Unusually large and muscular people (King was 6’ 3", 230 pounds) are abnormally strong, whether drunk or sober. If a man like that lands a punch, the officer on the receiving end could be severely injured.
He was coordinated enough to lead police on a high-speed chase without crashing.
The officers did not yet know whether he was armed.
Presumably they didn’t have riot shields or blankets on hand (this was 1991). So if the baton action isn’t resulting in compliance, you stop hitting him and…do what? If you let him get up (as he kept trying to do, instead of obeying commands to lay down and put his hands behind his head), he’s going to be harder to subdue. If he gets his hands into his pockets, they could come out with a gun or knife, at which point they would have had to shoot him.
The beating stopped the instant he put his hands behind his head, his first clear indication of compliance since the moment he threw the four cops off of him. Once he was cuffed, he was not beaten further.
Probably not, but the only way to guarantee you won’t get punched is to incapacitate them from long range. I don’t think anyone thinks the cops were totally unjustified in pulling batons. It’s just that there’s clearly a point where they passed beyond “subduing” King and moved into “beating” him. One gratuitous blow is one thing, but an extra 10 or 20 is, I think you’d agree, pushing it a bit.
Given his strength and size, I think the only point at which I would feel comfortable stopping the beatdown and saying to myself “I think we will be able to safely get handcuffs on this guy now” is when King actually puts his hands behind his head, communicating his willingness to surrender. Of course this could have been a ruse to temporarily stop the beating, which means that approaching King at that point was not a risk-free choice for the officers.
…you know, as I watchthe video again, and watch them whack him over and over again with their nightsticks, followed by kicks from one officer, and kicks from another, and then the stomp to the head, the only real response I can give to your post is WTF?
Can you show me any police department in the western world where this is standard operating procedure for dealing with a non-compliant subject?
I fully support the idea that LEOs are people doing a job, and they should be able to do their job with a tolerable level of harassment and risk. However, their job is one where they WILL be at risk from time to time.
Should a LEO be willing to take a bullet while on duty? Generally, I don’t believe getting shot is an acceptable work environment, but if a loony is walking the streets waving a loaded gun, the LEOs don’t get to run away like the rest of us. Getting shot at is way worse than being punched, and occasionally there’s no way around the fact that the LEO is going to be putting himself at risk when a specific situation arises.
When you get to the point of trading off the chance of a bloody lip vs. beating a man half to death, that’s when the LEO has to step up and take the risk that his job entails.
The blame for the acquittal does not belong with the jurors, it belongs with the prosecutor. The prosecution picked a charge that required them to prove the cops intended to kill King. Yeah, right. Cops with deadly weapons intended to kill him, failed to do so, then suddenly all decided at once to let him live. It was an impossible to believe, let alone prove, element of the charge. The prosecution then brought the charge in such a way as to preclude conviction for any lesser offense. It was all or nothing. My take is that the prosecution didn’t want the cops convicted, and so charged them in such a way that conviction was impossible.
[QUOTE=Cheshire Human]
The blame for the acquittal does not belong with the jurors, it belongs with the prosecutor. The prosecution picked a charge that required them to prove the cops intended to kill King. Yeah, right. Cops with deadly weapons intended to kill him, failed to do so, then suddenly all decided at once to let him live. It was an impossible to believe, let alone prove, element of the charge. The prosecution then brought the charge in such a way as to preclude conviction for any lesser offense. It was all or nothing. My take is that the prosecution didn’t want the cops convicted, and so charged them in such a way that conviction was impossible.
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Do you have a cite for this? I thought the charge was use of excessive force (or some legal-esque language to that effect). This is all Wiki says about it:
It does not matter, in any way shape or form, what happened before the struggle is over. As soon as the struggle is over, people expect that the police will stop all aggressive action. No one is saying that the urge to kick this guy is not understandable, just that it isn’t allowed.
I’ve often wondered how history might have been better had the Rodney King incident turned out differently.
Scenario 1: They try to subdue him, they order him to submit, he comes at the officers again, and they shoot him dead. Result: Dead offender, complaints from Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, protests and maybe some violence in the community. Investigation by the LAPD and maybe the cop is punished, maybe not.
Scenario 2: They keep trying to grapple with him and subdue him, King gets the better of at least one officer and either uses his weapon to shoot him or beats him severely enough to kill him or permanently disable him. Result: Nobody really cares, because it’s just another tragic but quickly forgotten tragedy for a cop. King is still in jail and has found Jesus.
Scenario 3: They create a long standoff in which one man has multiple officers cowed because he won’t submit and they don’t want to keep hitting him, the SWAT team comes in, the scene becomes a circus, they somehow get him under control, and then the LAPD is roundly criticized for being bested by one crazy man. Many queries about why the officers were too timid to get one man to submit.
**Scenario 4: **What really happened. Result: Lots of lives ruined, race relations set back yet again, innocent people dead or devastated from the riots.
Scenario 2.5: They keep trying to grapple with him and succeed, placing him in handcuffs and sending him off to jail without any long term injury to any party involved. The incident passes by without notice from the world at large.
It’s one thing to talk about other potential outcomes and another to pretend King grabbing a gun or a SWAT team getting involved is more likely than “group of cops on the scene subdues King while he’s on the ground without clubbing him 50 times.”
No, actually I’m saying it’s more likely that the cops would have just shot him dead right there. (And I’d be okay with that. But that’s beside the point.) AFTER the Rodney King incident, how many cops just pulled out their guns and shot the guy rather than trying to subdue him with nonlethal means? We’ll never know.
I have to disagree. 2.5 is not only the most likely scenario, it is the scenario that is played out countless times, every day.
Each day, police subdue suspects by using proper techniques. They arrest combative suspects without injuring them, and avoid kicking and punching them after they are no longer a threat. This is NORMAL policing, and it happens everywhere, all the time.
The Rodney King beating was an example of the kind of policing which does happen, but is not the norm.
[ul]
[li]King crashes headfirst into another car killing himself, his passengers, and the occupants of the other car[/li][li]An officer has an accident during the high speed chase and is injured or killed[/li][li]King runs over a kid in the street and kills him[/li][/ul]