reply to post by kerazeesicko
If you are going to bring up Rodney King, at least get the facts straight.
When he emerged from his vehicle, his behaviour was bizarre...laughing, giggling, waving at the helicopter. He reached behind him at which point an
officer drew her weapon on him and ordered him to lie down, which he did. Stacey Koon ordered four officers to "swarm him" basically they approached
him empty handed to handcuff him. At that point, King started resisting, throwing two officers off of him, hitting another, and giving the impression
he was under the influence of a PCP type drug. Koon ordered the officers to back off. King would not respond to commands to lie back down, so he
fired a taser at King, King went down....and then stood back up. He was tased again, dropped, then got back up and lunged at one of the officers. It
was at this point that the officers (TWO) started striking King with their batons. And King STILL tried to resist. Finally, it took six officers to
subdue him.
At the criminal trial, based on the evidence, the jury aquitted three of the four officers charged based on the belief the officers had a reasonable
belief that Mr King was highly intoxicated and very dangerous (face it, most normal people, TWO Taser blasts and we are done, not King) The fourth
officer had a hung jury.
At the Civil Rights trial, two officers were sentenced to prison and the other two aquitted.
So no, it wasnt the simple, lets beat the hell out of someone case a lot of people think it was. And no, the officers did NOT go unpunished.
Did they get a bit extreme....probably, however, not being in their situation and seeing a guy take two taser blasts and quite a few baton hits and
STILL trying to come at them.............
It is also noteworthy that his two companions that night were taken into custody with NO problems, and nor did their later testimony back up King's
claims that he had immeadiately exited his vehicle and laid down on the ground.
(yes, we had to study the case as part of law enforcement training in the military, and I worked with two LAPD officers who had been involved with the
case)
edit on 10-12-2011 by vipertech0596 because: (no reason given)