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Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate
Even if he was
- drunk
- going to fast
- belligerent
THAT SHOULD NOT BE MOTIVATION TO BREAK BATONS OVER A GUYS SKULL!!!
And you will never, EVER convince me that if he was white that it would have gone down the way that it did.
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Going too fast is an understatement. We are talking speeds of 90 to 115 mph. Whether or not it would have happened if he was white is up for debate. It's not like white people have never been victims of police brutality. Is there even any evidence that it happens more to black people than white people?
The biggest contributing factor was that a dangerous and violent criminal (armed robbery and wife beating) was pulled over for endangering people's lives and then resisted arrest. You will never convince me that if that didn't happen, that things would have gone down the way they did. All those things were major contributing factors.
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Originally Posted by opendoor
The big thing wasn't necessarily the beating itself, but the fact that all of the officers who did it were acquitted a year later by a nearly all white jury despite there being some pretty clear evidence of excessive force by at least 2 of the policemen. If they'd been convicted originally (as they later were on federal charges), the LA riots probably wouldn't have happened.
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Technically speaking, 3 of them were acquitted (arguably the right decision for 2 of them) and the 4th had a mistrial and would have been tried again. Rodney King himself said that he was only expecting a conviction for one of the officers.
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Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
No matter what the verdicts were in those trials that city was going to explode. Rodney King was merely an excuse or a catalyst.
The whole situation from the beating to the riots were repugnant.
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I seem to recall around the same time that this happened, there was also an incident where an African American teenaged girl was shot and killed by a Korean store owner which led to some skirmishes. Then the whole Rodney King thing happened which made everything blow up.
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Originally Posted by Forever Flames
I don't think that the police officers were right in gang beating a high drunk driver and I don't think the people put in place to uphold the law should be able allowed to break it. They could have handled it better. What I would like to see is groups of violent criminals/thugs drag drunk drivers out of their vehicles and gang beat them. Then we can send the violent criminals/thugs to jail for gang beating someone, and drunk drivers get gang beat, and no one will have anything to cry about because it wasn't the police doing it. Eventually we will run out of drunk drivers and violent criminals/thugs and the world will be better off.
Of course there are plenty of holes in this unrealistic scenario but one can dream....
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In theory, I have no moral problem with corporal punishment. I just don't think police or the public have the right or the training to apply it properly. When a dangerous repeat offender gets a thrashing, I certainly won't shed one tear no matter what colour their skin is. When you look at Rodney Kings crimes before and after the incident, it is hard to feel sorry for him.