It's
another exciting trip back through time as we take a look back on what happened
throughout history on the second-last day of April. And, I'll say this. While
I am sort of sad to see April fade away for another year, I'm really excited
about the prospects that May has to offer for this blog. It is the third anniversary, and I have got
some really big announcements coming up over the next few weeks, so I hope
you're excited to see some changes happening as we approach the
three-year-mark.
Of course, before we get to May, we have to finish off April. Have a look at some of the major happenings that took place on April 29...
Of course, before we get to May, we have to finish off April. Have a look at some of the major happenings that took place on April 29...
1429 - Joan of Arc arrives to relieve the "Siege of
Orleans"
1770 - Explorer James Cook arrives at and names the area
known as Botany Bay, Australia
1781 - The Battle of Fort Royal takes place off the coast
of Martinique during the American Revolutionary War
1861 - During the Civil War, Maryland's House of
Delegates votes not to secede from the Union
1882 - The "Elektromote" is tested in Berlin,
the precursor for the modern-day trolley
1917 - Actress Celeste Holm (d. 2012) is born in New York
City
1931 - Scottish-British singer/guitarist Lonnie Donegan
(d. 2002) is born in Glasgow, Scotland
1945 - The day before they commit suicide, Adolf Hitler
marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a German bunker at the tail end of
World War II
1951 - Racing legend Dale Earnhardt (d. 2001) is born in
Kannapolis, North Carolina
1953 - The very first experimental 3D television
broadcast takes place in the United States, showing an episode of "Space
Patrol" on Los Angeles television station KECA-TV
1967 - Muhammad Ali is stripped of his boxing title
following his refusal to enroll in the United States Army due to religious
reasons
1968 - The controversial musical "Hair" opens
on Broadway
1974 - During the Watergate Scandal, President Nixon
announces the release of edited transcripts of White House tape recordings
related to the scandal
1980 - Director/producer Alfred Hitchcock passes away at
the age of 80
1986 - A devastating fire at the Los Angeles Public
Library destroys or damages 400,000 books
1999 - The Avala TV Tower outside of Belgrade is
destroyed during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
2004 - The final Oldsmobile rolls off the production line
after 107 years in business
2005 - William J. Bell, the creator of soap operas
"The Young and the Restless" and "The Bold and the
Beautiful" dies at the age of 78
2011 - The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton
takes place
And,
here are the celebrity birthdays for April 29; April Ashley, Richard
Kline, Tommy James, Joey Levine, Anita
Dobson, Jerry Seinfeld, Kate Mulgrew, Daniel
Day-Lewis, Mark Kendall, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eve
Plumb, Curtis Joseph, Master P, Carnie
Wilson, Jack Mackenroth, Andre Agassi, Uma
Thurman, David Sullivan, Sam Jones III, Jo
O'Meara, Renee
Alway, and
Jonathan Toews.
So,
what date will we be going back in time to this time around? Well, for most of us, it may seem like
another typical day. But for those of you
who lived in the greater Los Angeles area, it was the beginning of 72 hours of
pure hell.
Perhaps the actual date will jog your memory.
April 29, 1992.
That
date was a very scary day for people in Los Angeles. A state of utter and total confusion was in place over the
following three days following the conclusion of a very controversial trial,
and by the end of it all, several areas of the city were left in ruins,
fifty-three people were killed, a further two thousand were injured, and at
least eleven thousand people were charged with a criminal offence that day.
But
what trial could have caused people to create so much chaos and destruction to
their own city? How could a major
metropolis lose control so quickly?
Well, to answer that question, I think we have to start at the beginning.
It all began a little over a year earlier in March 1991. On March 3 of that year, then 25-year-old Rodney King was driving west on I-210 with two passengers through the Lake View Terrace neighbourhood of Los Angeles when the California Highway Patrol tried to initiate a traffic stop. At some point, the scene escalated into a high-speed police chase that spanned through Los Angeles freeways and residential neighbourhoods before coming to a stop. King and the other two occupants were ordered under arrest on the spot - likely due to charges of reckless driving. And if that's where it all ended, it would have been seen as nothing harmless.
But then here's where things get extremely dicey.
At some point after the car King was driving was pulled to a stop, the two
passengers were taken out of the car and placed in nearby patrol cars as five
LAPD officers (all of Caucasian origin) arrived on the scene to subdue
King.
The
actual policy at that time for the LAPD (I'm not sure if it's been changed
since 1991, so that's why I state 'at that time') was that if a suspected
criminal was resisting arrest (as King was reportedly doing at that time), the
procedure was to tackle a suspect and cuff them, only using force if the officer
themselves felt that they were in physical danger.
For
whatever reason, the five officers opted to go by a different procedure against
the African-American Rodney King. They
tasered him, kicked him in the head, used their batons to beat King repeatedly
for sixty seconds and then tackled and cuffed him. The officers stated that they felt it was necessary since they
claimed that King was under the influence of PCP at the time of his arrest and
he was very aggressive and violent towards them.
At some point after the arrest was made, the video tape that detailed the whole incident was broadcast all over the media. And, you can just imagine how frightened I was as a nine-year-old at the time, watching these people kicking and beating this man. I was too young to understand the situation, and I remember having a LOT of questions over it and wondering what Rodney King did to deserve such horrific treatment. Again, this was the nine-year-old me talking here, but even at nearly 33, I still question whether the decisions that were made that night (by both King and the police officers) were the right ones. It was certainly a messy situation for sure.
To make the situation even more complicated, King was subjected to a drug test which showed that he had tested NEGATIVE for PCP. And it later came out that the reason why King ignored the traffic stop was because he had been released on parole due to a prior robbery conviction, and he was concerned that had he been arrested for a DUI, it would violate his parole terms and he would go back to prison.
At some point after the arrest was made, the video tape that detailed the whole incident was broadcast all over the media. And, you can just imagine how frightened I was as a nine-year-old at the time, watching these people kicking and beating this man. I was too young to understand the situation, and I remember having a LOT of questions over it and wondering what Rodney King did to deserve such horrific treatment. Again, this was the nine-year-old me talking here, but even at nearly 33, I still question whether the decisions that were made that night (by both King and the police officers) were the right ones. It was certainly a messy situation for sure.
To make the situation even more complicated, King was subjected to a drug test which showed that he had tested NEGATIVE for PCP. And it later came out that the reason why King ignored the traffic stop was because he had been released on parole due to a prior robbery conviction, and he was concerned that had he been arrested for a DUI, it would violate his parole terms and he would go back to prison.
The
end result (after the media reported on the case for what seemed like forever)
was that four of the officers - including one sergeant - were charged with
assault and use of excessive force.
There was a growing group of activists who claimed that the attack on
Rodney King was racially motivated, and tensions began to fester as the trial
grew closer and closer to beginning.
The
trial began in early 1992, and just to give a little bit of background in the
trial, here's the statistics.
Of the twelve jurors serving on the case, nine were white, one black, one Asian, and one Latino. The prosecutor of the case was black. And because of the media coverage that the case generated, the trial was moved outside of Los Angeles to Simi Valley.
Of the twelve jurors serving on the case, nine were white, one black, one Asian, and one Latino. The prosecutor of the case was black. And because of the media coverage that the case generated, the trial was moved outside of Los Angeles to Simi Valley.
It
wasn't until the seventh day of jury deliberations that the jury ushered in
their verdict. The date? April 29, 1992. And the verdict was heavily influenced by a small snippit of film
that was shown in the courtroom (but not on media broadcasts) which showed King
lunging towards one of the officers before being subjected to the beating that
would leave him severely injured. That
was enough for the jury to acquit all four officers of assault. Not only that, but three of the four
officers were also acquitted of the charge of using excessive force while the
jury couldn't agree on a verdict for the fourth.
That
decision set off the spark that ignited the dynamite inside of the city of Los
Angeles.
Half
an hour after the announcement of the acquittals was made at 3:15pm the
afternoon of April 29, a group of 300 people appeared outside of the Los
Angeles County Courthouse immediately protesting the verdict, and just a couple
of hours later, the crowd had grown to such a high number that the LAPD
dispatched two dozen officers to confront a growing protest in South Central
Los Angeles near the intersection of Florence and Normandie Streets. The crowd, however, outnumbered the
officers, and the police were forced to flee.
Soon after, reports of looting, carjackings, and beatings were coming
out of the area, hence setting the stage for the infamous Los Angeles Riots of
1992.
For those of you born after 1992, here's some video footage of the riots as they happened back in April and May 1992. Some of the videos may be disturbing to watch, so definitely initiate parental guidance if needed.
The stories coming out of the Los Angeles Riots of 1992 were barbaric. A white truck driver, Reginald Denny, found
himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, as he was physically dragged out
of his truck at the intersection of Normandie and Florence and badly beaten by
a mob of local black residents. The
whole incident was caught on tape by a television news helicopter. Another beating occurred that same day by
the same people who nearly killed Denny when Guatemalan-born Fidel Lopez was
attacked and robbed and left for dead.
Over
the next two days, racial wars were taken to the streets, and most of the
violence in the city was confined to South Central Los Angeles - the area of
town with the most visible minorities at the time. Businesses owned by Asian and Latino born Americans were looted
and burned to the ground. People began
beating each other up on the streets. A
strict curfew was placed over the entire city for several days. Even President George Bush went on the air
to plead with people to stop the violence and the anarchy. Schools and businesses were closed until the
following Monday. It wouldn't be until
the ninth of May before federal troops left the Los Angeles area, and some
soldiers were stationed in the city until the end of May - a full month after
the riots took place!
The riots had made such an impact on the world that they were referred to in
the world of pop culture. "Beverly
Hills 90210" featured a storyline in which the kids of West Beverly
considered canceling a planned integrated dance with an inner-city Los Angeles
school around the time of the L.A. riots.
"L.A. Law" actually featured a storyline that was set during
the riots in which one of the main characters became a victim of the violence
and his struggles to overcome the injuries, both physical and mental. And even Bill Cosby took to the airwaves to
persuade people to stop the violence to watch the series finale of "The
Cosby Show", which aired smack dab in the middle of the Los Angeles riots.
So,
what was the aftermath of the Los Angeles Riots of 1992? Well, there was a lot of pressure from the
public for a retrial of the officers who were involved in the King beating, and
new federal charges of civil rights were brought against the officers. In April 1993 - almost one year to the day
that the riots began, two of the officers were found guilty. Those two officers - Sgt. Stacey Koon and
Officer Laurence Powell - were sentenced to thirty months behind bars. All four officers were either terminated
from the LAPD or left the force of their own accord. Another officer who was at the scene, Susan Clemmer, later took
her own life in 2009.
Rodney
King was awarded $3.8 million in damages from the attack, and he used the money
to found his own record label, "Straight Alta-Pazz Records". But the record company soon folded, and King
ended up getting arrested a grand total of eleven times for charges ranging from
hit-and-run to domestic violence. In
his later years, King attempted to rebuild his life by leaving Los Angeles and
settling in Rialto, California, even seeking treatment in rehab (most famously
appearing as a patient on Dr. Drew's Celebrity Rehab), but sadly, King was
found dead in a swimming pool on June 17, 2012 at the age of 47.
As
for victim Reginald Denny, the truck driver who was brutally attacked the day
the Los Angeles riots started? He
sustained a massive seizure as a result of the injuries he sustained, and he
had to endure years of rehabilitative treatment to learn how to walk
again. His speech remains permanently
damaged. The men who were responsible
for his attack were all charged - the worst of the bunch, Damian
"Football" Williams - served four years of a ten year sentence issued
to him in 1993. He is currently serving
a 46-year-sentence in a state prison for an unrelated charge.
The question is...did anybody learn anything from it all?
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