Quote:
Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate
I was listening to a recent Real Time with Bill Maher episode where he had Arsenio Hall on to discuss Rodney King. Arsenio said the hardest thing is that when they did a 20th anniversary special on CNN, Arsenio's son asked his father why nobody was held accountable for the beatings and now, 20 years later, Arsenio said he STILL had no explanation for his son. And with no explanation, there is no assurance that white cops wouldn't get away with the same thing today.
Arsenio went on to say that one of the people he most feels sorry for was Reginald Denny. He was a good, innocent man that was attacked by a mob lit with rage. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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I'm not quite sure what that means. Two of the officers were sentenced to 32 months in prison after the federal trial. Is that not being held accountable?
I think the beating was very unfortunate and the cops that did it should never have been completely acquitted in the original trial, but Rodney King was no angel. He was on parole at the time for armed robbery and savagely beating the clerk (possibly racially motivated), and then the night of the beating, he led the police through a high-speed chase with a blood alcohol level 2.5 times over the legal limit.
The video that the media showed also didn't include the first parts where he was refusing to surrender even after being tased. When a violent offender on parole resists arrest, it's not hard to predict the outcome. I wonder if Arsenio Hall had trouble explaining that part. The way people talk about Rodney King, it is like he was a saint that was targeted for no reason, when in reality, he has a long criminal record that goes back well before the incident.