It’s no surprise that the police come into conflict with members of the public. The police are tasked with controlling a population that does not always respect their authority and may resist their efforts to enforce the law. Hence, police are armed, trained, and authorized to use force in the course of executing their duty. At times, they use the ultimate in force, killing those they are charged with controlling.
Under such an arrangement, it is only too predictable that officers sometimes move beyond the bounds of their authority, and that the affected communities respond with anger—sometimes rage. The battles that ensue do not only concern particular injustices, but also represent deep disputes about the rights of the public and the limits of state power. On the one side, the police and the government try desperately to maintain control, to preserve their authority. And on the other, oppressed people struggle to assert their humanity. Such riots represent, among other things, the attempt of the community to define for itself what will count as police brutality and where the limit of authority falls. It is in these conflicts, not in the courts, that our rights are established.
The Rodney King Beating: “Basic Stuff Really”
On March 3, 1991, a Black motorist named Rodney King led the California Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles Police Department on a ten-minute chase. When he stopped and exited the car, the police ordered him to lie down; he got on all fours instead, and Sergeant Stacey Koon shot him twice with an electric taser. The other passengers in King’s car were cuffed and laid prone on the street. An officer kept his gun aimed at them, and when they heard screams he ordered them not to look. One did try to look, and was clubbed on the head.6
Others were watching, however, and a few days later the entire world saw what had happened to Rodney King. A video recorded by a bystander shows three cops taking turns beating King, with several other officers looking on, and Sergeant Stacey Koon shouting orders. The video shows police clubbing King fifty-six times, and kicking him in the body and head.7 When the video was played on the local news, KCET enhanced the sound. Police can be heard ordering King to put his hands behind his back and calling him “nigger.”8
The chase began at 12:40 A.M. and ended at 12:50 A.M. At 12:56, Sgt. Koon reported via his car’s computer, “You just had a big time use of force … tased and beat the suspect of CHP pursuit, Big Time.” At 12:57, the station responded, “Oh well … I’m sure the lizard didn’t deserve it … HAHA.” At 1:07, the watch commander summarized the incident (again via Mobile Data Terminal): “CHP chasing … failing to yield … passed [car] A 23 … they became primary … then tased, then beat … basic stuff really.”9 Koon himself endorsed this assessment of the incident. In his 1992 book on the subject, he described the altercation: “Just another night on the LAPD. That’s what it had been.”10
King was jailed for four days, but released without charges. He was treated at County-USC Hospital, where he received twenty stitches and treatment for a broken cheekbone and broken ankle. Nurses there reported hearing officers brag and joke about the beating. King later listed additional injuries, including broken bones and teeth, injured kidneys, multiple skull fractures, and permanent brain damage.11
Twenty-three officers had responded to the chase, including two in a helicopter. Of these, ten Los Angeles Police Department officers were present on the ground during the beating, including four field training officers, who supervise rookies. Four cops—Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, and Theodore Briseno—were indicted for their role in the beating. Wind was a new employee, still in his probationary period, and was fired. Two California Highway Patrol officers were disciplined for not reporting the use of force, and their supervisor was suspended for ten days. But none of the other officers present were disciplined in any way, though they had done nothing to prevent the beating or to report it afterward.12
The four indicted cops were acquitted. Social scientists have argued that the verdict was “predictable,” given the location of the trial:
Simi Valley, the site of the trial, and Ventura County more generally, is a predominantly white community known for its strong stance on law and order, as evidenced by the fact that a significant number of LAPD officers live there. Thus, the four white police officers were truly judged by a jury of their peers. Viewed in this context, the verdict should not have been unanticipated.13
Koon, Powell, Wind, and Briseno were acquitted. They were then almost immediately charged with federal civil rights violations, but that was clearly too little, too late. L.A. was in flames.
A Social Conflagration
The people of Los Angeles offered a ready response to the acquittal. Between April 30 and May 5, 1992, 600 fires were set.14 Four thousand businesses were destroyed,15 and property damage neared $1 billion.16 Fifty-two people died, and 2,383 people were injured seriously enough to seek medical attention.17 Smaller disturbances also erupted around the country—in San Francisco, Atlanta, Las Vegas, New York, Seattle, Tampa, and Washington, D.C.18
Despite the media’s portrayal of the riot as an expression of Black rage, arrest statistics show it to have been a multicultural affair: 3,492 Latinos, 2,832 Black people, and 640 White people were arrested, as were 2,492 other people of unidentified races.19 Likewise, despite the media focus on violence (especially attacks on White people and Korean merchants), the data tell a different story. Only 10 percent of arrests were for violent crime. The most common charge was curfew violation (42 percent), closely followed by property crimes (35 percent).20 Likewise, the actual death toll
definitely attributable to the rioters was under twenty. The police killed at least half that many, and probably many more.… Moreover, although some whites and Korean Americans were killed, the vast majority of fatalities were African Americans and Hispanic Americans who died as bystanders or as rioters opposing civil authorities.21
Depending on whom you ask, you will hear that the riots constituted “a Black protest,” a “bread riot,” the “breakdown of civilized society,” or “interethnic conflict.”22 None of these accounts is sufficient on its own, but one thing is certain: the riots speak to conditions beyond any single incident.
In the five years preceding the Rodney King beating, 2,500 claims relating to the use of force were filed against the LAPD. To describe just one: In April 1988, Luis Milton Murrales, a twenty-four-year-old Latino man, lost the vision in one eye because of a police beating. That incident also began with a traffic violation, followed by a brief chase. Murrales crashed his car into a police cruiser and tried to flee on foot. The police caught him, clubbed him, and kicked him when he fell. They resumed the beating at the Rampart station; the attack involved a total of twenty-eight officers. One commander described his subordinates as behaving like a “lynch mob.” Though the city paid $177,500 in a settlement with Murrales, none of the officers were disciplined.23
Such incidents, as well as the depressed economic conditions of the inner city, supplied the fuel for a major conflagration. The King beating, the video, and the verdict offered just the spark to set it off.24
A Lesson To Learn and Learn Again
Rodney King’s beating was unusual only because it was videotaped. The community that revolted following the acquittal seemed to grasp this fact, even if the learned commentators and pious pundits condemning them did not. By the same token, the revolt itself also fit an established pattern.
In 1968, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (commonly called the Kerner Commission) examined twenty-four riots and reached some remarkable conclusions:
Our examination of the background of the surveyed disorders revealed a typical pattern of deeply-held grievances which were widely shared by many members of the Negro community. The specific content of the expressed grievances varied somewhat from city to city. But in general, grievances among Negroes in all cities related to prejudice, discrimination, severely disadvantaged living conditions and a general sense of frustration about their inability to change those conditions.
Specific events or incidents exemplified and reinforced the shared sense