Marked by severe economic failures and rising social tensions, the 1980s of the United States set the stage for many social controversies and discussions prominently seen today. Among the most heated of these controversies includes the issue of police brutality, which hit the spotlight in Los Angeles of 1992 after what became known as the Los Angeles riots.
As the US transitioned into a new decade, the major Southern California city of Los Angeles brought with it a mess of social discordance, particularly in its southern region, which consisted of mostly African Americans. South LA, plagued by a drug epidemic, high unemployment rates, and constant gang warfare and violent crime, induced an aggressive reaction from the Los Angeles Police Department. The LAPD utilized a crime-fighting strategy that targeted mostly minorities and was built largely on violent military-style tactics, causing anti-police sentiment in LA to skyrocket. Tensions between LA citizens and the LAPD continued to grow until eventually bursting in riot when the case of Rodney King, an African American victim of police brutality, was made public.
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| Photo of Rodney King, taken soon after he was beaten |
In March of 1991, Rodney King was pursued by LA police in a high-speed car chase until he was eventually ordered out of his car, when several cops, using their batons, then beat and kicked King for a reported fifteen minutes while over a dozen other cops stood by and watched. After the beating, King sustained several skull fractures, broken bones, and permanent brain damage. Unbeknownst to the police, a witness recorded a video of the beating, bringing the case to court and resulting in the indictments of four officers: Stacey Koon, Theodore Briseno, Timothy Wind, and Laurence Powell. With the video as evidence, the guilty sentence of the four men seemed inevitable, however, after an examination by a jury of twelve (of which nine were white, one was Latino, one was biracial, and one was Asian) all four officers were acquitted. In the afternoon of April 29, 1992, just three hours after the acquittals, the riots broke out.
The riots began at the intersection of Florence and Normandie, in South LA. Rioters burned and looted grocery stores, liquor stores, retail shops, and restaurants, and many white or Latino citizens were made the targets of assault. Initially, LAPD Chief Darryl Gates reported that the situation was under control, however nothing could have been further from the truth. In fact, the first several hours of riots saw no response from the LAPD. By the night of the first day of the riots, mayor of LA, Tom Bradley, announced a state of emergency, and California governor Pete Wilson requested for 2,000 National Guard troops. However, the riots persisted until May 2nd, by which a city curfew had been placed that shut down school and work, 6,000 National Guardsmen and 4,000 Marines were patrolling LA, over 2,000 people had been injured, over sixty had been killed, about 12,000 rioters had been arrested, and several thousand buildings had been damaged or destroyed. From the riots, LA sustained over $1 billion in damages, and tens of thousands of citizens were put out of work.
With the riots finally settling down, King (who had publicly spoken out against the riots) eventually received some justice. By 1993, Koon, Stacey, Wind, and Briseno were all fired from the police force, and both Koon and Stacey served time in jail. Additionally, Darryl Gates was forced to resign, and King received $3.8 million in a civil lawsuit.
Ultimately, many efforts were made to reform the LAPD after the riots, eventually resulting in the high citizen approval rates of the current LAPD. However, the issue of police brutality still remains just as heated of a discussion today as it was during the riots almost three decades ago.
Although this is a sad part of today's world, it is still one that we must know about and act upon in order to fix it. It also turns out, though not completely out of the blue, that police violence has taken a huge toll on the mental health of minority communities, especially African American ones, according research done by Boston University and University of Pennsylvania. These instances of police brutality have led many in those communities to feel inferior and have low self esteem as well as have traumatic thoughts during situations with the police. Overall, this only leads to a lack of distrust for the police system which is detrimental to society since law enforcement relies on civilians reaching out and reporting incidents.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/spotlight/2018/09/14/police-brutality-damaging-black-communitys-mental-health/1218566002/