Rodney King Dead at 47
The man who inadvertently helped bring you the L.A. riots of 1992 was found dead this morning, according to TMZ:
Rodney King — the man who was at the center of the infamous Los Angeles riots — was found dead this morning in Rialito, CA. He was 47.
According to our sources, King’s fiancée found him dead at the bottom of a pool.
Law enforcement sources tell TMZ they responded to a call at 5:25 AM PT. We’re told they physically removed King from the pool and attempted CPR.
Our sources say he was pronounced dead at 6:11 AM.
Law enforcement sources say Rialto PD will open a drowning investigation, but so far there are no signs of foul play.
King’s passing comes more than 20 years after he was beaten by L.A. police in 1991 following a high-speed chase. The incident, including startling images of King trying to crawl away from police, was caught on video, and the acquittal of the officers involved sparked the race riots that erupted in Los Angeles the following year.
Thousands were injured and 53 people died throughout the riot, which caused about $1 billion in property damage and inspired a national dialogue about racially-motivated police brutality.
“People, I just want to say, can we all get along?” King said on the third day of rioting after days of seclusion, according to CNN. “Can we get along?”
King was awarded $3.8 million in a civil case, but was left with permanent brain damage. He was arrested last year for DUI but told PEOPLE in April that he was doing well and was no longer drinking “as much as I used to.”
Though as TMZ adds in an update to their story, “According to our sources, King’s fiancée is telling friends King had been drinking and smoked weed in the hours before his death.”
At Hot Air, Howard Portney provides a flashback to King’s 15 minutes of infamy:
King achieved a modicum of fame in 1991, when a bystander videotaped his beatdown by Los Angeles police who had stopped him for speeding after a high-speed chase.
Four LAPD officers were tried in on charges of using excessive force. Three were acquitted and the jury failed to reach a verdict for the fourth. The announcement of the acquittals in April of 1992 sparked six days of bloody rioting in South Central Los Angeles and also launched King’s second 15 minutes of fame, when he appeared on camera and famously urged, “Can’t we all just get along?”
The answer was an unequivocal no. By the time the LA Police Department and National Guard had managed to restore order, 53 people lay dead, thousands more were injured, and property damages—mostly from looting and arson—exceeded $1 billion.
In 1993, the U.S. Justice Department reopened the investigation of the King beating and obtained an indictment of violations of federal civil rights against the four officers. A guilty verdict was returned and two of the officers who had taken part in the assault were each sentenced to 32 months in prison.
The following year, King filed a civil suit against the City of Los Angeles and received $3.8 million in damages. In the interim period, he was arrested twice, once for hit and run and a second time for speeding while intoxicated.
“It’s one thing to waste your life,” Kathy Shaidle writes in response to King’s death, “It’s another to cost your community at least a billion dollars and get other people maimed and killed in the process.”
I don’t blame Rodney King and think that it is unfair to do so. Whatever ill or good he may have done in his life, he is far past earthly judgment and I find it ill mannered and lacking compassion to speak ill of the man. His death is sad.
Who I do blame? The media, his lawyers, a supine prosecution without any courage, the tape was severely edited to cut out King’s combat with officers for minutes before his beating. Without that first five minutes, the beating looked inexcusable. With that five minutes of King fighting (and winning) against the cops it looked like sheer desperation short of shooting him.
Rodney King did not cause the LA Riots. It was the news media, a cowardly DA (who charged instead of dismissing the cops), and most of all the BLACK COMMUNITY AS A GROUP who thought their anger over the failure to convict White cops beating a black felon who resisted arrest justified murder, a permanent maiming of some random White guy, and widespread arson.
The fallout of the King riots was the irrefutable proof that Black people indeed exceed White racism (currently) by a factor of at least ten. Easily proven, the market value of White racism leads to David Duke’s trailer in Monroe LA, not Hell but you can indeed see it from there, and the market value of Black racism leads to Louis Farrakhan’s mansion around the corner from Obama’s mansion.
At any rate, I am sad Rodney King is dead. It could not hurt anyone to include him and his family in their prayers.
Totes agree with you, Whiskey (for once, haha).
I don’t blame Rodney either and everything you said makes sense. Sadly.
Amen. We are all flawed human beings, some more than others. I’m sure if you asked Rodney would he like a different life, another chance, he would say yes.
Do not judge, lest ye be judged …
Another causualty of our liberal feel good society. It is a shame that we keep throwing money into the same rat hole and expect a different outcome.
Rodney was not to blame for who he turned out to be, that can be laid at the feet of a long line of liberal moronic democrats who believe that the answer to all societal ills is a government check sent through the mail.
Wake up fools, if you want to have logical thinking citizens then they must be educated to understand what is real and what is false.
Rodney was a product of his environment and regardless of anything else by the time of the encounter with the LA police he was way beyond redemption.
What a waste of humanity and the same politicians continue to churn out the mentally enept so they can have a voting block. Shish……
Amen to all you’ve written here.
You’re a sweetie, Whiskey.
– to the officers imprisoned by the DOJ of Bush 41?
And to think I always thought there was this thing called double-jeopardy. Now, even if they can’t get any convictions on the actual crime, they catch you saying something someone else disputes, and they retry you until you are penniless and broken.
This has become some shitty country. Thanks, Bushies.
According to the article, the JD reopened the investigation in 1993. Unless it was done in literally the last days of the Bush 41 administration, this must have been the CLINTON Justice Department that reopened this investigation, not either of the Bushes.
Rodney King…famous motorist. RIP.
That’s what the MSM always calls him.
Except he certainly didn’t live in peace.
Motorist: I always envision a chappie in tan leather driving coat with matching gloves, hat, and goggles. Don’t you?
Rodney King: stoned crack addict driving nearly 100 miles an hour THE WRONG WAY down a freeway at rush hour, leading police on an hour-long chase through local side streets, endangering many, many innocent people, destroying much property, ending in his resisting arrest aggressively.
So, yeah. Rodney King was a “motorist”. Who then milked the system for all it was worth, and you all paid for it. That was his death warrant, though. Never give the town drunk too much money. He’ll certainly kill himself with it.
I hope he rots in Hell, keeping a seat for Maxine Waters warm for her.
Damn Straight Mr.J
Rodney got LESS THAN the beating he deserved that night. The reason you see two-handed “like a baseball bat” swings by the Police that look so horrific on the video, is because Night Sticks arent what they used to be (solid wooden clubs).
They are Hollow. Plastic. A glorified whiffleball bat designed to “push, prod and control”, not something that can be used as a striking weapon BECAUSE THEY DONT WORK EFFECTIVELY THAT WAY ANYMORE.
Evidence being not a single broken bone suffered by Mr. King. Lots of bruises, because the tool they used was a toy, against a massively amped-up thug. Thats why it took so long, and so many blows. My Fathers Night Stick would have killed him.
But then, in my fathers day, he would have been shot at the first instant of rsistance, and rightly so after endangering so many lives with his vehicular assault of that neighborhood.
Good Riddance Mr. King.
I await your bretheren in the form of Mr. Martins postumous 15 minutes of flaming cars and shattered window “fame”
JohnJ,
You have several facts wrong.
Mr. King was not driving the wrong way on a freeway. King may indeed have driven the wrong way down some surface streets in an idiotic attempt to evade the police, but he never did so on a freeway.
His wild ride was not at rush hour, unless you feel that rush hour in the Los Angeles metropolitan area is at 12:30 am. He and Mr. Helms and Mr. Allen spent the evening drinking and watching a basketball game. He was certainly drunk, legally, at the time of his chase, which took place just after midnight on Monday, March 2, 1992.
King was never accused of “destroying much property”, and in fact was never accused of destroying ANY property.
Since following the facts of any story are significant in understanding the events, I’d have to conclude you’ve erred.
Cheers,
Boomer
I have no hard feelings toward Rodney King. My condolences to his family. RIP.
“Judge not,” and all that. But isn’t this the very same supposedly morally superior “non-judgmental” attitude that has gotten us into the deep, deep pit of shit we are stuck in today?–see inner city Chicago, Detroit, Camden, Oakland, etc., etc.
From what I read, this paragon of virtue spent his last day on Earth drinking and smoking weed, sitting by the pool that was probably bought with his $3.8 mil. Somehow, I don’t think that this made him happy.
Good news is hard to find.
Rodney King the man was not really what the whole riot was about. The riot was caused by news media not accurately reporting what he did or what he was high on and who then edited the video to make it look like something it was not.
The riot was caused by a Community that didn’t look at the case and instead looked at their hateful leaders, and the news media who couldn’t tell a whole story if it was dropped on their desks just before air time.
This whole debacle was a disgusting episode of American history where even the perpetrator himself asked those immortal words: “Can’t we all just get along?”
The man himself is gone. The stench of the rotten behavior of the leaders remains.
I’m sure the media will find their way to express how King’s death will affect Obama. I mean, that’s what it’s all about. Ax anyone.
The true culprit of the LA riots: CNN. When the whole affair came out, it was CNN who never ceased playing several times an hour for months a six second clip of a 85 second or so video of the arrest. At the time, and very naive about the nature of the press, I thought surely this a an open and shut case. Therefore, I was surprised as everyone else when the jury acquitted the officers. I was dumbstruck – how??
Well, it turns out the defense attorneys had a frame by frame analysis presented to the jury. What emerged was something far different from what the brief six second clip implied. The press who covered the trial didn’t report how more complex the event really was. This all trickled out weeks and months afterward as a few honest reporters tired to make sense of the verdict and how it could happen. In any case, nasty riots ensued. The malignant need of a press corps so intent on portraying America to the world as a deeply racist country trumped any regard for journalistic ethics.
The press has been deeply corrupt for decades now. The difference today is the rise of talk radio and especially the internet which makes it harder and harder for the press to keep getting way with this.
To this day, I view the network, which has yet to apologize, as being tainted with blood.
Ah, the irony of the riots, the billions wasted, and over fifty killed, and then Rodney violates the safety rule of never swim alone in your pool, especially while stoned. He did finally admit that America had been very, very good for him though. He got a civil cash settlement for resisting a drunk driving arrest while black and was going to marry a juror from the civil trial, life was looking good. So after and evening of smoking weed Rodney drowns in his own pool the taxpayers bought for him. Only in America.
Rodney, we hardly knew ye… /sarcasm.
Barrack Obama: “If I had a brother, he would be like Rodney King.”
Kings 15 minutes of infamy was a direct result of his Methamphetamine intoxication and subsequent violent behavior towards police, then receiving the beating he most richly deserved.
I’ll lay five-to-one odds he died from continued drug abuse.
Those cops were acting stupidly then, too. And the media had to act stupidly to keep the news going. They knew that inciting riots would sell newspapers. You can bet they’ll try it again later this year.
If Barracky boy had a brother, it would look just like Rodney. (sniff).
From obscurity thee be plucketh, whence to return.
Kinda hard to sympathize about a guy who became famous for being a turd and whose lifestyle reflected everything that’s wrong with society. Maybe not “his fault” but my life only changed in the negative thanks to his very existence.
That is, blacks felt they had more “reason” to be angry when the fact of the matter is, blacks no longer have any reason to be angry, except at themselves. And the resultant swerve by the white apologists is severely annoying. The lying by the media is also troubling, to say the least.
Finally, making the guy out to be some kind of hero is also a monumental failure.
Don’t forget the looting.
I vividly recall seeing footage of a store being looted, and the reporter stoppped a woman who had her arms full and a look of absolute joy on her face. I don’t remember the question the reporter asked, but I sure do remember the gleeful reply:
“Cain’t be anythin’ wrong wid it. Ain’t nobody stopping us!”
She was probably a regular attendee at one of the MANY storefront black churches in the area.
Yeah? So he’s dead, like Julius Caesar. So what?
rodney king. america’s iconic figure in the new american society.
how is the white reginald denny, anyway? the black mob was so proud of pulling him out of his truck and nearly beating him to death. or did he die. i can’t recall.
I felt sorry for Rodney. Until I stopped to think that he blew through $3.8 million on booze and weed and hard-scrabble friends and family. And still felt sorry for him.
His fiancee couldn’t swim. Way to enforce another black stereotype, lady.
And now we have Trevyon Martin, the new Rodney King. At least we saved him from drowning in his own pool 20 years from now.
Chris Rock’s advice for Rodney King:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfkrw57VnAU&feature=related
Actually the villins of the riot were the New York Times and the pussilanimous police chief (and Calif. Govenor.) Dan Parker had alerted the Police of the possibility of a riot should there be an aquital. The NYT editorialised that this wouldn’t happen and “right thinkers” castigated the chief for bad thoughts.
He made himself unavailable when the riots began. The chain of command didn’t pull. The Gov of california wanted Federal troops and did not mobilize the guard.(He didn’t ask for troops,so Bush I couln’t act.
The Dinken’s pogram in Brooklyn revealed the same failure of leadership