What a horrible loss of lives. Things can be replaced and repaired yet 63 people weren’t so lucky thanks to the LAPD officers being acquitted of nearly beating Rodney King to death. Now there’s more to the events than what little the Media tends to show. King was dealt a pretty bad hand for a few reasons our corporate-owned news likes to leave out.
- LA cops often treated the residents, especially the poor and Black, as an enemy (they still do).
- LAPD was already on the defensive due to a Black teenage girl being killed by a Korean store owner for attempted shoplifting earlier; poor kid had the money to pay crumpled in her hand.
- My friend Lester claimed the LAPD wanted to get even for a female officer killed during a traffic incident a couple days before; no luck finding proof of this.
- King had a record, was drunk driving and tried to evade the California Highway Patrol before LAPD took over. A hat trick toward winning the cop lottery for physical abuse.
- There’s also debate regarding the beating he got. Was he also on other substances allowing him to resist some of the taser usage or was he just scared enough to power through? Did he charge one of the cops or were the others toying with him while yelling racial slurs?
We don’t know anymore. King drowned a few years ago. The primary cops involved have disappeared and sure as hell won’t talk. Sadly, the guy who videotaped the incident died of CV-19 last year. The accurate events are lost in the ether of Time.
It didn’t matter then neither, the criminal case’s verdict acquitted the cops and the city erupted in an orgy of destruction lasting three days. I’m not an expert nor do I completely understand the rationale for riots and I don’t recall ever being in one. What I have learned is the major participants are venting their frustration at the inequality, the injustice and other negative crap thrown at them. It sucks in how these riots hurt their fellow citizens ‘s businesses who are mostly in the same situation but when people have nothing left to lose, the assholes in power need to get their collective shit together to address it.
Bush the Elder was up for re-election so his party tried to blame it on the Democratic mayor and pump up this do-nothing POTUS as a law-and-order guy, aka, he’ll protect the scared, old Whiteys living a thousand miles away. Slick Willie had the Dem nomination locked up then too and I don’t recall his spin. I’m confident it was something cynical and void of substance to woo undecided racists.
The riots’ legacy? Certainly not police reform. I think it just became another sad footnote in the History of the city and nation.