During all the confrontation, the noise and lights woke up citizen George Holliday. He rushed to get his new video camera and starting recording the action. The recording vaguely shows King rising to his feet and heading towards Powell. When the focus was better, you can see Powell and Wind beating King with their metal batons. Powell gave the first hit to the face. The beating went on for a total of 81 seconds before he was handcuffed. It also records officer Briseno stomping on King's shoulder, causing him to hit his on the pavement. According to Dr. David Glannetto, King had numerous broken bones and bruises. There were twenty-seven uniformed officers present at this incident and none of them made any effort to stop the abuse.
After the incident was over Koon got into his car, and sent a message through his in-car computer verifying the beating, the excessive force and the use of the taser. Powell also reported this on his computer but in a more deceitful way. Typing, "Oops, what?" and "I haven't beaten anyone this bad in a long time." He added another insulting comment relating the disturbance to "Gorillas in the Mist.".
The next day, March 4, 1991, Holliday decided to take his tape to the Los Angeles television station. They found this very disturbing and played it on the evening news. This gained so much publicity after CNN started broadcasting it everywhere. Everyone felt that excessive force was used against King. Even Police Chief Daryl Gates agreed that the use of force was "very, very extreme." Soon prosecutors were pressing charges, but not against Rodney King, against the four officers involved in the arrest. On March 7th Chief Gates declared that officers Koon, Powell, Briseno, and Wind would be prosecuted. .
At first people didn't think that this had anything to do with racism, not even King, until Powell's exposure of the "Gorillas in the Mist." This is what changed a lot of views that caused a great deal of protesting and riots.