It’s The 20 Year Anniversary Of The L.A. Riots
On April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted four Los Angeles police officers accused in the beating of black motorist Rodney King. Thousands of people in the Los Angeles area rioted over the six days following the verdict. Property damages topped roughly $1 billion, 54 people died during the riots, and thousands more were injured.
1. Rodney King is beaten, sparking the flame:
March 3, 1991: Rodney King is beat by four police officers. He is laying on the ground and is unarmed. His initial crime was driving over the speed limit, but he engaged in a high-speed chase with cops because he feared breaking his parole (for a previous robbery conviction). When he resists arrest, he is tasered and hit with a baton 56 times, and kicked at least six. Nearby and unbeknownst to the officers, a private citizen — George Holliday — caught the confrontation on video (warning: graphic violence at video link).
2. Rodney King, following the beating:
King alleged he had suffered “11 skull fractures, permanent brain damage, broken [bones and teeth], kidney damage [and] emotional and physical trauma.” Nurses at the hospital where he was treated reported that the officers who accompanied King openly joked and bragged about the number of times King had been hit.
On April 29th, 1992, the four officers were acquitted. President George H W Bush: “viewed from outside the trial, it was hard to understand how the verdict could possibly square with the video. Those civil rights leaders with whom I met were stunned. And so was I and so was Barbara and so were my kids.”
4. The Riots:
An aerial view of firemen extinguishing a fire. (AFP PHOTO/MIKE NELSON)
Rioters kick in the window of this Jaguar parked across from City Hall.
Cornelius Pettus, owner of Payless market, throws a bucket of water on the flames at neighboring business Ace Glass during the first night of the Los Angeles Riots.(REUTERS/Hyungwon Kang/Los Angeles Times/Files)
A shopping center is engulfed in flames. (REUTERS/Hyungwon Kang/Los Angeles Times/Files)
Over 13,000 soldiers were deployed throughout L.A. to maintain order.
A police officer responds to a shooting incident as a Korean American business is set ablaze. (REUTERS/Hyungwon Kang/Los Angeles Times/Files)
A boy helps his father loot the Big 5 Sporting Goods store.
19. “Can’t we all just get along?”
Rodney King speaks, calling an end to the violence.
Congregation members and other volunteers start to rebuild the Exposition Park Church of the Nazarene, which was destroyed in the riots.
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Sweetcheex76 a year agoAfter the riots started, I was at work, talking on the phone with a woman when she let out a shriek. 2 of her co-workers went to grab lunch and were pounded with baseball bats on Wilshire because they were white. They ran back in the office all bloody with broken ribs, etc. We then closed our office but my normal 15 minute commute took almost 3 hours. Smoke billowed in the sky everywhere.
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Benjamin Sapiens a year agoIronic (but not surprising, given human nature) that these people responded to senseless, unnecessary violence against one man with senseless, unnecessary violence against an entire city. Of course, if these riots had taken place two hundred years earlier on the East Coast against the British and they Loyalists instead of in L.A. against whites and Koreans, the rioters would have been called patriots and gone down in our history books as champions of liberty and freedom. Funny how that works …
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Museviolet a year agoMy parents use to have a small shop Near there and some people of the neighborhood would help us protect our shop from rioters. Because they know if our shop burn down they wouldn’t have anywhere else to get their groceries. Scary times man.
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MrDeconstruction a year agoApril 26th 1992, there was a riot on the streets, tell me where were you?
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David G. a year agoThis makes me feel old. This was just a huge mess where everyone was pretty much wrong. Rodney King was on PCP, the cops didn’t need to use such excessive force and they should have been punished, the riot devolved into selfish acts of destruction and theft and after a few days they weren’t even about the verdict anymore. You’d think we learned from this, but nothing has really changed.
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