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 particular incident. This type of ethical deviance is something the public has not seen since the civil rights era. Little did Chief Gates, the Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, and the LAPD know what the consequences of their actions would lead to. Moving forward in time to the verdict of those police officers being acquitted of the charges, the public sentiment spiraled into an outrage. The disbelief and shock of the citizens of Los Angeles sparked a mammoth rioting that lasted for six days. The riots led to 53 deaths and the destruction of many building. This is a true but disturbing story uncovering the ethical deviance from the LAPD and the L.A. riots. The two perspectives are from the Rodney King incident are the LAPD and the L.A. riots. The first perspective of ethical deviance in the Rodney King incident is by the Los Angeles Police Department. Police brutality has ... ... middle of paper ... ...les and what they were actually going through was true. I could never imagine a mentality of a police chief being this way. It is an absolute horrific way of policing, and goes against anything to what the current era of community policing stands for. Also, what I don’t understand is how not one police officer took a stand against the police chief, and how this type of policing was never reported and deemed as acceptable behavior. The reason I also chose to include the L.A. riots is because it displays a side of the story many people simply do not discuss. The impression that I received is the rioting is deemed as justifiable. Both incidents are classic examples of how a lack of proper ethics and leadership can lead to such tragic incidents. What is even sadder is in between all this innocent people were affected, such as Rodney King, the businesses, and 53 deaths.
The Rodney King Trial created extreme controversy and uproar in the state of California. The police officers that assaulted King were accused of assault and assault with a deadly weapon because they could be seen on tape beating Rodney King after pulling him over. King wasn’t completely innocent though, he was “convicted of attempted robbery in 1989, [he] served one year at the California Correctional Center in Susanville before being paroled and allowed to return home... there was a bottle of beer in the car when King saw the flashing lights of the California Highway Patrol. Knowing that he was violating his parole, King initially tried to get away, leading the officers on a high-speed chase”(Zook 4-5). This alone demonstrates that King was in the wrong that night. Even though Rodney King made some poor decisions that night, the beating he received was too intense. “Officer Powell came up to the right of [King],” according to Doug Linder, author of “An Account of the Los Angeles Police Officers’ Trials (The Rodney King Beating Case)”,“and in...
Dempsey, J. S., & Frost, L. S. (2012). Police Ethics and Police Deviance. An Introduction to Policing (6th ed.). Clifton Park, NY: Delmar Cengage Learning.
In the early 1990’s in Los Angeles, California, police brutally was considered a norm in African Americans neighborhoods. News coverage ignores the facts of how African ...
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.
On August 9th, 2014, 18 year old Michael Brown was shot by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, sparking protests, riots, and widespread debate on police use of force. Numerous questions arose as to whether Michael Brown was armed or unarmed, if he had his hands in the air or was attacking Officer Wilson, and whether Officer Wilson was justified in firing his weapon that resulted in the death of Michael Brown (Itkowitz). Twenty-two years have passed since the riots in Los Angeles after the officers involved in the beating of Rodney King were acquitted on charges of excessive force, and it left many to wonder, including myself, as to why this happened again. Why were there so many questions surrounding the incident and how this could
The 1990s is arguably the most controversial, clamorous, and dangerous times in the United states for race. The beating of Rodney King and the Los Angeles riots were only some contributions to what would lead to the change in the landscape of race relations in the early 1990s. Rodney King would be hit 56 times by 4 white policemen causing him to suffer through a broken leg, his skull being shattered in 11 places, permanent brain damage, and both of his knees injured (Whitman, David). Within hours of the jury's verdict, the riots began. Los Angeles was in turmoil with what it has witnessed. What was most surprising was that this was the first time
The day of March 3rd, Rodney King sped away from the police officers while intoxicated. The day of March 3rd, Rodney King was roughly taken from his vehicle.The day of March 3rd, Rodney King was brutally bashed and beaten close to sixty times by Los Angeles, California police officers (Boyd 1). The Rodney King Legacy Lives states, “The sickening tape, shot by a neighborhood resident, clearly shows the man on the ground offering no resistance as the cops pummeled him reportedly fifty-six times in the body and face,” (Carter 2). From the tape, the member’s of the jury had the opportunity to see, for themselves, the acts of brutality that took place. Some of the damages caused “skull fractures, nerve damage, a crushed cheekbone, a broken ankle and possible brain damage” (Brady 1).With this information, the members ...
In America, police brutality affects and victimizes people of color mentally and socially. Social injustice has become a major issue, which involved the principle of white supremacy vs minorities. The current police brutality that has been occurring is culturally disconnecting ethnicities from one another. According to Cincinnati Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell, “…the cultural disconnect is very real; you have the weight of generations of abuse on African Americans,” (Flatow, 2016). For example, over the past four years, there have been countless acts of police brutality. The three key deaths of Eric Garner, Philando Castile, and Alton Sterling have become the face of police brutality in the year 2016. People knew that it was unequal treatment of black people by police in the United States and they made it known by creating #BlackLivesMatter.
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...
The four white policemen who brutally beat Rodney King Jr., a black man, half to death for merely speeding is determined by the court¡¦s judgment, as officers performing their duty. Hate, to those particular jurors and judge, was not a valid concern. To them, the beating was not due to the officers¡¦ resentment for a black man, but because they were simply disciplining an offender of the law. To the minority groups, the court¡¦s ruling was outrageous.
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...
The death of Rodney King was a day that has caused change in the police work enforcement. King's death affected the community and caused chaos throughout the nation. His death was caught on camera being beaten by officers of the Los Angeles police department due to being pulled over after a high speed chase on the 31st of March 1991. Due to this it is said that he “became a symbol of racial tension in America(Rodney King)”. Due to this tragic death, it had impacted
Subsequently, the death of Trayvon Martin is seen as the motive to construct a response to anti-black racism, similarly known as The Black Lives Matter movement. To clarify, Shaun King author of ‘Black Lives Matter opposes police brutality, not police’ states, “I believe that brutal police officers should be held to the highest ethical standards and find it deplorable that abusive officer after abusive officer in America is far too often set free without punishment” (King). The author uses powerful diction such as
On the morning of March 3rd, 1991 an African-American man led police on a high-speed chase through the city of Los Angeles. Approximately eight miles later police swarmed around the car and confronted the driver, who went by the name Rodney King. During the confrontation, officers tortured King until the point he was forced to seek medical care. A case was opened and the police officers were acquitted. This angered many people, specifically Blacks and led to the historical “L.A. Riots’’ , where they felt race had something to do with the case.