The Rodney King case started in 1991, after a high-speed chase involving King and two of his friends.
After King ran a red light, he finally stops the car as three cop cars and a helicopter arrive at the scene
(Linder, 2001). Allen and Helms, King’s two friends, obeyed officers’ order, but King remained in the car
until Singer shouted for him to get out of the car. Once King was on the ground, Sergeant Koon told
Singer that “we’ll handle this” (Linder, 2001). Koon had suspicions about King being an ex-con, which
was true, was just a hunch at the time and shouldn’t have had excess force used on him at the time of
his arrest.
After George Holliday released the video of King’s beating, many viewers made a riot for the justice for
King. If it wasn’t for this video, the four officers would not have been held accountable for any of their
actions. This trail was sent to another district so there wasn’t bad publicity for the LAPD. By holding
trail in a predominantly white suburb called Simi Valley, the jury was made up of ten whites, one
Mexican, and one Asian, in which wasn’t a fair jury. In April of 1992, two officers were found guilty of
use of assault with a deadly weapon while the other two were acquitted.
In result of the two officers’ acquittal, riots occurred daily. There were more than 50 people killed along
with 2,000 people injured from this catastrophe. There were 9,500 people arrested for rioting, looting
and arson, in which cost nearly a billion dollars in property damage (Rodney King Biography, 2016).
Since then, King found himself in trouble throughout the rest of his life. In 2004, King was guilty of
driving while under the influence of PCP (Rodney King Biography, 2016). In 2005, King was arrested on
suspicion of domestic violence and again in 2007 for public intoxication with gunshot wounds in which
they thought was from a domestic dispute (Rodney King Biography, 2016). King’s life ended in 2012,
twenty years after the fight against racial tension in America by drowning, in which he was intoxicated
with alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and PCP.
In the Rodney King case, I think that police used excessive force without reasoning. The officers on the
scene could have stopped beating King when he finally started to cooperate, but instead officers kept
beating King. Finally, King was taken in an ambulance from how badly he was beaten. The officers used
less-lethal methods by using a CEDs on King to keep him under control and beating King with a baton,