By Tony Castro
Whittier Daily News
LOS ANGELES — Twenty years ago Thursday, shortly after midnight, what should have been a routine traffic stop on a San Fernando Valley freeway escalated into an altercation that forever changed policing - and race relations - in Los Angeles.
Unaware they were being filmed by an amateur cameraman, four white LAPD officers beat an African-American motorist named Rodney King. The 12-minute video was aired that night by a local TV station, giving Angelenos and the rest of the world a glimpse of shocking behavior from those sworn to protect and serve.
“That day put in motion the forces that changed and dramatically transformed Los Angeles, the LAPD and many of our institutions,” says Bernard Kinsey, who helped lead Rebuild Los Angeles, the economic redevelopment agency formed after the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
“The city would never be the same.”
Those riots erupted April 29, 1992, hours after the four officers charged with the use of excessive force were acquitted by a predominantly white jury in Simi Valley.
“Ultimately, the (minority) community felt that it needed to get justice and sadly, people took it into their own hands,” says Danny Bakewell Sr., a former civil rights activist who now is publisher of the Los Angeles Sentinel.
“We don’t condone that, but we certainly do understand that. You can only suppress and oppress a people for so long.”
In three days of violence that spread from South Los Angeles to other parts of the city, 53 people were killed and nearly 2,400 were hurt. Looting, vandalism and arson resulted in an estimated $1 billion in damage.
In the midst of it, King made a public appearance and broadcast his now-famous plea: “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?”
Chase turns ugly
The incident began after King - who later admitted to driving drunk - refused to stop when California Highway Patrol officers tried to pull him over for erratic driving. The LAPD joined in the high-speed chase, which ended at Osborne Street and Foothill Boulevard in Lake View Terrace.
With a police helicopter hovering overhead, officers kicked, tasered and beat King, leaving him with crushed bones, shattered teeth, kidney damage and a fractured skull. The attack was captured by George Holliday, who lived nearby and grabbed his new video camera when he was awakened by police sirens.
“From the (minority) community perspective, the video validated years and years and years of complaints that this was the treatment that they were receiving and no one took action or believed that these things were going on,” said Councilman Bernard Parks, a deputy chief of police at the time of the beating and later police chief.
Raphael Sonenshein, a political science professor at Cal State Fullerton, said the videotape gave then-Mayor Tom Bradley the power he needed to reform the Police Department.
“The LAPD was a political entity unto itself,” said Sonenshein, who has written three books on Los Angeles politics and government.
“Bradley sort of fought them to a draw up until the Rodney King beating, and it was the Rodney King beating ... (that) gave him the political clout to finally win that battle.”
In July 1991, in the wake of the beating, Bradley formed the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department, headed by attorney Warren Christopher, who would later become U.S. secretary of state.
The blue-ribbon panel issued a blistering report that detailed a pattern of racism and excessive force within the LAPD.
The outgrowth of the Christopher Commission was Proposition F, passed by voters in 1992, which put the chief of police and the LAPD under civilian control.
The beating and its aftermath - the LAPD was later found to be woefully unprepared for the riots - forced the retirement of longtime Chief Daryl Gates, whose controversial tenure was marked by allegations of racism and arrogance.
“Police chiefs now are considered civilian leaders of the city ... having to maintain the support of the mayor,” Sonenshein said. “Two consecutive chiefs lost their jobs because they didn’t have the support of the mayor. That would have been unheard of.”
No one appears to be more aware of those changes than the current chief, Charlie Beck, a career law enforcement officer named to the position by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in late 2009.
“I don’t think there’s any other incident in modern times that certainly changed the Police Department and changed the city to the extent that the King incident did,” Beck said.
“We’re still responding to things that were put in place by the Christopher Commission, their recommendations, the Inspector General, the role of the Police Commission, even to the way I act as chief trying to be a nonpolitical chief. All that traces its way back to Rodney King.”
The changes wrought by the King beating have been substantive, not only in the upper echelons of the LAPD but in the police culture seen on the streets, according to San Fernando Valley anti-gang advocate William “Blinky” Rodriguez.
“It’s a completely different type of relationship that communities now have with the police,” Rodriguez said. “I think law enforcement realizes that the community has to play its role.
“Sometimes it’s just co-existing because there’s an open dialogue, and you have to say that the leadership of the LAPD has played a tremendous role in making this happen.”
King: `Memories still there’
Now 45, King says he still has nightmares about the beating, according to an interview with CNN set to air Friday night.
“I wake up like tossing and turning and sometimes even hearing the voices that went on that night,” he says in the interview. “You know, `Hands behind your back. Lay down. Get down! Get down! Get down’ ...
“I have to wake up. It’s a nightmare, all right. I have to look outside. It’s all green, blue. That time has passed on, but the nightmares and memories is still there.”
Two of the four officers who were acquitted in Simi Valley, Sgt. Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell, were convicted of federal civil rights violations and served 30 months in prison.
The other two officers, Theodore Briseno and rookie Timothy Wind, were acquitted in the federal civil rights trial.
The city of Los Angeles paid King $3.8 million to settle a civil suit.
Now reportedly living in the suburb of Rialto, King has had numerous run-ins with the law. According to reports, he started a rap music label with the settlement money, but it failed and he now works in construction.
Holliday, the plumbing company manager who videotaped the King beating, sold his footage to a local television station. Now living in seclusion in the San Fernando Valley, he works as a self-employed plumber.
He licenses the use of the video and interviews with himself through his website, www.rodneykingvideo.com .ar.
Rebuilding from the ashes
Today, on the once-vacant piece of land where the beating took place sits the Lakeview Terrace Library, though there is no marker designating the site of dubious distinction.
In South Los Angeles, African-American business leaders like Kinsey point to a historic revitalization of the area that at the time of the 1992 riots had not fully recovered from the urban violence of the 1960s.
“I knew every address destroyed and every business that was burned, and I knew the ones that were rebuilt,” Kinsey said of South Los Angeles, where 1,172 buildings were destroyed by the riots.
“Not in the history of this country ... did we have any kind of rebuilding effort like we had take place in Los Angeles. Over the past 20 years, there has been over $2.2 billion invested in South Los Angeles.
“I think you would be hard-pressed to find someone who would say that the city is not better than it was in 1992.”
When Beck was named chief in 2009, the mayor pronounced him the embodiment of the changes that had taken place in the LAPD.
Beck, a 32-year veteran, came to office with the joint support of what once might have been two unlikely allies - the police union and civil rights activists such as lawyer Connie Rice.
“I think that if the King incident hadn’t happened, there would have been some other catalyst for change,” Beck said. “I think that the Los Angeles Police Department had to change. It was not adapting to the world that it lived in and the people that it served.
“I think it would have happened in some other way anyway.”
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