Rodney King, R.I.P.
Rodney King died today.
He was a tragic figure.
I don’t blame him for any of the violence which took place after the policemen charged with assaulting him were found not guilty. An interesting resource on the court case is here. I discussed how the video evidence was demolished in court in this post, What happens when Zimmerman is found “not guilty”?
The violence was memorable, particularly the attack on Reginald Denny:
And King’s statement “can’t we all get along” was memorable too.
He led a troubled life. May he rest in peace.
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Sir,
I appreciate your sentiment. You are right on the troubled man, and that he did not cause the later trouble. I would have appreciated the whole video, versus what the news presented. The edited video is as wrong as what has happened in Zimmerman, Brawley, and the Duke Lacrosse team.
Best,
rabid wombat
In my Zimmerman post I had the full King video, but it’s been taken down by YouTube with this statement: “This video has been removed as a violation of YouTube’s policy on shocking and disgusting content.”
Rodney King was still a weak man, a total jerk and a self-made loser.
I hope people don’t get maudlin over him. He resisted arrest, and his overall behavior led to terrible events.
I learned something today I did not know…
Ms Kelley, King’s fiance, was also a juror on his civil law suit for damages.
Huh…
Follow da money, Rags!
We could be cynical, and say that is all that was. And maybe that would be right.
Or, as I suspect is more true, this woman just developed a crazed empathy for King, mixed up with his victimhood/celebrity. (The money never hurt…)
I like the jury system, but it involves people. And THEY can be fruitcakes!
Too many people with their own agendas used Mr. King without any regard for Mr. King himself. He became a means to an end. I am also sure that those same people are going to use Mr. King’s death for their own purposes again.
Once Sharpton and Jackson find a way to financially profit from King’s death, look out. They will stir up the masses and trouble will surely follow. But only if they can profit financially.
I’m waiting for their absurdly convoluted nexus between Trayvon and Rodney. Sharpton: “The tragic events in their lives are so similar, why, Rodney could have been Trayvon’s uncle!!”
He had an addiction to alcohol and had later arrests for alcohol related charges. He was a troubled man who may have died as a result of his drinking.
As far as the Zimmerman case is concerned, there will probably be riots if he is found not guilty or guilty of a lesser charge. I am also concerned about the reaction when Obama loses in November, not just from the mobs, but Obama’s reaction.
So much for integration.
“If I had a brother, he’d look just like Rodney…”
Wait…
Nope, that doesn’t work.
i have it that The LAPD developed a revised crime fighting /policing set of poilcies that has been very effective. It has been adapted by several cities across the US & internationally.
LAPD still have the rugged image & have not been metrosexualled like those I saw in NY.
Which is good because TV crime shows depend on them & there are jobs for extras . Other crime series are pushing out the police extras in favour of detectives & Forensic types.
Give me a good looking man in uniform any day!
The LAPD is stretched pretty thin, traditionally. They are one of the smallest departments in relation to the population of any in the nation.
I am a big white guy. The LAPD would (in those days) beat the dog spit out of me if I did what Mr. King did. They would do it because they are afraid, and want to go home at the end of their shifts.
I had a friend in WOFT (primary helicopter training) back in the very early 70s. He was a CHPie, and in the Army Reserves, which accounted for his flight training. He told me that all LEOs in the LA area were making what he called “open holster” stops for anything, including a tail light. By that, he meant “with gun drawn”, because there had been so many shootings of officers.
We sometimes ask people to do what people really are not equipped to do.
Yes rags – I agree.
On of my little hobbies in the US is to check out the local police . They say a lot about the city/state. One area I would definitely live in is NTh Georgia where the police are big fat & mean & pack heat Triple the locals.
I just read in my local rag that a former writer of NYPD is charged over smashing the head of a 5lb poodle. Typical NY scriptwriter.
Give me real police & real men.
The use of extreme force on resisting suspects was given as an alternative to the old choke-hold, once it was detrermined that people with certain illnesses or who were obese could die after being choked out. Yes, the use of the baton was the accepted method, especially when the person was in a pain-tolerant (ie: drunk, on PCP, crazy or on crank) state. After that, was deadly force.
Did the cops go too far? Perhaps. Probably. However, the lack of a weapon, such as a taser, gave the cops few choices. And absent institutional controls, we know that SOP tends to drift, often towards extremes. To that end, the coppers were set up to fail.
Not an evil man, I think, but an imperfect one.
If there is an afterlife, I hope he is becoming what he was intended to be.
Here we go-
I, like most, heard about Rodney’s death late morning. All news outlet reported it, as did cable tv.
…I wondered…who would be the first to show the king beating, and stoke the racial anarchy that followed–given the season we’re in now-
nothing until 1:00 EST–MSNBC–They led with it, and after the “background” ran the clip of the beating at 1:02.
I recorded that full hour to see how many times they ran it. I have yet to review it, but will let you know.
Much to my dismay I see the professor led with it-
Worse; the skull mashing of Denney-but the video imbed says “Bobby Green-truck driver rescuer”
I lived in San Diego at the time, but was working in Las Vegas. I can tell you that in every city in western US that had a street named “MLK Boulevard” burned. Didn’t make the nightly news. But I watched thousands terrorize N. Vegas from my hotel.
Reginald Denny deserves more respect than the animals and lawlessness (including the police) that preceded his attack. He was not afforded the luxury of living out his days as he wished, especially drunk and stoned at the bottom of his own pool.
Ahh, Browndog my lad, ya’ bested me, by a minute.
Much more detail in your post, I am humbled..
Reginald Denny, was unavailable for comment.
as a Lost Angels native, i will say what others have avoided: the world is a better place with him gone.
had he not decided to drive while under the influence, and then attempt to evade being stopped, and then, having been stopped, had he not violently resisted arrest, none of the events that followed would have occurred.
EVERYTHING that followed can be righteously laid at his feet, and all the deaths, pain and suffering that followed are on him.
he had choices, he made poor ones, and all attempts to absolve him are morally dishonest. the unreported fact that everyone else in the vehicle with him was not harmed is proof that he earned what he got.
besides, if the LAPD could have still used the choke hold, there would have been other options available to the responding officers, but the same criminal coddling scum that incited the riot removed that tool from the LAPD option list.
rot in hell Rodney.
Well said.
Not fair. King was responsible for what happened to him, but the animals who rioted in his name were moral agents. He didn’t cause them to riot; they made their own decisions, and he can not be blamed. If you must blame someone other than the rioters themselves, blame the media that irresponsibly kept airing the most exciting few seconds of the video, falsely giving so many people the impression that that clip was representative of the whole thing, and that the police action was not justified.
Rodney King may have led a tragic life as a tragic figure but he is the single greatest source and cause of his self-inflicted personal tragedy caused by drugs and alcohol leading to incredible violent episodes throughout his life.
The LAPD was forced to use the tactics used on Rodney King by left-wing politicians. Left-wing politicians MANDATED the tactics used to subdue King. Then the left-wing politicians attacked the LAPD because LAPD used the only tactics they were allowed to use. This stuff is insane.
Sorry the man never got his life together. But don’t worry. The race hustlers will soon find another to take his place…
No worries-there will be a parade of Trayvon’s coming down the pike before the election.
I was old enough remember the riots of ’67.
FEAR.
Damn Obama if he takes us back there. Nobody– black, white, or green that remembers, wants to go back.
We never locked out doors at night before April 1968. We never left them unlocked after that time.
I was pretty young then and didn’t really understand the significance of King’s death.
The sad part is that the civil rights movement died that same day and has been replaced by the race-hustler’s movement…
BTW-
A panelist on MSNBC called Rodney King “the Rosa Parks of our time”.
Every host on MSNBC is both nuts and among the least known hosts on cable so nobody is paying attention to anything they said…
I couldn’t find my alpha-dog, Aqua Velva, one day, and it turns out he has a show on MSNBC. Yeah, go figure. I still can’t find it on the TV, but an NBC limo picks him up on Thursday afternoons. So…
As someone who lived in Los Angeles at the time the Rodney King affair took place, I don’t blame him as much for the riots that took place after the cops were basically acquitted in the state courts as I do then Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradly.
He’s the jerk that went on local TV to tell the citizenry that if they were unhappy with those verdicts that they should “take their anger to the streets.” (direct quote — I watched him say it on tv.)
Hours later, Reginald Denny was almost beaten to death in south central Los Angeles and the next few days of rioting were off and running at full tilt; eventually some fifty-three people died — mostly because some crooked politician got on television and carelessly ran his mouth fully intending to incite one of his constituencies.
Between the two, Rodney King and Mayor Tom Bradley, Mr. King, in my mind, bears the lesser responsibility for the horrific Los Angeles riots.
As Conservatives, we know that each individual bears responsibility for there own acts and omissions.
King didn’t cause a riot. People…individual people…caused a riot. And not “them”, either.
Rags, you and Milhouse wrote the words I was looking for. My compliments to you both.
I remember it well. Tom Bradley was a horrible mayor. The thought that he once stood a chance of becoming governor of the once-great state of CA is terrifying. He would have been to CA what obastard is to the country.
Bradley bears the blood of many on his hands and he knew exactly what he was doing. Rodney King, on the other hand, was a hapless idiot irresponsibly stumbling through life leaving a wake of destruction at which he shrugged his shoulders, checked out any angles to make a buck, and poured himself another drink.
I agree. Bradley was much worse.
Reginald Denny is the most famous victim of the rioting which followed the original verdict, but 55 people died in the rioting, including at least 22 murders which remain unsolved.