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In April 29, 1992 that's when the LA Riot started and I can say that it was such a terrible time. Lots of people got affected by that time and lots of things had happen . All of the terrible things that had happen because of the police brutality against African Americans people. For example, Rodney King was on a high- speed chase of 110 mph while being intoxicated, which led to his arrest and brutal beat. He tried to get away because he got scared of his revocation of parole and scared to go back to prison. Once king stopped, he refused the request of getting into the prone position and charged at one of the officers, he was then beaten and arrested. While the beating was happening George Holliday picked up his camera and started recording …show more content…
My interviewee was my neighbor Pedro. He was around in 1992. I asked my interviewee Pedro the following; Where were you and how old were you when the Rodney King beating happened? He answered “ I was in South Central, I was staying by 49th and Central. At the time I was 21. I know about this because I remember I was working and on my way home the buses were taking a different route home and the bus driver told us all why.” Do you think it was fare for police to do what they did with Rodney King? “ No I didn’t and I still don’t think it was fare because they could of confront him a different way. They took advantage of their power.” Did you see the Rodney King situation come out on the news a lot? “ I did not have a TV, but at the coffee shops I did, and a lot. It was a hot topic.” After the trial of Rodney King and the police, do you think the situation was justified? “No, like I said before they took advantage. The judge was obviously on the cops side. Rodney King should’ve gotten justice right away.” Can you tell me how you felt since you lived nearby? “ I was kind of scared because I thought it was going to get near me. SInce Vernon and Central was and still is popular cross street.” In your experience, has the LAPD’s relationship with the community gotten better or worse? “I Believe it’s gotten worse, so many beatings against African Americans, and
In May of 1992, performer and dramatist Anna Deavere Smith was appointed to compose a one-lady execution piece about the encounters, sentiments, and pressures that added to and were exacerbated by the 1992 Los Angeles riots. For her work, Smith met more than 200 inhabitants of Los Angeles amid the season of the uproar. Her script comprises totally of the genuine expressions of individuals from the Los Angeles group as they ponder their encounters encompassing the Los Angeles riots. As Smith depicted in the prologue to her play, Twilight, which she later distributed as a book, "I am first searching for the humanness inside the issues, or the crises." She strived to keep up a wide assortment of points of view, talking individuals from all kinds of different backgrounds:
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 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.
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 Chicago riot was the most serious of the multiple that happened during the Progressive Era. The riot started on July 27th after a seventeen year old African American, Eugene Williams, did not know what he was doing and obliviously crossed the boundary of a city beach. Consequently, a white man on the beach began stoning him. Williams, exhausted, could not get himself out of the water and eventually drowned. The police officer at the scene refused to listen to eyewitness accounts and restrained from arresting the white man. With this in mind, African Americans attacked the police officer. As word spread of the violence, and the accounts distorted themselves, almost all areas in the city, black and white neighborhoods, became informed. By Monday morning, everyone went to work and went about their business as usual, but on their way home, African Americans were pulled from trolleys and beaten, stabbed, and shot by white “ruffians”. Whites raided the black neighborhoods and shot people from their cars randomly, as well as threw rocks at their windows. In retaliation, African Americans mounted sniper ambushes and physically fought back. Despite the call to the Illinois militia to help the Chicago police on the fourth day, the rioting did not subside until the sixth day. Even then, thirty eight
“April 26th, 1992, there was a riot on the streets, tell me where were you!? You were sittin' home watchin' your TV, while I was paticipatin' in some anarchy,” these are the lyrics Sublime uses in their song ‘April 26, 1992’ to describe what happened during the Los Angeles Riots of 1992. “First spot we hit it was my liquor store. I finally got all that alcohol I can't afford. With red lights flashin' time to retire, And then we turned that liquor store into a structure fire,” people ,running through the streets, had no pity when demolishing small businesses and taking what ever they may want from them. The streets, neighborhoods, businesses were destroyed by angry protesters. Their reasons were clear, all they wanted was some justice. A video tape of four L.A.P.D police officers brutally beating a male (Rodney King) without any sympathy was made public, which started the bomb track. “Let it burn, wanna let it burn, wanna let it burn, wanna wanna let it burn,” says the song when describing the riots. Throughout these days there was an estimate of more than 50 killed, over 4 thousand injured, and 12,000 people arrested. The damage caused in the city was about one billion dollars, damage that is believed was never fully repaired. The riots and destruction that went on for about a week that showed the people’s rage and that they were not going to tolerate the injustices committed by the authorities.
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.
While the L.A. riots were far larger, and the effects are still being felt, I still feel that the Watts riots had more of an impact. I had known about the riots previously, as I had been interested and looked into it on my own, but I had not looked into the economic at the time. Seeing that there were not any real economic effects from the riot, and in-fact some things may have gotten even worse, changes how I think of riots reported on in the media. Although there has been little in empirical studies done on the impact of the Watts riots, which is odd due to their importance in recent American history, especially now, it is clear that the riots started a trend of misguided racial tension that continues to this day, one that has prolonged the suffering and disenfranchisement of Blacks in the United States. While I do not believe another riot is the answer, researching this riot has shown me that while the riots can be considered important, the reality is that their effects on society are quite minimal, and only the political discussion of the riots is what has lasted to today. The failure of any real reform since then of the treatment of Blacks in general, let alone in the criminal justice world, shows to me a real lack of justice in the United
...DuBois, a black civil rights activist, wrote “During that year seventy-seven Negroes were lynched, of whom one was a woman and eleven were soldiers; of these, fourteen were publicly burned, eleven of them being burned alive.” In most of the race riots the problem was started by a white person attacking a black person. However in almost every riot the police force sided with the white people by either participating in the riot and attacking the black people or by failing to stop the fight. One major reason for this is because the black people had no power, the entire police force and justice system was made of only white people.
Rodney King Beating and Riots. CNN documentary (Full length). (2011, March 6). YouTube. Available at:
These situations shined a light on some of the underlying racism problems that still show up in today’s day and age. These events call for people to educate themselves about what is actually going on in police stations, court case sand places of authority. I experienced the effects one of these events first hand during the Freddie Gray riots in Baltimore. I live near the area the riots took place and I visualized much of the destruction the riots caused to the city. I also heard of the schooling districts discussing whether or not to close school, based on the events. This caused me to do more research on why this actually happened and who Freddie Gray was. The black lives matter movement is a beast of its own, considering the controversy that is has brought about, but it is also beautiful because it started a revolution of properly going about dealing with racial problems in today’s
Whenever people discuss race relations today and the effect of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, they remember the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was and continues to be one of the most i...
First time the police brutality was ever brought up was in the year of 1991, when an episode of Rodney king was aired. It was one of the cases most talked about on the topic of Police Brutality Mr. Rodney King was assaulted by LAPD officers and that started the African American movement on police brutality.
Nonviolent protests were more common than the violent protests. African Americans had built up momentum and were staging immense protests. Little Rock Nine and March on Washington are some of the many nonviolent protests, Little Rock Nine was a group of nine students, who were on there way to Central High School, was met by the Arkansas National Guard. March on Washington was held in Washington DC. Where More than 250,000 people, 60,000 were white, marched for jobs and freedom on August 26, 1963. Violent protests were terrifying for the people who witnessed these protests that injured and killed many people. The Baptist Church bombing was on September 15, 1963, at least 15 sticks of dynamite were planted underneath the stairs of a church
Truthfully, Rodney King's case; this argument was very prominent because in his case were displayed how polices misbehavior can be very dangerous. Furthermore, in this case it was understandable that this cruelty was based on racism. Rodney King an African American was stopped for speeding on a freeway. King challenged the police officers that demanded to stop the car, so he was abuse by white four police officers. The heartless beating of Rodney King by officers of the LAPD has conveyed much-need civic focus to the problem of police brutality nationally.