#onthis

Rodney Glen King was an American author and activist who was born in 1965, in Sacramento, California. He and his four siblings grew up in Altadena, California. King attended John Muir High School.

Earlier, King had a history of robbery of a store in Monterey Park, California on November 3, 1989. He reportedly had threatened the Korean store owner with an iron bar and in retaliation was hit with a rod the owner found on the floor. King hit the store owner again with a pole before running away. He stole two hundred dollars in cash and was caught convicted, and sentenced to two years in prison.

He was released on December 27, 1990, after serving one year in prison.

In the early morning of March 3, King was driving a 1987 Hyundai Excel with his friends Bryant Allen and Freddie Helms. He was going west on the Foothill Freeway, Interstate 210, in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. The three had spent the night watching basketball and drinking at a friend's house in Los Angeles.

Officers Tim and Melanie Singer, husband and wife, of the California Highway Patrol were the first ones to notice King's car speeding on the freeway. They decided to pursue and confront King’s car but they refused to pull over. This pursuit reached about 117 mph (188 km/h).

King left the freeway and the pursuit continued through residential streets. The car’s speed ranged from 55 to 80 miles per hour (90 to 130 km/h). By this point, several police cars and a police helicopter joined in to stop them. After about 8 miles, the car was cornered and put to a stop. The first Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers to arrive were Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore Briseno, and Rolando Solano.

After the police ordered them to exit the vehicle, Allen was manhandled, kicked, stomped, taunted, and threatened. King’s other friend Helms was hit in the head while lying on the ground, a deep cut on the top of his head which he was treated later.

When King got out of the car, he was reportedly giggling, patted the ground, and waved to the police helicopter. As King went to grab his buttocks, Officer Melanie Singer thought King was reaching for a weapon and drew her pistol, pointing at King, ordering him to lie on the ground. At this point, Stacey Koon, the ranking officer at the scene, told Singer that the LAPD was taking command and ordered officers to holster their weapons.

According to a report, Koon ordered the four other LAPD officers at the scene to subdue and handcuff King using a technique called a "swarm". The officers allegedly claimed that King resisted arrest, while King and Witnesses present denied any appearance of resisting. The officers later testified that, King was under the influence of phencyclidine (PCP), although King's toxicology report tested negative for the drug.

King was found to be unarmed during the process and he later reasoned that he tried to outrun the police because a charge of driving under the influence would violate his parole for his previous robbery conviction.

Plumbing salesman George Holliday, an uninvolved witness present on the scene, filmed the incident from his balcony. His video recording showed King on the ground after being tasered by Koon. Officer Powell strikes King with his baton, and he is knocked to the ground, as alleged in court that King was rushing towards Powell.

Powell strikes King several more times as Briseno intervenes attempting to stop him from striking again. Koon reportedly said, "Stop! Stop! That’s enough! That’s enough!" as King rises again,

to his knees, Powell and Wind are seen hitting King with their batons.

Koon acknowledged continuing the use of batons and directed Powell and Wind to strike King with "power strokes". In the videotape, King continues to try to stand again as Koon orders the officers to "hit his joints, hit the wrists, hit his elbows, hit his knees, hit his ankles". Officers Wind, Briseno, and Powell attempted numerous baton strikes on King, with 33 blows hitting King along with seven kicks.

Two days later, Holliday tried to contact LAPD headquarters at Parker Center to inform them of his videotape of the incident. He was ignored and decided to send the footage to local news station KTLA. The footage, as a whole, became a media sensation and portions of it were aired numerous times.

King was taken to the Pacifica Hospital where he was found to have suffered a fractured facial bone, a broken right ankle, and multiple bruises. King alleged, in a negligence claim filed with the city, he suffered; 11 skull fractures, permanent brain damage, broken bones and teeth, kidney failure and emotional and physical trauma. Blood and urine samples taken from King five hours later showed traces of marijuana.

Later nurses in the hospital reported that the officers who accompanied King were openly joking about his situation and bragged about the number of times they hit King.

Subsequently, several organizations were started throughout the United States to safeguard against police abuse.

On April 29, 1992, the jury acquitted all four officers of assault and acquitted three of the four of using excessive force. The jury failed to reach a verdict for the fourth on using excessive force. The jury was composed of ten whites, one bi-racial male, one Latino, and one Asian American. The prosecutor, Terry White, was black.

Within hours of the acquittals, the 1992 Los Angeles riots were started and was sparked by outrage among racial minorities over the trial's verdict and other related longstanding social issues. This lasted six days and killed 63 people, with 2,383 more injured. It ended only after the California Army National Guard, the United States Army, and the United States Marine Corps provided reinforcements to re-establish control.

The federal government prosecuted a separate civil rights case, obtaining grand jury indictments of the four officers for violations of King's civil rights. Their trial in a federal district court ended on April 16, 1993, with two of the officers being found guilty and sentenced to serve prison terms. The other two were acquitted of the charges. In a separate civil lawsuit in 1994, a jury found the city of Los Angeles liable and awarded King $3.8 million in damages.

King was found dead in 2012 in his swimming pool two months after he published his memoir “The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption”. The coroner found evidence of alcohol, cocaine and PCP in his system and ruled that based on his history of heart problems, he experienced a cardiac arrhythmia which resulted in his accidental drowning. King had died 28 years later after his father, Ronald King, was found dead in his bathtub in 1984.