Rodney King was an American author and activist who was born on April 2, 1965. He was best known for being an indirect part of the reason for riots that took place in Los Angeles in The '90s.
On November 3, 1989, King robbed a store in Monterey Park, California. He threatened the Korean store owner with an iron bar and in retaliation he hit King with a rod he found on the floor, leading King to hit the store owner with a pole before fleeing the scene. King stole two hundred dollars in cash during the robbery and was imprisoned for two years, but only served one.
On March 3, 1991, King was beaten by LAPD officers after a high-speed chase during his arrest for drunk driving on I-210.The Los Angeles County District Attorney charged four police officers, including one sergeant, with assault and use of excessive force. A civilian, George Holliday, filmed the incident from his nearby balcony and sent the footage to local news station KTLA. On April 29, 1992, the seventh day of jury deliberations, the jury acquitted all four officers of assault and acquitted three of the four of using excessive force.
The riots in Los Angeles started on April 29, 1992 and lasted until May 4, 1992. They were caused by the footage of the beating getting released, the aforementioned rulings for the four officers, as well as growing resentment and violence between the African-American and Korean-American communities. The rioters were primarily from African-American and Latino communities. Their methods included widespread rioting, looting, assault, arson, protests, property damage, and shootouts. People who tried to stop them include the government and county law enforcement, as well as armed civilians, notably from Korean American communities, defending property from rioters and looters. On May 1, 1992, Rodney went public to tell the rioters to stop with his often quoted "Can we all get along?" line, which has received lots of Beam Me Up, Scotty! treatment, with people either thinking he said "Can we all just get along?" or "Can't we all just get along?".
By the time the riots ended, 63 people had been killed, including nine shot by law enforcement personnel and one by National Guardsmen, 2,383 had been injured, more than 12,000 had been arrested, and estimates of property damage exceeded 1 billion dollars (more than 3,600 fires were set and 1,100 buildings looted and destroyed). The bulk of the damage affected Koreatown, as about 2,300 Korean-owned stores in southern California were looted or burned and 730 Koreans had to be treated for PTSD.
In April 2012, King published his co-authored by Lawrence J. Spagnola memoir, The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption, which describes King's turbulent youth as well as his personal account of the arrest, the trials, and the aftermath. He died on June 17, 2012 at the age of 47 from accidental drowning.
Rodney himself was a somewhat polarizing figure, with the BBC quoting him on his legacy "Some people feel like I'm some kind of hero. Others hate me. They say I deserved it. Other people, I can hear them mocking me for when I called for an end to the destruction like I'm a fool for believing in peace."
The movement would be succeeded by the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2013 after neighborhood watchman with a gun George Zimmerman was acquitted for shooting Trayvon Martin, a black teen, in Florida in 2012. It'd be made even more important with George Floyd's death in Minneapolis in 2020, which also led to protests regarding police brutality against black people. There were many other protests and riots over police brutality against black people, but none of those had any known significant impact on media.
Rodney King and the riots have received lots of references in media. More serious ones would show consequences towards racial Profiling and Police Brutality, while more comical ones would stick to quotations or mocking of the police.
Rodney King and the riots in media:
Film — Live-Action
- Black Panther (2018): A news report on the riots is playing during the opening scene, as a Meaningful Background Event which adds some context to N'Jobu's radicalization as a black supremacist and the film's overall themes of race relations.
- At the beginning of Chasing Amy, after Hooper X shoots a blank-firing pistol into a crowd at a comics convention in New York City, Holden asks him how he isn't getting beaten up by the police; Banky tells him "wrong coast".
- Dark Blue opens with footage of the assault on King and is based on the novel set in Los Angeles in 1992, days before the city erupted into rioting following the Rodney King verdict.
- Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood has a scene in which several policemen are playing the Game Within a Game Rodney's Ride, in which they're beating up a black man who's presumably Rodney and cheering their asses off.
- Get Him to the Greek: According to Aldous, the "African Child" album is the most detrimental thing to 'appen to Black culture since the Rodney King beatings.
- Kings 2018 depicts the life of a foster family in South Central Los Angeles in 1992, when the city erupted in violence following the verdict of the Rodney King trial.
- Malcolm X opens with alternating scenes of a burning American flag and the Rodney King beating.
- In the ending of Natural Born Killers, amongst the various current events seen via flipping through the television channels is a brief clip of King asking the page quote.
- In Robin Hood: Men in Tights, when Achoo is being beaten by the Sheriff of Rottingham's men he shouts out "I hope someone is videotaping this!"
- Straight Outta Compton the riots out a hold on the bickering between Eazy and Cube, and Ice Cube is shown cruising around, observing scenes at the riot, including the title of their song "Fuck The Police" spray painted on many walls, and a Blood and a Crip holding up a red and a blue bandana tied together in the air.
- Private Parts has a chapter on Rodney King. The opening sentence is "They didn't beat this idiot enough."
- A Different World: One episode has Dwayne and Whitley on their honeymoon in Los Angeles at the time of the riots. They were even momentarily separated in the midst of the event.
- The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: In "Will Gets Committed", the Banks family volunteers to clean up their old neighborhood, which is implied to have been damaged in the riots.
- In Living Color!: A humorous PSA has David Alan Grier as King and Jim Carrey as Reginald Denny (a truck driver who was pulled out of his vehicle and beaten) warning people to stay in their cars.
- Millennium: In the episode "Beware of the Dog", Frank talks to Michael Beebe, a yuppie resident of a strange small town in Washington, who tells him he fled Los Angeles after the Rodney King riots. Frank deadpans "I believe we can all just get along."
- The People v. O. J. Simpson: "From the Ashes of Tragedy" opens with a video of the Rodney King beating by four LAPD officers, and the protests and eventually, the riots in Los Angeles that resulted from the officers' acquittal in their trial.
- Billy Idol took inspiration from the riots for his album "Cyberpunk".
- Black Tie White Noise by David Bowie was made partially in response to the riots. The titular song points out how the superficial attempts at achieving racial harmony within the country are ineffective and how difficult it'll actually be to do so, even involving violence.
- Body Count (Album) by the band with the same name has the song "Cop Killer" which was inspired by real life acts of police brutality against black people and mentions the beating of Rodney King. The song was removed from later reissues under pressure from Moral Guardians and replaced by "Freedom of Speech".
- The name of the album "The Battle of Los Angeles" by Rage Against the Machine refers to the riots.
Stand-Up Comedy
- Bobcat Goldthwait discusses the riots and tape in his standup routine, when he tells the audience "If you ever see me getting beaten by the police, put the video camera down and come help me."
"I do not need a videotape of me being beaten by the police, because you know that whenever a bunch of my friends are around and there's nothing to do, one of them is going to go 'Hey, you wanna watch Bobcat's police tape?'"
- Bill Hicks flew to England the very day that the LA riots occurred. On his album Arizona Bay, he discusses the trial and riots on the tracks "Step On the Gas" (about the beating of Reginald Denny), "Hooligans" (about how gangs in Britain don't hold a candle to gangs in America, prefaced with a mention of the riots), and "Officer Nigger Hater" (about the trial of the cops who beat King).
- In the climax of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Officer Tenpenny's acquittal sparks riots all across Los Santos (a city styled after Los Angeles).
- The Idle Class: The Community Policing upgrade, unlocked for buying a Privatised Cop, has the description "Can we all get along?"
- Police Quest 4: Open Season was made by Daryl Gates, who was the chief of LAPD at the time and related to the incidents. People who were internally working at Sierra started calling the game Rodney King's Quest, also as a reference to their King's Quest series. Some elements of the game feel similar to earlier moments in his life, like the Korean store owner, though here the owner's a woman and would rather shoot you if you tried shoplifting instead.
- This
comic from Sinfest, which discusses many ways Star Wars can be interpreted, has a panel about "The Oppressed Minority" in Race Wars: The Establishment Strikes Back, in which a guy is beaten up by policemen and mentions Rodney King while screaming.
- Next Time On Lonny: The credits to Lonny change each episode. One of them had "Police Supervisor" Rodney King.
- Animaniacs: In the song "A Quake, A Quake", the riots are mentioned in passing as one of many Los Angeles disasters.
- Family Guy:
- In "Brian Does Hollywood", Peter gets pulled over by the LAPD and gets beaten in a parody of the King incident, which Lois tapes for the family's vacation video.
- In "Prick Up Your Ears", Mayor West watches an episode of Rodney King of Queens, in which Carrie beats King for forgetting to take out the trash.
- In "No Meals on Wheels", Peter prepares to serve Joe and his fellow officers at his restaurant by offering a cop-themed menu, which includes "Rodney King Crab".
