Rodney King, the Riots, Aftermath, Etc.

There have already been a lot of retrospective articles about Watergate, since that scandal started unraveling forty years ago.  And now with Rodney King’s death yesterday, everybody is reminiscing about the Rodney King era:  his videotaped police beatdown in March 1991, the 1992 acquittal of the four LAPD goons by an all-white jury and the subsequent L.A. riots that killed fifty-three people and injured over 2,000.

By 1992, most people thought civil rights violations being acquitted by jurors was a relic of the Deep South in the 1950s and early ‘60s.  But that fantasy disappeared when twelve white trash inbreds watched the 81-second video of Rodney King being clubbed 56 times, watched the video again and again, and went “Huh?  Police brutality?  Where?”

(Two of the LAPD Gang of Four were later convicted on federal civil rights charges.)

Most people over a certain age probably remember where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the four LAPD knuckledraggers being acquitted, and/or heard the news that L.A. was on fire.

I remember some of the jokes going around:  L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates called for a two-week waiting period before you could buy a video camera.  (At least I think it was just a joke.)

Adam Sandler called Daryl Gates a douchebag on Saturday Night Live during one of his Opera Man skits; “bagga doucha” to be exact.  Also:

Q.  How many LAPD officers does it take to push a suspect down the stairs?

A.  None.  He fell all by himself.

And a few rock bands got in their two cents worth.  Living Color expressed their angst in a track from their Stain album (1993).  And on the Judgment Night soundtrack (also 1993), there was a reference to “L.A. ’92” on this Slayer/Ice-T collaboration.

Police Brutality is Legal; Photographing It ISN’T

This seems to be some people’s “reasoning.”  The infamous Rodney King beating by the LAPD would have been their little secret if the entire incident hadn’t been videotaped from somebody’s apartment window.  At the time, there were jokes going around that the L.A. city council wanted a 3-day waiting period before you could buy a video camera.

These days it’s not even a joke.  There are already a few state and local laws prohibiting citizens from videotaping police officers during an arrest.  Leonard Pitts, Jr. writes about it in this column, Give Thanks to Citizens With Cameras.

He tells about a woman in Rochester, NY who was arrested for videotaping a traffic stop from her own yard.  In Miami Beach, a man was arrested, beaten by police and had his cell phone stomped on — how convenient — after he recorded an officer-involved shooting.

The recent pepper spraying incident art UC Davis would have been nothing more than a rumor if the incident hadn’t been captured on a cell phone.  Same with the police execution of an unarmed handcuffed suspect on an Oakland BART train (New Year’s Day 2009.)  The executioner, BART police officer Johannes Mehserle, is already out of jail after serving a shorter sentence than most people would get for shoplifting.  But if the murder hadn’t been caught by somebody’s cell phone, the police would have come up with an official story that the murder victim — Oscar Grant — had fallen and hit his head; pulled a gun and had to be shot; or something.

About ten years ago (give or take), the San Francisco Police Department filed a libel suit against a woman whose only “crime” was giving a sworn statement about what she had witnessed during an arrest.

Just as you don’t need a weather man to tell which way the wind blows, you don’t need a court ruling to know that these laws against videotaping police officers are clearly unconstitutional.  Every one of these laws should be suspended immediately by the federal government until the courts can come to the obvious conclusion.