After a high speed chase, Rodney King was pulled over by a husband and wife team of California Highway Patrol members, early in the morning of Sunday, March 3, 1991. But shortly thereafter, five LAPD officers under the command of Sgt. Stacey Koon arrived and took over the crime scene. Koon and the other four officers – Theodore Briseño, Laurence Powell, Rolando Solano and Timothy Wind – would then proceed to shoot King with a taser, and beat him with their batons. It was later claimed that King was hit 56 times in 81 seconds.
The reason for this level of precision is that a random citizen, George Holliday, captured the beating on home video, and it soon was all over the media. Four of the five police were charged with offences relating to the beating (for some reason, Solano was not charged). The LAPD repeatedly denied that race was a factor in the beating or the subsequent trial, but they also moved the trial to a conservative neighborhood and somehow managed to have no black people in the jury. None of them were found guilty of any charges under California law, although Koon and Powell were later convicted of federal charges.
As mentioned in:
Zeus — Eminem
Blackness — Tola
Burn It — Fever 333
Rodney K. — Willie D
A Wake — Macklemore
Playboy — Lloyd Banks
Cop Killer — Body Count
Mrs. Officer — Lil Wayne
Alive On Arrival — Ice Cube
Represent – Showbiz & A.G.
This Little Pig — Living Colour
Who’s the King? — Dog Eat Dog
I Got Pulled Over — OG Kid Frost
We Didn’t Start the Fire — Fall Out Boy
