multiple misconduct complaints (Riccardi & Ravin, 2000). Officers who abuse of their powers have received minimum training, counseling or sanctions by their managers to help them reduce their bad behavior. Furthermore, the no tolerance on race has been implemented and caused the Police Department to become more diverse. Twenty five years ago the department was sixty one percent Whites, no a day’s Whites only account for thirty three percent of the officers. Diversity has grown in the department, but it seems that not much has changed since the Rodney King incident. According to Gerber and Winton (2015), African Americans represent nine percent of the population but account for thirty one percent of the use of force cases and nineteen percent of the deadly shooting by the police. On the other hand, the LAPD has almost met the objective of creating a community-based policing. The LAPD has created programs such as the Community Police Problem Solving
The concept of special weapons and tactic teams originated in the late 1960's as a
The Los Angeles riots kicked off on the twenty-ninth day of April 1992 following the acquitting of four officers who had beaten and injured a motorist in the previous year. In the year 1991, California Highway Patrol officers detected Rodney King speeding as he drove in Los Angeles. King then led the officers on a high speed chase for the fear that the court would revoke his probation for a robbery offense he had committed (Gray, 2014). He was caught and ordered out of his car surrounded by several L.A.P.D cars and this led to a struggle between him and the police officers with some of them thinking that he was resisting arrest. One sergeant, Stacey Koon, used a Taser gun to fire at him before they beat him with their buttons mercilessly. He was struck with police batons more than fifty times and suffered eleven fractures besides other injuries. George Holiday, who was a nearby resident, videotaped the ordeal and delivered it to a local television station the following day (CNN Library, 2014). The tape sparked tension between the black Americans and the whites. The blacks saw the beating as racial discrimination against their community. However, no violence was recorded from the blacks du...
-On March 3, 1991, Rodney King was arrested for reckless driving and was beaten brutally by three police officers as their supervisor watched (Wikipedia Encyclopedia, 2004). Two weeks later, a Korean shop owner, Ms. Du, shot and killed Latasha Harlins for attempting to steal a bottle of orange juice (Wikipedia Encyclopedia, 2004). On April 29, 1992, the four officers involved with the beating of Rodney King were acquitted (Wikipedia Encyclopedia, 2004). These three events affected the Korean Americans and African Americans a great deal. The African Americans caused a riot to vent their anger and frustration on what they felt was injustice towards the acquittal and the small punishment Ms. Du received for shooting Latasha Harlins. The Korean Americans' shops and dreams were destroyed because of the riots.
This incident would have produced nothing more than another report for resisting arrest had a bystander, George Holliday, not videotaped the altercation. Holliday then released the footage to the media. LAPD Officers Lawrence Powell, Stacey Koon, Timothy Wind and Theodore Brisino were indicted and charged with assaulting King. Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg ordered a change of venue to suburban Simi Valley, which is a predominantly white suburb of Los Angeles. All officers were subsequently acquitted by a jury comprised of 10 whites, one Hispanic and one Asian, and the African American community responded in a manner far worse than the Watts Riots of 1965. ?While the King beating was tragic, it was just the trigger that released the rage of a community in economic strife and a police department in serious dec...
It all begun one year before (March 3, 1991) when Rodney King and two friends were detected to be speeding in the 210 freeway in Los Angeles. He was driving under the influence of alcohol. King, scared because he was already in probation, went on a high speed chase. Eventually King was surrounded by police cars and had no ch...
On the night of August 11, 1965 the Watts community of Los Angeles County went up in flames. A riot broke out and lasted until the seventeenth of August. After residents witnessed a Los Angeles police officer using excessive force while arresting an African American male. Along with this male, the police officers also arrested his brother and mother. Twenty-seven years later in 1992 a riot known as both the Rodney King riots and the LA riots broke out. Both share the similar circumstances as to why the riots started. Before each riot there was some kind of tension between police officers and the African American people of Los Angeles. In both cases African Americans were still dealing with high unemployment rates, substandard housing, and inadequate schools. Add these three problems with policemen having a heavy hand and a riot will happen. Many of the primary sources I will you in this analysis for the Watts and the LA riots can be found in newspaper articles written at the time of these events. First-hand accounts from people living during the riots are also used.
The Los Angeles riots were a release of pressure that had build up from the innocent charging of Officer Laurence M. Powell and other Police officers that "Used excessive force" on Rodney King on March 3, 1991, but that was not the only reason.(8) In the words of a singer singing about the riots "They said it was for the black man, they said it was for the Mexican, but not for the white man, but if you look at the streets it wasn't about Rodney King, It's bout this f****d up situation and the f****n' police."(9) Did the riots even have anything to do with King? Was King a minor reason for this to happen, or did King put the level of pressure right over the top? Whatever way you see it, the fact is that on April 29, 1992, anarchy was set free in Los Angeles and before the papers could write about the happenings in this city of angels, the writing on the walls could tell it all.
According to Dr. Carl S. Taylor, the relationship between minority groups and police in the United States has historically been strained. Some cities have a deep and bitter history of bias and prejudice interwoven in their past relationships. The feeling in many communities today is that the system pits law enforcement as an occupying army versus the neighborhood. Dr. Taylor wrote about easing tensions between police and minorities, but stated “If there is any good news in the current situation, it is that the history of this strain has found the 1990’s ripe for change.
The Baltimore City police have faced a myriad of problems in the last year. The riots following the Freddie Gray arrest were reported around the country and created a situation where the Governor was forced to call in the National Guard to protect the city. Community leaders report that African American’s are stopped, searched and arrested at a far greater number than Caucasian’s. The Baltimore city police are at an impasse with the community at this time, it is up to the city leaders and the police officials to come up with some real solutions to the issues that can no longer be ignored.
Ultimately, the problems of police brutality and racial profiling may be alleviated by race-sensitive police training, requiring officers to be from the neighborhoods they police, and most importantly, decentralizing the police department. This would include holding police officers accountable to an effective community-elected review board that would take the place of ...
On the night of March 2, 1991, Rodney King and two of his friends decided to go "cruising around looking for some girls." After a few drinks, the three men began cruising around the streets of Los Angeles. At about midnight, King was driving at speeds of up to 115 miles an hour on the freeway. Two California Highway Patrol officers clocked King's car, and began to pursue him. This, however, was not going to stop King. After a 7.8-mile pursuit on freeways and city streets, King was forced to pull over because another vehicle was blocking the street.
Police reform should start by giving proper training to the new recruits and veterans in the force. During their training, “Law enforcement agencies should adopt and enforce policies prohibiting discrimination based on race, ethnicity immigration status, etc.” (Cops, p.90). It is apparent
Martin Luther King Jr. states “the law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me, and I think that 's pretty important also." In this quote, Dr. Kings is referring to how biases the legal system is in the United State. His hope that one day the justice system will treat all man equal and race wouldn’t be a factor. However, African American and Hispanic are still being suppressed by the justice system. Police officers are still discriminating against minority and getting away with it. One can argued, that police are to be blamed for what is transpiring nowadays in our society. Furthermore, most of the riots emerged after an officer killed an individual and gets acquitted.
...te police officers of charges stemming from the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King. As a result of this verdict, thousands of citizens rioted for six days. Mass amounts of looting, murder, arson and assault took place.” Riots are one of the most common forms of mob mentality and are shown in this book several times.
On April 2, 1965, Rodney King was caught by the Los Angeles police after a high-speed chase on March 3, 1991. The officers pulled him out of the car and beat him violently/harshly, while inexperienced/low quality cameraman George Holliday caught it all on videotape. On February 26th, 2012 Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman for being a young black man in the wrong neighborhood.Six Baltimore police officers faced charges ranging from bad behavior to second-degree murder in the April 2015 death of Freddie Gray. Gray died when his neck was broken in the back of a police transport van. He had been arrested with handcuffs and leg irons, but they did not secure him in a seat belt.The death set off (more than two, but not a lot of) days after the riot in Baltimore.