Rodney King unintentionally changed U.S. policing forever
Rodney King speaks during a news conference on May 1, 1992, in Beverly Hills. / AP
(AP) LOS ANGELES - Rodney King, who died Sunday after a troubled life, never meant to change the Los Angeles Police Department — but that's what he ended up doing.
The mention of King's name will always recall painful video images of his 1991 beating and the following year's Los Angeles riots, which were sparked by the acquittals of the officers and resulted in vast destruction and dozens of deaths.
But the King affair also transformed basic practices of policing, not just in Los Angeles but across the country, author Lou Cannon said.
"The LAPD is famous and notorious and other departments key off of what they do," said Cannon, who researched every aspect of the King case for his book, "Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD."
"The King beating and trial set in motion overdue reforms in the LAPD and that had a ripple effect on law enforcement throughout the country," he said. (Click for a full report on King's life, and death, at left)
After the 1992 riots and the ouster of police chief Darryl Gates, a commission headed by Warren Christopher — who became later President Bill Clinton's secretary of state — recommended a number of reforms.
Among them was an end to the "lifetime chief." Starting with William Parker in 1950, Los Angeles police chiefs had virtual lifetime tenure granted by civic reformers responding to civic corruption in the 1930s and `40s.
But as the city's demographics changed, the largely white police department — almost 60 percent white at the time of the King beating — was seen as the equivalent of an occupying army that couldn't be controlled by the city's elected officials.
Later in the decade, the department's Rampart scandal resulted in a huge probe into allegations of corruption among anti-gang officers. That ushered in eight years of federal oversight of the LAPD, after the U.S. Department of Justice alleged a long pattern of abuses. Many of the reforms proposed by the Christopher commission were mandated by the federal consent decree.
Under police Chief William Bratton in the 2000s, the department focused on community policing, hired more minority officers and worked to resolve tensions between officers and minority communities who continued to complain about racial profiling and excessive use of force.
"It became more perilous to pull someone over for driving while black," Cannon said.
Further, King has become a national symbol of civil rights and for the anti-police brutality and anti-racial-profiling movement, the Rev. Al Sharpton said.
"It was his beating that made America focus on the presence of profiling and police misconduct," he said.
The city's current police chief, Charlie Beck, agreed that King's beating served as a catalyst for reform.
"What happened on that cool March night over two decades ago forever changed me and the organization I love," he said in a statement. "His legacy should not be the struggles and troubles of his personal life but the immensely positive change his existence wrought on this city and its police department."
Attorney Harland Braun, who represented Theodore Briseno, one of the police officers charged with King's beating in a federal trial, said the incident might never have become so important if it hadn't been for the video shot by George Holliday, a neighborhood resident trying out his new video camera.
"In those days, you might have claimed excessive force but there would have been no way to prove it," he said. "Now, you see case after case with videos. People watch their conduct because everyone has a cellphone and can take a video. But it was unusual then."
King was found dead in his backyard pool early Sunday morning. Police found no alcohol or drug paraphernalia near the pool and said foul play wasn't suspected. An autopsy was expected to determine the cause of death within two days.
The real tragedy of Rodney King was that he never got the help he needed, Cannon said. King clearly had neurological problems and addiction issues, and he had learning difficulties as a child which were never addressed.
"He wasn't a bad person. He just didn't know how to behave," Cannon said.
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If hate such as what you posess were somehow filtered and reduced or eliminated from the fabric of our society, you would be surprised to learn that many of the "gangsters" might not turn out to be "gangsters" at all.
I have never known any child to be borne a gangster, rather through a variety of life's circumstances and environmental influences, evolve into becoming one.
Many changes have been made for the better for all concerned. Let each and every one of us resolve to do all that we can to give aid and respect to our hardworking dedicated law enforcement officers who brave our horrific and dangerous streets every single day. Let us recognize the sacrifices they make and know that unlike all of us after we have had our morning cup of coffee, they leave home "seeking" the dangerous hot spots so that we can be safe. When they say goodbye to that kid leaving to catch the school bus, they have no idea what the day will hold for them and their wives face the uncertainty of their returning home every single day. Our official wars like the Gulf war and the war in Iraq will come to an end. Theirs is for every single day and has no end.
Sure, we can all sit back in the comforts of our home and play Monday night quarterback, but we are not staring at the end of a high powered gun-nozzle facing the fear of being struck by a bullet in the back. The best we can do is accept that errors will be made in the heat of battle out of fear for one's life and do the best we can as they do.
God Bless all of our Protectors in uniform and I offer a daily prayer for your safe return home.
p.s. In every city everywhere, do what is right regarding their pensions.
Monstrous oak trees begin as acorns. Your mindset is the perfect example of the kind of acorn that would readily grow into the kind of police officer that would perpetrate such a vicious beating on a human being. I hope you are in law enforcement. You are too entirely too prejudicial.
The awareness of such mindsets have forced Police officers to routinely act more on the offensive. Suspects, on the other hand, developed a strong belief that they would never receive justice and so adopted the "kill first or be killed anyway" mindset. Such a mindset has cost hundreds of lives and we will never know just how many hardworking and dedicated law enforcement officials continue, to this day, to meet their deaths because of it.
The Rodney King video should be remembered as graphic and indisputable evidence of the kind of police brutality that black people had long complained of in LA. The final and complete investigation substantiated those claims and resulted not only in the ousting of the police chief but permanent changes in police department techniques throughout the country.