It’s been 20 years today since the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers, an incident captured on grainy video by George Holliday, a resident of Lake View Terrace who heard the commotion and captured the beating from his balcony.
The videotape, and the riots that followed in late April after four white officers accused in the beating were acquitted, tore the lid off long-simmering racial and socioeconomic tensions in South Los Angeles and other working-class sections of the city. It also created a national conversation about the treatment of minority groups at the hands of authorities.
Just about every news outlet today has a take on the 20th anniversary of the beating, ranging from interviews with King, who suffered serious injuries and later sued, to explorations of how police conduct business in an era where cameras are omnipresent. A sampling:
The Los Angeles Times had piece on how the LAPD is now a “changed operation,” though cameras have so far been installed in only one-fourth of its cars:
The use of cameras by the LAPD has evolved considerably over the years. Putting cameras in patrol cars was a key reform proposed by the Christopher Commission, which studied the LAPD after the King beating. After years of delays, the department recently installed cameras in a quarter of its cars and plans to outfit the rest of its fleet in coming years. In addition to deterring misconduct, police officials believe that cameras can help exonerate officers from false accusations.
A blog post in the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out that 20 years later, even with cameras everywhere, suspect beatings are still common:
Just a search for “police beating” on YouTube shows a large number of disturbing videos and titles. . For example: “Video Allegedly Shows Md. Police Beating Student,” “Philadelphia Police Beating Caught On Tape,” “Police beat down an old man…,” “Minneapolis Police Beat Man,” “Seattle Police Beating.” And the last one, where a Seattle Police officer beat a 16-year-old black girl two years ago, is the most disturbing one I’ve seen to date, and all because she kicked her own shoes off while in jail.
The blog Thy Black Man cited from a Center for Constitutional Rights report on police and minorities in New York City:
Their report — which contains data from 2005 to 2008, supplemented by an update for 2009 and 2010-found that when blacks and Latinos are stopped by the NYPD, 45 percent of them were frisked, as opposed to only 29 percent of whites.
