Rodney King, Key Figure in LA Riots, Dies at 47

[Junkman2008]

It's hard to believe that it has been over 20 years since he became embedded in US history.


By CHRISTOPHER WEBER — Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — Rodney King, the black motorist whose 1991 videotaped beating by Los Angeles police officers was the touchstone for one of the most destructive race riots in the nation's history, was found at the bottom of his swimming pool early Sunday and later pronounced dead. He was 47.

King's fiancée called 911 at 5:25 a.m. to report that she found him in the pool at their home in Rialto, Calif., police Lt. Dean Hardin said.

Officers arrived to find King in the water and unresponsive, with no signs of foul play. He was transported to Arrowhead Regional Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:11 a.m., Hardin said.

The 1992 riots, which were set off by the acquittals of the officers who beat King, lasted three days and left 55 people dead, more than 2,000 injured and swaths of Los Angeles on fire. At the height of the violence, King pleaded on television: "Can we all get along?"

King, a 25-year-old on parole from a robbery conviction, was stopped for speeding on a darkened street on March 3, 1991. Four Los Angeles police officers hit him more than 50 times with their batons, kicked him and shot him with stun guns.

A man who had quietly stepped outside his home to observe the commotion videotaped most of it and turned a copy over to a TV station. It was played over and over for the following year, inflaming racial tensions across the country.

It seemed that the videotape would be the key evidence to a guilty verdict against the officers, whose trial was moved to the predominantly white suburb of Simi Valley, Calif. Instead, on April 29, 1992, a jury with no black members acquitted three of the officers on state charges in the beating; a mistrial was declared for a fourth.

Violence erupted immediately, starting in South Los Angeles.

Police, seemingly caught off-guard, were quickly outnumbered by rioters and retreated. As the uprising spread to the city's Koreatown area, shop owners armed themselves and engaged in running gun battles with looters.

During the riots, a white truck driver named Reginald Denny was pulled by several black men from his cab and beaten almost to death. He required surgery to repair his shattered skull, reset his jaw and put one eye back into its socket.

King himself, in his recently published memoir, "The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption," said FBI agents warned him a riot was expected if the officers were acquitted, and urged him to keep a low profile so as not to inflame passions.

The police chief, Daryl Gates, who had been hailed as an innovator in the national law enforcement community, came under intense criticism from city officials who said officers were slow to respond to the riots, and resigned under pressure soon after. Gates died of cancer in 2010.

The four officers who beat King - Stacey Koon, Theodore Briseno, Timothy Wind and Laurence Powell - were indicted in the summer of 1992 on federal civil rights charges. Koon and Powell were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison, and King was awarded $3.8 million in damages.

In the two decades after he became the central figure in the riots, King was arrested several times, mostly for alcohol-related crimes, the last in Riverside Calif., last July. He later became a record company executive and a reality TV star, appearing on shows such as "Celebrity Rehab."

In an interview earlier this year with The Associated Press, King said he was a happy man.

"America's been good to me after I paid the price and stayed alive through it all," he says. "This part of my life is the easy part now."

The San Bernardino County coroner will perform an autopsy on King within 48 hours.

http://www.kentucky.com/2012/06/17/2...#storylink=cpy

[Poncherello]

He was a mess long before 1991, is anyone really surprised his life came to a quick end? I have to admit, I thought he would have been dead a long time ago....when he drank and smoked all his money away.

[Junkman2008]

I would have to agree Ponch.

[HardcoreABN]

I heard LA is gonna burn again because of it

[PredatorC6]

And all this time I thought $h!t floated?

[HardcoreABN]

Originally Posted by PredatorC6

And all this time I thought $h!t floated?

nah, there is always the submariner- the one that you swore landed in the shitter, but is nowhere to be seen

[Junkman2008]

You guys ain't right. I mean, the guy was no candidate for citizen of the month but I frown on speaking ill of the dead unless the person needed killing. Like a child molester.

[HardcoreABN]

Originally Posted by Junkman2008

You guys ain't right. I mean, the guy was no candidate for citizen of the month but I frown on speaking ill of the dead unless the person needed killing. Like a child molester.

he assaulted LEOs while cracked out on PCP which caused a city to burn....The world is better off.

[Junkman2008]

Originally Posted by HardcoreABN

he assaulted LEOs while cracked out on PCP which caused a city to burn....The world is better off.

He may have been under the influence of drugs and alcohol but he definitely wasn't the one doing the assaulting. It's been a few years. maybe you need to You Tube the video again.

I was a LEO in LA just before the riots. I knew exactly how some members of the LAPD operated back then and although the movies tried to paint the entire department as being crooked, they were dead on about a few bad apples. So I'm a lot more in tune with the facts as compared to what you were fed by the media.

[PredatorC6]

The news just reported that this turd's so called fiancé was on the jury that aquitted him and awarded him $4million.

WTF ???

[XQIZT]

Originally Posted by PredatorC6

The news just reported that this turd's so called fiancé was on the jury that aquitted him and awarded him $4million.

WTF ???

Its not like they were engaged DURING the trial, thats grounds for an immediate dismissal from the jury pool...it had to have happened after. Odd, but a non-story.

[Junkman2008]

Originally Posted by XQIZT

Its not like they were engaged DURING the trial, thats grounds for an immediate dismissal from the jury pool...it had to have happened after. Odd, but a non-story.

A three-dollar lawyer would have picked up on that immediately and had her dismissed.

[PredatorC6]

Originally Posted by XQIZT

Its not like they were engaged DURING the trial, thats grounds for an immediate dismissal from the jury pool...it had to have happened after. Odd, but a non-story.

I never implied that he and she were involved during his trial, just that it is VERY bizzar that they were now a "couple". I wonder if after he got the $4 million, did she persue him with the idea to help him spend (blow) it? From the news photos, that sure wasn't the home of a millionaire they were living in !!

If he invested the $4 million and got 5% a year, then he had a yearly income of around $200k.

Was this a house of someone in LA with an annual income of $200k ?

No. It looked like the home of a $10k per month habit crackhead. Whatever it is, one less dope smoker on the planet.

I wonder what ms. whoever is going to do now for income w/ Rodney's graveytrain derailed?

Answer: Another welfare whore.

[Junkman2008]

Originally Posted by PredatorC6

... From the news photos, that sure wasn't the home of a millionaire they were living in !!

Have you ever priced property in LA County? In LA, you would damn near need to be a millionaire to afford a in-ground pool.

Originally Posted by PredatorC6

I wonder what ms. whoever is going to do now for income w/ Rodney's graveytrain derailed?

Answer: Another welfare whore.

Man, you sure are opinionated! What is your beef with her??? How do you know that she doesn't have a masters degree in something you can't even spell and is capable of supporting herself? How do you know that she doesn't pay more taxes than you make a year? Gesh, get off your high fucking horse!

[92Roadster]

Originally Posted by Junkman2008

Have you ever priced property in LA County? In LA, you would damn near need to be a millionaire to afford a in-ground pool.



Man, you sure are opinionated! What is your beef with her??? How do you know that she doesn't have a masters degree in something you can't even spell and is capable of supporting herself? How do you know that she doesn't pay more taxes than you make a year? Gesh, get off your high fucking horse!

......I take it you ran out of coffee today.....

.....every try getting off a "high fucking horse" must be
pretty nasty fall....