Normally TV news shows rely on amateur videos to show nature in its full and unpredictable fury: a flash flood submerges Main Street in Small Town, U.S.A.; a twister touches down near the airport. Last week in Los Angeles, however, a man testing his new camcorder captured an ugly but, to some, totally unsurprising incident: the prolonged beating of a black man who had been pulled over for speeding by the police. The two-minute tape showed Rodney Glen King, 25, an unemployed construction worker, lying on the street after police officers shot him with a stun gun, being stomped with their feet and bludgeoned with billy clubs.
Broadcast repeatedly over local and national TV, the clip seemed to cause as much discussion as those riveting, early scenes from the air war. Subsequent news footage of King, looking dazed and disfigured, only made the situation more appalling. The attack left him with brain damage, internal bleeding, missing teeth and a broken ankle. And yet, because the incident focused attention on the issue of police harassment, some activists could barely contain their enthusiasm. “We are blessed that this incident happened,” said Susan Finn, of the antiabortion group Operation Rescue, which also claims to be the object of police brutality. L.A. Chief of Police Daryl Gates helped fan the flames of outrage by not condemning the patrolmen. If anything happened, Gates said, it was “an aberration.”
The police chief was soon rejecting calls for his own resignation. He eventually changed his stance on the case, asking the district attorney to prosecute three officers. Since that same D.A.’s office refused to file charges against King, saying that there was no evidence that he had committed a crime, Gates may be simply taking his only rational option. This appears–to on-scene witnesses such as George Holliday, the white amateur photographer who took the videotape, and millions of at-home witnesses–to be the ultimate open-and-shut case. “Without the tape, the LAPD might have argued anything and been believed by a jury,” says a source close to the D.A.’s investigation. “With the tape, it looks like the city might as well just start writing the check to King’s lawyers.”
The victim, who is out on parole after serving time for second-degree robbery, has a team of Beverly Hills attorneys preparing a complaint. They are not exactly on unplowed turf. The southern California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union says it receives 55 police-related complaints each week from black and Hispanic citizens. In December former L.A. Laker Jamaal Wilkes said he was treated poorly by cops. Last month, baseball Hall of Famer Joe Morgan won $540,000 in damages for being pushed around by police. “This is not an isolated incident,” says Ramona Ripston of the ACLU. “The difference this time is that we have the proof.” In living black and white.
