Posted by
Playful Walrus on Monday, March 07, 2011 1:46:28 PM
Have you seen the retrospectives?
It has been twenty years since that career criminal Rodney King drove like maniac and then tried to attack police officers who had finally pulled him over. Apparently high, perhaps on PCP, he ignored commands by the officers to cease resisting his arrest, and as a result, it took many swings of batons and a kick or two to finally take him into custody without him being able to take down an officer by rolling into his legs and grab the officer’s gun.
A resident caught some of the event on tape. Some. Unfortunately, the result was that race hucksters and LAPD haters in general seized on the opportunity to portray this as nothing by a bunch of racist white police offers beating up a black man for no reason other than that he was black.
The officers were tried in criminal court, and were found not guilty. I watched much of the trial and was not the least bit surprised at the acquittal, as the officers were able to provide convincing justification for their action. Violent, opportunist thugs went rioting in Los Angeles, stealing, vandalizing, and committing assault and murder on TV. To this day, their parents wonder why businesses avoid moving to those areas. Those areas are still awful, despite all of the tax dollars and the corporate donations thrown down rat holes there, supposedly meant to address the problems that contributed to the rioting.
Then there was the federal civil rights trial, in which the police offers were convicted after one of them took a different approach to blame the others in an apparent effort to minimize what he could be facing. They served their time, and went on with their lives.
Rodney King, who burned through his seven-figure settlement money (perhaps somewhat literally), has continued to have run-ins with the law. At least he hasn't killed anyone with erratic driving – yet. He should not be portrayed as a hero. At best, he suffered excessive force in a mishandled, but legitimate, arrest. But there's a good case to be made that nothing that happened to him was out of line; it just didn't look good on tape.
And we should never tolerate rioting again, nor reward rioters with money and job offers.