Right, it’s not like it’s made public when a cop kills someone. Over the years it sounds like training has improved and the use of Tasers has definitely increased by a huge amount. I’m skeptical that a lot of cops shot someone because they were worried it would look bad if they beat him.
None of which are relevant to what the officers should’ve done when they arrested King.
Sure it’s made public. But the cop isn’t likely to say, “Hey, I debated whether to beat him into submission and ruin my life, or just kill the scumbag and argue it was justified. I went with the second option.” That’s what I mean when I say we’ll never know.
Those of you offering opinions who have never worked LE or corrections or with the mentally ill or some similar job where it was your responsibility to subdue/restrain uncooperative/chemically altered/batshit insane adults are hilarious. What you think you know about how it should have gone down is laughably naive and it is only the “benefit” of 20 years of media blathe that keeps you from being horselaughed clear off the internet.
Those cops, clearly, needed additional baton training. They used what they had, the way they had been (poorly) trained to use it. Those of you who are advocating wrestling with him need to go out and try your luck subduing a few angry, chemically altered assholes mano y mano. If you don’t just outright get injured by him, wait til he starts biting, spitting, and bleeding on you.
Again:
If you have relevant experience or insight to offer, and evidently you do, do it without the insulting commentary.
[QUOTE=Scumpup]
Those of you offering opinions who have never worked LE or corrections or with the mentally ill or some similar job where it was your responsibility to subdue/restrain uncooperative/chemically altered/batshit insane adults are hilarious. What you think you know about how it should have gone down is laughably naive and it is only the “benefit” of 20 years of media blathe that keeps you from being horselaughed clear off the internet.
Those cops, clearly, needed additional baton training. They used what they had, the way they had been (poorly) trained to use it. Those of you who are advocating wrestling with him need to go out and try your luck subduing a few angry, chemically altered assholes mano y mano. If you don’t just outright get injured by him, wait til he starts biting, spitting, and bleeding on you.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve not been a member of LE, corrections or dealt with the mentally ill, but I’ve been a member of a shore patrol more than once, and dealt with drunk and disorderly types on several different occasions…as well as folks hopped up on other, more aggression producing drugs…and I can tell you, that you don’t need to put that kind of beating down on a guy to subdue him. There are other methods that could be used than a bunch of guys using night sticks on a guy laying on the ground.
Just to address several strawmen (from my perspective) in this thread, I’m not saying the cops in question needed to put themselves at any exaggerated risk. I’m not saying that some pain and discomfort wasn’t going to happen to ole RK to get him to submit. I’m not saying there is some magical right mix formula for the exact (to the nth degree of beat down) amount of force necessary to subdue someone like that, and that even a particle over that degree should bring automatic censure. What I AM saying is that the beating that RK got was over the top and gratuitous. It was those things because, even leaving aside that there are other ways the police COULD have used to subdue the man (that could be training on their part, or doctrine), the method they did use was over the top when they kept beating the crap out of him after it was clear that he had no fight left in him. Guys…we’ve all seen the freaking video by now. For decades. It’s not like there is a gray area here. Once he was prone on the ground and was just covering up he was done…yet the beating just kept on coming.
Look…I’m probably one of the biggest pro-police/military folks on this board. I nearly always take their side, especially early on, when folks around here are going apeshit in trying to second guess or prejudge their actions. I’m a firm believer that most of the Monday morning quarterback types here don’t have a clue what they are talking about, or what it’s like to be in some of these situations…and that hindsight is always 20/20 (plus, it always helps when you have access to all of the information after the fact, as opposed to dealing with the fog of war data gaps at the time). But in this case, it’s pretty clear that the police were in the wrong. Their training and doctrine were flawed, and change was needed. I dislike what happened after the event (i.e. the riots), and especially disliked the way the media pretty much fanned the flames by going over the top the other way (and leaving out some key information…or de-emphasizing it I suppose). But in the end, it was a positive event, since it did cause a ripple effect of change, not just in LA but throughout the country. We have a better police force today because of this and other events like it…IMHO anyway.
-XT
56, IIRC.
Of course, the jury in the first trial found that the first 50 were justified, and only the last 5 or 6 weren’t, so I doubt your scenario would have gone down any differently.
So even if the LAPD had done what the jury found they should have, we still would get riots. IMO.
What should have happened is the officers involved should have been reprimanded for the excessive 6 strikes, and then whatever riots followed should have been put down with whatever force was necessary.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m not speculating on what might’ve prevented the riots.
I like Orson Welles here: “I’m willing to admit that the policeman has a difficult job, a very hard job. But it’s the essence of our society that a policeman’s job should be hard. He’s there to protect the free citizen, not to chase criminals — that’s an incidental part of the job.” I found this quote on the wikipedia page about Isaac Woodard, that dastardly honorably discharged soldier who was whupped good for… well, we don’t right know.
Well, if the question is “how can the LAPD subdue a obstreperous drunk without having it look bad on videotape”, I don’t think that is always possible. Because even in circumstances where reasonable people agree force is necessary, we still get people complaining, and taken to the ultimate, rioting is a form of complaining.
I am looking for some sense of proportion. How serious is it when a violent criminal gets subdued with a little bit more force than it theoretically should? I see no particular reason why the average citizen should give much of a shit.
And slippery slope arguments about how this will lead to a police state don’t appeal much in this instance. An armed robber, out on parole, drives drunk, attempts to evade police at over 100 mph, violently resists arrest, get Tased twice, and then gets hit 14% more than he should have. You have to go a bit further down the slope than that.
I don’t have the expertise that some in this thread do (hi, Little Nemo) but IME hand to hand combat is messy and dangerous and does not lend itself to neat cut offs and clear boundaries. It is very hard to subdue someone who does not want to be subdued without hurting him, and without making it look brutal. It is brutal. That can’t be avoided. But what else could they have done? They already Tased him twice. Batons are the next level up. You can’t turn a beating, even a justified one, off like a light switch. What do they do - choke hold? Forbidden by California state law. Shoot him?
OK, so King was hit five or six times more than he should have been. That’s awful. Bad cops. Naughty naughty - this is going on your permanent record. And if it happens a lot, you are off the force.
But Rodney King was a fucking scumbag, and presented far more of a threat to the public than even seven cops who failed to throttle back the adrenaline on an instant’s notice. And therefore I am prepared to cut the cops a lot more slack than the criminal.
Regards,
Shodan
What are you talking about, the jury in the first trial acquitted the police of all charges, nor was that the finding of the jury in the second trial.
That’s utterly absurd. If the jury had actually convicted the officers there wouldn’t have been riots. The reason for the riots was because they, quite understandably, saw the virtually all-white jury acquitting the four white cops of nearly beating Rodney King to death despite the overwhelming evidence against him as being an insult to the black community which had long felt mistreated both by the LAPD and by the government in general and it wound up being the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Had the jurors done their jobs and convicted the police, there would have been no riots.
It’s worth remembering at the time that with the exception of a few racist whackos like Pat Buchanan, everybody, even President Bush(whom no one would call a liberal) was aghast at the verdict.
Again, what the fuck are you talking about with this “five or six times more than he should have been.”
I understand that lots of white people don’t think there’s anything wrong with racist redneck cops kicking the shit out of black people who piss them off, but for those of us who aren’t snow-white(and many who are snow-white also) they’re the problem and quite frankly for those of us who aren’t snow-white they are people we’re afraid of and they’re the people who need to be thrown in jail.
And I agree. For that matter people often treat Tasers as a horrible idea even though they are generally better than the alternatives (like clubbing the crap out of suspect). But I also think the King beating looks bad because the force actually was very excessive.
That’s unfortunate. And I don’t think any amount of clubbing by a group of people qualifies as “a little bit” of force.
Did you know there were two other people in the car with King, both just as black as he was? If the cops were the racist scum you seem to believe they were, why did the cops not lay a finger on them?
Perhaps the reasons for the beating might have had more to do with the fact that King was violently resisting arrest than racial animus.
Regards,
Shodan
This wasn’t hand-to-hand combat. If it had been, there probably wouldn’t have been riots.
They should have gotten a slap on the wrist for aggravated battery?
That’s weird, you think you’d be more scared of drunk drivers since they kill a couple of order of magnitude more people every year than police do.
Drunk drivers aren’t supposed to be public servants, and when they kill people they go to jail.
I nearly pissed myself laughing at this.
If you read the reports and statements of Stacy Koon, the sergeant who ordered the beating you’d find what really set him off. It was King’s actions directed towards one of the white female CHP officers, Melanie Singer.
as Koon described it, "[King] grabbed his buttocks with both hands and began to shake and gyrate his fanny in a sexually suggestive fashion. As King sexually gyrated, a mixture of fear and offense overcame Melanie. The fear was of a ** Mandingo sexual encounter**.”(bolding mine)
Now, if you think that Koon’s reference to a “Mandingo sexual encounter” doesn’t suggest that he clearly had issues with black people and particularly with black men pairing up with white women and that he didn’t suffer from FBBD(Fear of the Big Black Dick) syndrome then you are truly ignorant of the way whites, particularly whites of his generation reacted to blacks.
It should be noted that Singer was not afraid of King attempting to rape her and in fact testified for the prosecution against Koon and the other racist scumbags.
So yeah, the other two blacks weren’t beaten because they hadn’t been uppity and suggested they found a white woman sexually desirable.
Similarly when Emmett Till was murdered, his companions who hadn’t whistled at a white woman weren’t murdered, but I assume you’d agree his killers were racist pigs.
You think that it’s wrong to suggest that the cop who when describing the incident as being “out of Gorillas in the mist” wasn’t a racist?
And, of course, let’s not forgot Koon’s right-hand man who bragged about the beating afterwards and referred to the encounter as being “something out of Gorillas in the Mist”.
Now, since you object to classifying them as racists perhaps you can explain why it’s wrong use the term “racist” to refer to people who refer to blacks as “gorillas”.
Do you also object to calling people racists who refer to blacks as “niggers” or is that wrong also?
I think people who drive drunk should be punished, but I don’t think they deserve to be beaten within an inch of their life by racist assholes who have issues with black men fucking white women.
Also, when they hurt or kill people, drunk drivers go to jail. They don’t have message boards full of people supporting them and defending their actions.
So what about the insulting commentary in [POST=15186192]post #61[/POST] to which you have still not responded?
Scumpup is rightly pointing out that many of the suggestions that officers should have “dogpiled” on King, or continued to approach him in some kind of 7 man restraint technique to be found nowhere in California’s POST guidelines or Clede’s Police Nonlethal Force Manual come away as being informed only by choreographed Hollywood renditions of use of force and have no actual experience in dealing with violent and aggressive suspects, much less doing so while wearing a duty belt with 15+ lbs of weapons and gear equipment, much of which could be grabbed and used against the officer in a grappling encounter. The POST guidelines DO recommend that a peace officer attempting to restrain a suspect NOT place himself or herself in a position where they can be grappled or brought to ground, the point of which the vast majority of posters do not seem to understand.
And it would seem that most of the respondants are familiar only with the highly edited KTLA video which shows the latter part of the beating, but truncates about the first twenty-five seconds of the tape which shows King, after being Tasered, lurching at officers, swinging his arms, and attempting to get up. Although it is clear that the actions of the officers were excessive (and frankly demonstrate an ineffectual use of the PR-24 as a restraint and control device) it is also clear that they considered King to be a threat, and the normal escalation of approved use-of-force methods were ineffective.
Media presentation of the case merely referred to King as a “motorist driving at excessive speed” and “convicted robber on parole”, not expanding on King’s history of violent and manipulative behavior, the fact that he was over two times the legal blood alcohol limit, or that he repeatedly refused to exit the vehicle or be taken peacefully into custody, instead making the situation appear that the LAPD had pulled over the vehicle arbitrarily and started beating King without provocation. (King’s vehicle was actually spotted by a CHP cruiser which led the pursuit at speeds of up to nearly 120 mph, which wouldn’t even be allowed under modern high speed pursuit doctrine.)
It was also the television media that started the speculation that the pursuit and beating were racially motivated, and brought in a variety of self-proclaimed “race relations experts” to expand on this theory, a tail-wags-dog story that ended up inflaming the smoldering racial tensions in South Central Los Angeles. The same media outlets made much of the parallels of the beating of Reginald Denny, a white truck driver, but virtually ignored the beatings of Asian and Central American immigrants because they made for a much less compelling story than just black versus white.
The reality is that of all of the officers on scene, only Laurence Powell–who is also responsible for most of the baton strikes and kicks–made statements that could be legitimately interpreted as racist. It is clear that the officers were not in control of the situation as they should have been, and certainly at least Powell used excessive and unnecessary force. The approved methods for escalation of non-lethal force–for which the LAPD was considered a gold-standard up to that point–were found lacking in the case of a suspect who was resistent to Taser shocks and unconcerned about injury, resulting in a slew of new techniques and tools being implemented, which have since been widely disseminated to other police departments.
King, of course, went on with his life and settlement, suffering no penalty for his reckless and intoxicated pursuit, and continuing to put the public in danger by driving while intoxicated, assaulting his then-wife, and otherwise generally being a complete scumbag with essentially a get-out-of-jail-free card by virtue of being elected “The Guy Most Likely to Cause a Billion Dollar Riot If Arrested.”
Stranger
I have no problem with someone using torture under the premise that they’re going to save a lot of lives. But torture is verboten and the torturer should be punished. There’s no question that it is impossible to draw a satisfying line on use of force, and even if we do draw a line, it is very likely someone is going to cross it for what seem like good reasons. That is not a reason to let them off the hook for crossing a line. The road to hell is not paved with good intentions if we stop them from laying these paving stones.