Talk:Rodney King

I don't want to tread on any sensitivities here, not being from the US or having any real understanding of US domestic issues, but THE big thing that made the whole matter major news over here was that the officers who we saw brutally assualting King on TV were (a) not charged to begin with, then (b) aquitted by an all-white jury. Maybe there are local matters that didn't make it onto our news broadcasts, but the present entry reads like a whitewash. Err .. no pun intended. Tannin 07:54 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Whitewash? This is stub that I've been assembling from bits and pieces I've been finding while doing the day page updates. In the US, however, this was a very controversial topic with the great majority of white thinking the original verdict was just and the great majority of blacks thinking it was unjust. I've tried to reflect both sides in the meager amount of text written so far. --mav

Absolutely, there is a significantly high number of African-Americans within the US, such that it is rather strange how frequently all white juries will decide issues involving African-Americans. Susan Mason

Nationwide, blacks make up around 12% of the population of the United States. Regionally, populations can vary widely. For the sake of completeness, approximate year 2000 census figures are white=72%, black=12%, hispanic=12%, asian=4%, native=1%. -º¡º

PS to my post above: It wasn't just African-Americans who were shocked. It was the talk of white, middle-class Australia too. They played the tapes over and over. I remember being sickened by the beating and profoundly shocked by the verdict. I'm not aware of knowing anyone over here who didn't feel the same way, and I guess that applies to people in many other countries too. (I'm not going to comment on your point, Susan, as I'm not qualifed to do so from 10,000 miles away. But I hear what you are saying.) Tannin

I believe Leonard Peltier was tried with an all-white jury. Susan Mason

If I remember right, the first King jury wasn't all white - there was one hispanic. But that is a minor point. --mav

The Rodney King jury was made up of 10 whites, 1 hispanic, and 1 asian. Ventura county in 1990, from which the jury pool was drawn, was roughly 65% white, 2% black, 25% hispanic, and 5% asian. A "perfect" jury drawn from this county would have had 8 whites, 3 hispanics, and 1 asian. Things may not be as simple as we wish. -º¡º

I know what you mean BFB. I've just been refreshing my memory with a little reading on the case, and ... yes ... there are lots of complexities. I'm pretty much done with this entry. I just wanted to get the main fact out onto the page. I'm sure that others more familiar with it than I am will tidy up and get the details exactly right. Tannin

OK, I'll take my courage in both hands and insert it myself. I guess I have the advantage that I am 10,000 miles away and rather detached from the argument and thus a NPOV is easier for me, and the disadvantage that I'm 10,000 miles away and don't know anything much about it, other than the fact that I saw a black guy lying on the ground getting the living sh*t kicked out of him by three or four policemen and that (for reasons I don't understand) they were found "not guilty" by an all-white jury in a middle-class town a long way away from where the crime occurred.

(And yes, I know what you mean about starting a stub and getting flack because of stuff you haven't got around to mentioning yet. I sympathise.) Tannin

Rodney King was driving 80 mph and swerving violently about on a frequented road with a speed limit of 50. After being pulled over, high on PCP, King lunged at one of the police officers (conveniently not shown on the media, but a common fact known by anyone who bothered to find out what happened in the court room). The officers repeatedly told King to get down after subduing him, but he made repeated efforts to get up and attempt to attack the policemen again. But, thats not the way that the media wanted to spin it. Whats King been up to since then? Although the policemen got off, King was given 4 million dollars in a civil court. He has also been arrested half a dozen times since then, for various offenses such as: possession of cocaine, exposing himself in public, beating his girlfriend (multiple times), and most recently, driving 100 mph on a road before veering off and crashing into house (which was on the news a few months ago). (anon)

I know that. All except for the most recent offence, anyway. I'm not in the habit of posting without doing some research beforehand. None of that, however, is relevant to what happened immediately after the arrest. You and I may think that King is a nasty bit of work and like to see him safely locked away out of the community, but that is not the point. The law exists to punish people only after they have been given a fair trial, and even then it does not descend to savage beatings. Not in civilised countries, at any rate. Tannin