It all started with Rodney King, the anger that played out on Foothill Boulevard twenty five years ago started a chain reaction of brutality that still has not played itself out.
Rodney didn’t see it that way, he was old school, and he knew the unwritten rules of Chief Daryl Gates, LAPD. As a convicted felon he’d been around the block a few times before getting high (likely on PCP) and drunk and engaging officers in a high speed chase late one night. When first interviewed about the beating he reportedly said something to the effect of “Well, I ran, didn’t I?” And he got caught. Street justice if you run and get away, well, you got away. But if you get caught, you get beat. Those were the rules of the street.
Technology changed all that; the video didn’t lie. No carefully contrived set of reports about how the suspect “violently resisted arrest,” could justify the savagery of hitting and kicking a man, lying face down on the ground, with aluminum nightsticks over and over again. Some communities were appalled by what they saw, others were very, very angry, because it rivaled a truth they had been living for decades. In their neighborhood LAPD was little more than an occupying army, order maintained through fear and oppression.
Then it got worse; much worse. The prosecution somehow allowed the trial of the four officers involved to be heard in Simi Valley in front of a jury having no African Americans. The resulting acquittals moved us from anger to hatred. The worst kind, race-based hatred. Fifty-four died, fires burned, people indiscriminately beaten, a city at war with itself. Rodney tried, “Can we all get along?” but no we couldn’t. A real, occupying army, the National Guard and martial law was our only answer.
Did we learn anything or did we just get meaner? LAPD has made real strides – community policing, new use of force protocol, but the stick is still swinging. Not so much on the street anymore, but back in the jail and in the courtroom. Punishment is no longer so swift, but more brutal than ever. Sentences for guys like Rodney King doubled, then tripled in the last twenty-five years. Given a choice, I’d bet Rodney would choose the street.