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.”
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.”
(Cross-posted at Ed Driscoll.com.)
God’s mercy on him, may he rest in peace.
“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.”
That may be so, but it wasn’t Rodney King who encouraged the rioting, nor was it Rodney King who did the rioting, nor was it Rodney King who let the rioters rob and burn scot-free for several days.
Amen.
He was, after all, just some guy.
In some ways, maybe what LA went through was fated, asked for, necessary.
Doesn’t make it pretty.
Just 20 years ago.
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/sublime/april29th1992miami.html
We’re you there, Kathy Shaidle???
The guy was a petty and inadvertent player in the whole affair. The Lefties, the media (which developed and ran with the video in endless loops while constantly slandering the cops), along with a virus of race-pimp excrement like Sharpton and Jackson, all ginned up the story until LA burst into flames. I was there. The fire burned right around where I worked and lived. Get your facts right.
the media (which developed and ran with the video in endless loops while constantly slandering the cops), along with a virus of race-pimp excrement like Sharpton and Jackson, all ginned up the story
Never forget that the endless loops only showed part of the incident. Deliberately omitted (isn’t that the standard tactic of media aiming to shove public opinion left?) was the footage of the beginning of the police encounter. But it might have mitigated the media-created sympathy for Rodney King by showing his own misdeeds, so had to go.
I think the point being that if Mr. King had done the right thing the first time, what followed would not have happened. He is both faultless for the riots and at fault for the riots–all at the same time. This is not to mean another spark would not have set the events off–they would have. But he nevertheless ended up being the spark, not someone else, and since it was an act of commission on his part, the blood does lie partially on his hands–from an ethical viewpoint.
Never think that entirely disproportionate results can’t occur from our bad actions. It’s hard enough to avoid them when we are *trying* to do the right thing. How much harder when we aren’t.
Exactly, Anonymous. Our actions have consequences far beyond our intentions and imaginings.
No, I wasn’t there, but Rodney K. and I had something in common, so I feel I do have the right to make an educated guess on one matter:
That he used the phrase “my drinking isn’t hurting anybody but me” at least 200 times in his life.
Here are some facts about the case that aren’t always mentioned:
http://countmazz.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/dennis-prager-rodney-king/
King was a repeat felon:
http://www.vh1.com/shows/celebrity_rehab_with_dr_drew/season_2/cast_member.jhtml?personalityId=11669
And by the way: King wasn’t on PCP, as cops suspected. That was 100% booze at work.
“A pool?” Yes. King blew all his settlement money on booze though, so who knows how that happened.
What I find weirder than the “pool” is… the “fiance.”
And Scoopy, you are so right. People with no moral or philosophical foundation fall back on cliches and/or empty rhetoric under those circumstance. In fairness of a sort, he likely had permanent brain damage and not necessarily all from the beating.
King had a crappy childhood, and probably never had a chance. But he’s an extreme individual example of something most honest people have already observed in the main:
throwing millions of dollars of “white guilt” ransom money at uneducated, “underprivileged” people with bad impulse control and lousy family backgrounds is worse about a effective as flushing it down a toilet.
throwing millions of dollars of “white guilt” ransom money at uneducated, “underprivileged” people with bad impulse control and lousy family backgrounds is worse about a effective as flushing it down a toilet.
I agree, mostly because these civil settlements do nothing to hold the actual wrongdoers (the cops, that is, who violate the rights of their fellow citizens) accountable.
King was Sudetenized just like Trayvon Martin was. The criminal element within the black community has been propagandized by the Left, particularly by the black Left, into believing their criminal acts are actually more on the level or Robin Hood than immorality. It’s no surprise this criminal community see cops as the enemy. Both cops and criminals have become radicalized.
The difference is that cops are doing their job and are not just out there for fun. I don’t like cops much but the level of abuse and violence and endemic criminality they have to deal with daily is almost unbelievable to understand from those not involved in it.
The political Left is on the same bandwagon again with their New Jim Crow and sad theories about stop-and-frisk and “driving while black” as if they explain the endemic criminality of black Americans. Despite what Cory Booker, Michelle Alexander and Micheal Eric Dyson would have us believe, the sad fact of an unacceptable percentage of black Americans in prison is not a sign of white racism but the sign of a black American culture steeped in criminality. Don’t do crimes and no cops will be beating you or putting you in prison. I could get stopped by police 100 times a day but that’s not going to give me an arrest record if I’m not breaking the law.
I don’t get the blame on Rodney King at all. For me, the blame for the riots is on:
(1) The cops, who broke the law (remember, two of them were convicted, eventually).
(2) The first jury, which let them walk. The terrible cop culture of LA (and please, no denials that the culture of police departments then and now is that of an us v. them occupying army, not protect-and-serve civil servants) is aided and abetted by the almost complete lack of accountability for cops who break the law.
(3) The race hustlers, who fanned the flames.
– pool?
As I remember it, Rodney begged his fellow miscreants to ‘get along’ only after he was drug in front of the cameras by his legal team. The appeal for reason and sanity was not his idea and his ‘speech’ did nothing to calm the rioting. Seriously, has anyone ever seen a more wooden and uncomfortable performance? When there was nothing left to loot or burn, the animals finally went home on their own volition, no thanks to ‘getting along’.
I’m not a fan, but Rodney’s adventures did shed a light on a few important things:
(1) Never run from the police unless you want to be beaten senseless.
(2) Never expect the police to ‘police’ themselves.
(3) Never expect a drunk driver to reform.
As I frecall, a prominent rapper even went on TV essentially telling Rodney to STFU with the “just get along” stuff. And for some reason I’m remembering it as Ice-T, the guy who’s on one of the Law & Order shows on TV now.
Gotta agree w. previous comments. King wasn’t responsible for the riots. He was really a pathetic figure. I’m not sure who to compare him with. Horst Wessel, maybe.
The whole LA riot situation was pathetic. I lived close to LA county when the riots occurred. I recall sitting on the roof of my house watching the flames and smoke from the fires.
What made this whole affair disgusting was that none of the guilty parties were ever held to account. Rodney King’s own actions initiated the situation, so he is partly to blame. Rodney King was a career petty criminal and a deadbeat father. But he also should not have received a beating from the LAPD as a result of that incident. The rioters that looted and burned private properties in LA were never held to account, nor were the LAPD officers involved in the beating.
There were also the numerous Korean businessmen that had their properties looted and burned while the LAPD stood by and did nothing. Or what about poor Reginald Denny? He was beaten within an inch of his life by rioters, the perpetrators were caught on video attacking him, yet nothing was done about that crime. Sadly, it was the typical case of reward the guilty and punish the innocent.
Those involved in the LA riots were just deadbeats looking for an excuse to lash out at someone else for their miserable condition in life, just like the Occupy scumbags. Those truly responsible for the massive damage resulting from the riots were never held to account (ie. Rodney King, LAPD, LA City Council, the rioters, etc.)
Rodney King himself profited handsomely from this sordid event. But he never bothered to pass along any of that filthy lucre to those that suffered far worse abuse than he did. So it is just cosmic justice that he wound up floating face-down in a pool at the age of forty seven after a day of drinking and carousing.
Ok, this is cold hearted but I still recall the video – some of it live – of the looters, and how this all started with a habitual drunk driver.
He ruined hundreds if not thousands of lives.
As such, the thought that occurs upon hearing he was found face down in water is…..did someone forget the flush cycle?