There had been many domestic problems in Los Angeles before the Rodney King riots. In 1871 race riots against the Chinese occurred, and fifteen were lynched. In 1965 six days of rioting took place that left, thirty four dead, caused $175 million dollars worth of damage, and over one thousand injuries. Then in 1991 a Korean grocery store owner Soon Ja Du killed a 15 year old, freshman, girl. Latasha Harlins, was accused by Du of stealing a plastic container, Latasha then striked Du, and Du shot her in the back of the head as she was leaving. Not only did a few minor tensions break out between the races, before the Rodney King beating, but also tensions were inspired by the blacks current hatred of Koreans, Hispanics, and

The Rodney King trial’s verdict led to a amazing show of, brutality, carelessness, and greed, in a riot that tore through the city of Los Angeles on the night of April 29, 1992. At 4:23 p.m. five black gang members walk into pay-less liquor and each of them takes about two or three forty ounce malt beverages, in order to steal them. On the way out David Lee the owner gets in their path, and has one of the bottles smashed over his head, he then proceeds to move out of the way, and let them pass. Samuel Lee, David’s father, was behind a bulletproof shield, watching the incident happen, he then pushed a silent alarm, but the cops were too slow, and the children got away, as the kids ran away one of them yelled “This is for Rodney King.” This crime committed at pay-less liquor, was the first crime out of spite of Rodney King, and there were many too follow. At 5:22 at the corners of Florence, Hillendale avenues police are called due to eight black males standing in the street throwing bottles, and rocks, at passing cars, and hitting them with baseball bats, this is happening just about one hundred yards away from pay-less liquor. At around 5:45 the police arrive, and arrest Seandel Daniels, Cerman Cunningham, and Marc Jackson, all under eighteen, and was arrested for throwing objects. As two officers detained Seandel Daniels, he screamed I can’t breath, and one of the officers said to the other, “Take it easy, we don’t want another Rodney King here.” As the two officers took Seandel back to their cruiser one of the officers spots two men in the crowd with video cameras, whom later asked were just making sure there was no “misconduct.”

King committed many crimes on the night of his beating, and his trial did not allude to those crimes. King was drunk, ran from the police, and did not seem to care about his health, or the friends in his car, or the area surrounding him. King’s trial somehow was not over any other crimes but the one committed against King, for abuse of force by the officers. The all white jury from Simi Valley, a pro-police, law-biding community, tried the officers and acquitted every one of them of all the charges, and only put them all on probation. This verdict sparked a massive riot in the South Central section of Los Angeles. The second trial was taken to the Supreme Court led by Justice John G. Davies, by King on a case of violating King’s civil rights. Officer’s Stacey Koon, and Laurence Powell were found guilty of violating King’s civil rights, and both served two years in prison. So both sides of the Court benefited, by either getting the charges dropped for certain crimes, or not gett

Some topics in this essay:
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