Citation Needed - Rodney King [True Crime Special]

Episode Date: January 23, 2019

Rodney Glen King (April 2, 1965 – June 17, 2012) was a construction worker turned writer and activist after surviving an act of police brutality by the Los Angeles Police Department. On March 3, 1991, King was violently beaten by LAPD officers during his arrest for fleeing and evading on California State Route 210. A civilian, George Holliday, filmed the incident from his nearby balcony and sent the footage to local news station KTLA. The footage clearly showed King being beaten repeatedly, and the incident was covered by news media around the world. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

But he looks like he's fighting a three-headed monster though. Yeah, right. But how is a gigantic lizard fighting an even bigger three-headed monster in the city is supposed to save that city? You literally ruin everything. Hey, guys, guys, guys, guys. Do not go in there. Why shouldn't we go into the studio?

Okay. I shouldn't have to explain this, but this week's essay is about Rodney King. And a few minutes ago, I saw Eli walk in there with four bats, a can of black shoe polish and a few police uniforms with the asses cut out of the pants. Gross. And that's not all. Look at this script. Holy shit. No, no, guy. Guy, you didn't even write that. I, I've never, I've never seen, is that? Wait, is that every single black racial slur as a Disney song? Yeah, I feel like he made some, he had to

have made some of these up and look at page four. No, I, even, no, I'm not doing that. I, as time, I, I think that's actually a hate crime. So what do we do? How about we just go over to my place to record today? We'll just leave them in there. I mean, let's do it. Let's do that.

It's the only way we get out of this, Tom. All right. Someone text Heath and tell him where we'll be, all right. Hey, guys, what's up? What's up? Sorry, I'm late. So what do you think? You guys like the police outfit?

It's pretty good, right? Oh, God. Don't turn around. Don't turn around. Don't turn around. Oh, dude. Oh, but hey, he's come on. I don't think the nightstick is supposed to go there.

Oh, okay. Mr. Police expert. Where am I supposed to put it then? Hello and welcome to CitationNeeda, the podcast where we choose a subject for you to sing a little article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm no one, I'm going to be beating the truth out of this episode, but to get from here to there I'm going to need a jury of my peers Tom Heath and Cecil. Oh, this is the first time anyone ever considered me a peer. You know, I realized like legally,

that means we're all best friends, like everybody here. Today on this episode, we are all best friends. Best friends. Yeah. Best friends. Yep. It's visual. I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention, I was writing in my diary.

Best day ever. Best friends. best friends. So I'm best friends. And also, yeah. So now you may have noticed that you're like, you're just standing. And let me know. I'm trying to sing on a key. He's not going to say, I get it.

I'll get it. I'll get it. As you may have noticed, Eli isn't here. I'm not going to say where Eli is or why it's not here, but I am going to use this as a segue to remind people that when members of our cast find themselves in Nick or I win prisons, they turned to Patreon funds to help get them home. So if you'd like to learn how to join our Patreon ranks, be sure to stick right to the under the show and with that out of the way, tell us Tom, what person placed in concept

phenomenon or event? Well, we'd be talking about today. All right. Today we will be talking about Rodney King because I guess we like to keep both current and controversy free. So well, there you are. Let's us. Right. It's going to go well.

All right. So if you read the article and carefully timed this essay for a week when Eli was off, are you ready to elucidate us? I am indeed ready. We reviewed a movie with an African American little person with a speech impediment this week on God. I love it. Zero hate crimes in that episode.

So just say and you can manage. You can keep that streak going. It's away today. So who was Rodney King? Because America hates black people now. So Rodney King was a very bad driver who later became an activist for civil rights and against police brutality. After he was almost beaten to death by a team of white police officers who got mad when

he tried to outrun them and resist being arrested. And apparently he did all those things whilst blacking, which was proud of him. I was a mistake. It was. He said was frowned upon. I love the past time. Yeah. I was a mistake. It's every time he was. He said was frowned upon. I love the past time. Yeah. Wrong tense, perhaps.

So following the incident, those officers were put on trial for using excessive force. And despite shockingly clear evidence of their guilt, they were acquitted. And this all happened in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1850s. Wait, no, sorry, this happened in Los Angeles, California in the 1990s. Yeah. This all led to the LA riots of 1992. Also centuries of racism before that was a contributing factor. Yeah, man.

Yeah. To be determined. I don't know. Okay. We've all seen that video by now. factor. Yeah, man. Yeah, it's been to it. Yeah. To be determined. I don't know. Okay. We have all seen that video by now. And I don't know.

You can clearly see Rodney attacking the officers with his blood spatter. So I'm very good people. Yeah. The jury sure. Yeah. Look, if it wasn't dangerous, they wouldn't make you put it in those special little red bags. He's reaching for his blood spatter.

You know, look at back. I thought some of this thought shining a light on this kind of racism would be the straw that broke the camel's back. Just turns out that camel does not skip leg day. He's a grown. I was thinking like a jacked camel right now. Is there anybody else think you're just like like Joe camel just like he was squashed. He's doing his PR with straw,

like the size of Rhode Island is whatever bitches rule. The cabs, the size of cantaloupes. Yeah. So I'll start with a quick background on Rodney King's early life. He was born in Sacramento, California in 1965 and grew up in

Los Angeles along with his four siblings. His father was known to be a violent alcoholic, but not necessarily a raging alcoholic. There was no data to confirm rage just to be clear. And his father died at the age of 42 when Rodney was 19. Okay. Good. Good. Just making a note, violent, but not raging. Cool. Cool. That changes at all. That's the whole. Everybody should know that. Yeah. No, here on here on citation needed, we don't want to paint all our violent alcoholics with the same broad brush. Exactly. You could be a very calm, violent person. You don't know. I'm just trying to like, let's get some

new areas here. The story is way scarier. You don't know. All right. One of the detail that your high school class full of Irish cops will definitely tell you about as if it somehow relates to a team of police beating up an unarmed man. Rodney King already had a criminal history before that incident that made him a household name. In 1989, he robbed a convenience store stealing $200 in cash. He got caught and he ended up spending a year in prison before getting out on parole. And I guess in the early 90s, cops would determine the amount of beating they did based on the criminal history that everybody yells out at the beginning of a traffic stop. So that's how they knew.

We're all beaten to give. It's either that or I'm calling everyone in the bar a liar. It's one of those two days. You know, little known fact though, Heath, when you get hit with a night stick, your rap sheet shoots audio like Sonic's rings. It just oh, okay, your TPN a house. That's why that first strike, that's an investigatory strike. That's how that works. Oh, all right, guys, you joke, but LA cops and spent a lot of time making sure all the black

people had criminal records so you could tell from a distance. You didn't have to hit anybody. Yeah. So the important part of the story begins on March 3rd, 1991. Rodney King is driving down the interstate 210 in Los Angeles, along with his two friends Bryant Allen and Freddie Helms. And again, all three of them are doing this blackly just to give you plenty of context at 12 30 AM officers, Tim and Melanie Singer of the California highway patrol caught Mr King speeding and tried to pull him over. But King had been drinking that night and he knew a DWI was a parole violation that would get him sent back to jail. So he decided to take a shot at outrunning the police in his 1987

Hyundai Excel. Oh, she said, He's so great. Wait, wait, hold on a second, Tim and Melanie Singer. Right. We're made. How weird is that? This looks like the 925 from the earlier robbery. Should we get back up?

Are you listening to me, Timothy? Yeah, of course, babe. I was. Wait, what did I say? You, you said you were okay with chicken, but you could also do Mexican. That was half an hour ago. You aren't even paying attention to me.

Oh, no, I was. You said there was a 904 in progress. I wanted divorce. I wanted divorce. Yep, married police, probably not the best idea as partners too. Feels like they could just not be partners. I don't know, they could be like anywhere else. Right? You can just do that. I will say there's a lot of marriages, whether or not partners, just throw that out. Yeah. Point being lots of mistakes in the LAPD manual at this point. So we'll get to a

bunch of the others in a second. So Ronnie King exits the freeway and starts racing through some residential streets while his two friends. I'm assuming we're screaming at him to pull over and probably getting a head start on the beating that he's about to get. But King ignores his friends and the cops and keeps trying to get away during which time several more police cars joined the pursuit, along with a police helicopter. Uh, finally, after about eight miles of running, King gets cornered and gives up the chase. You know what I love guys? You know what I just, I love that we don't have enough money in our budgets to make sure

that like kids all eat lunch. Like that's good. But like, we'll employ a helicopter to catch a guy speeding in a hundred. That's those are our priorities. I'm loud. We have four, four, eight miles. So within the eight miles, we'll deploy what we wait, where was the helicopter to begin with? Was he just there for lighting? helicopter to begin with was he just there for lighting. Another helicopter for key lighting and then another one for. Yeah. It's a backlight there.

There's a boom helicopter just. Yeah. So his car has finally stopped and he's surrounded by police officers. Tim and Melanie Singer, who originally tried to pull him over and also the first set of LAPD officers to arrive on the scene. Those officers were Stacey Koon. Um, wait, what was his name now? What? What? I don't know if I'm more surprised that he is Stacey or if the last name is given the circumstances. I feel flummoxed on all sides right now. White guy named Stacey Kuhn. Uh, okay. These are all white guys. Also Lawrence Powell, Timothy Wind and Theodore Burzano. So officer Tim Singer orders everyone out of the car, tells them till I face down

on the ground. Kings two friends, Alan and Helms, they both go ahead and start doing that. But apparently, you need some help with the lying on the ground in the form of kicking, stomping and clubbing to the head, quoting their account, and also some racially charged taunting during that process, which to be clear was being performed by a team of white police officers from 1991. So it must have been just rough. Like, like, like if the four of us try to start freestyle rapping right now, like that level, like middle school assembly bad. You know, you'd be really hard on these guys. This is how you help someone out of your seat. Have you flown you night? Wait, wait, wait, Cecil, I'm confused because like, and

these were black guys, not Asian doctors, I'm confused. Who just be clear like, we're not beating the white people, right? I just want to make sure that. Yeah, no, this is the 90s. It was different, but it wasn't that different. Okay, but important note, right? Like, so the two guys who followed police instructions

to the letter and weren't driving also got beaten, right? We should all keep that in mind. So what of Mr. King? Yeah. So meanwhile, there's another unfortunate issue happening here with Rodney King getting out of the car. Apparently he was drunk and also six foot three to 125 pounds trying to exit a Hyundai Excel matchbox. Yeah. Basically, like this is me every time I'm in the aisle seat and Eli's in the middle seat of the Ryan air economy cabin and get the shit 12 times during a one hour flight. And it's just really awesome. If I can Eli was a transformer, he'd be a porta-potty truck with a leak called shit-tree.

But I mean, we can call him whatever we want. And he doesn't have to be a transformer. He's a good boy. I feel like Striek implies a solid a little bit more than the real situation. So like shit-puddle. I think he could be shit-puddle. Shit-smear? Shit-smear? No. Yeah, I don't know. So like shit puddle. I think he could be shit puddle.

Shit smear. Shit smear. Well, he's Jewish. He'll be smear, right? That's a shit smear. Okay, that's locked in shit. Shmeer. So yeah, running king, he's dealing with big guy seat stuff and that's tough. Yeah, I mean,

based on my experience, that means like, you know, the seat belts getting stuck in your side fat and you're trying to get to the buckle, but the side fat's kind of surrounding it and it's tricky. You're doing advanced yoga to extract your knees from the dashboard. That's tough. Then you got to overcome the friction of twisting your back fat against the pulse tree and your jacket at the same time. It's a whole thing. Point being, whatever's happening, it takes Rodney King a bit longer to get out of the car than his friends. Fuck sick. Like the sounds terrible, but like six, three, two, twenty five, he's strong. I'm five eight to twenty five. I need the jaws of life to change the radio. Are you kidding

me? You got to get that voice activated Amazon car thing. Jesus Christ. I am seriously 5A225, 635225 doesn't seem that big to me. Yeah, so 5 extra inches. I knew he was black, but Jesus. That's more than 5 extra inches. Anyway, so, um, yeah, but Jesus. That's more than five extra inches. Anyway. So, um, yeah, six inches. Sure is.

Six inches in total. We're talking about the calories. Yeah. So, uh, I mean, it's five if we stop at 10 inches for a foot. Yeah. Yes, that would make any. Yeah. 10 inches is a Caucasian foot.

It's a different. Yeah. no, he's he's five foot 13. You got it. No, six three. That's not the same. So, so King finally emerges from, uh, from the vehicle, all five foot 13 to 25 of him. And, uh, you know, it's been a little while. So if the all-white team of cops wasn't angry already, they certainly were now. And I guess King just, he knew

he was fucked at this point. So he kind of just gave up, started just messing around, which I totally respect. Like, you know, your call just mess around. So he's making jokes now. He's doing crowd work. Oh my God. No, they love it's making jokes now. He's, he's doing crowd work. Oh my God. No, they love it. They love jokes. He's doing the jokes. He's doing the crowd work. He's, he's blowing kisses up to the helicopter. I do love this guy. He literally did that. He's calling the cops mass. And he's dancing around and fuck them. And at one point, he even grabbed his ass cheeks in a grand jester of fuck all of you. So good stuff.

Like I like he committed to the bit. Um, unfortunately Rodney King didn't have the lessons learned from the Rodney King beating to inform his behavior. Sadly. So yeah, when he started reaching back for his butt cheeks, officer Melanie singer thought he might be going for a weapon and she pulled her gun, causing several other cops to do the same thing and making the whole thing even more tense. And just for the record, he was not armed with anything between his butt cheeks or otherwise. So it was just them

all pulling guns. Yeah. Right. Black guy moves one centimeter night stick. White guy waves an AK 47. Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to hold still and let this bald eagle perch on your shoulder. I'm just going to go ahead and point out that like all things considered the fact that there's more story to tell after they thought the black guy had a gun tells you that maybe things have actually gotten worse rather than better. That wasn't cheerful. I thought that was you know, right? Right. Yeah. Okay. So now that Tom's on the record technically implying that Rodney King should be grateful for how good he had it. It was words in my mouth. It meant that matters how I characterized it. Can't we go back to the episode? Does anybody

want to count the days of the week or whatever. I guess it is a dish best serve called so is a leaf. We have the next. All right. So this is when Stacey Koon shut the fuck up.

That can't be his name. You're making this up. It's official. This is when Stacey Koon, the ranking officer at the moment decided he's taking official command and he told everybody to holster their weapons. And that's just about the last reasonable non evil thing that Stacey Koon did that day. The next move was ordering a swarm

technique in which four officers moved into grab, Randy King and forcibly handcuff him. And according to witnesses from both sides of the eventual trial, this is when Ronnie King went super saying and just started tossing people off of him. They used a taser on him twice and he was like, well, alcohol beats taser, go fuck yourself and just kept throwing me off and they still couldn't get him cuffed. Now granted, resisting like that was obviously unadvisable, but it clearly didn't justify the extended clubbing attacks by a circle of cops with batons that was about to happen.

I know that this is about to get gross, but if you've ever seen the swarm technique, it's fucking super adorable because they communicate by Wigland, their little butts. As if there's ever been a cop that had a little butt. Are we absolutely certain the cops didn't know for sure that he wasn't a baby seal at this point, like, I mean, could benefit of the doubt. We know now because white people get really upset when you club baby seals. So right after the second round of tasering from officer coon, that's when a nearby resident named George holiday started filming the incident with his camcorder from across the street. And apparently none of these cops noticed that happening.

This is a camcorder from the 80s, by the way. So there's a guy with everybody laughs because they're just picturing the same thing that your dad had. It was like super proud that he got the thing and like he could barely shoulder the fucker for like two minutes. I have to have a PCR hook to my belt, but yeah, that hurry up and do something fun. The battery will be last six minutes. Yeah. That thing. There's a guy with basically a shoulder mounted rocket launcher pointing at his home crime scene, which has 21 cops now and nobody noticed, or

they thought the video would help them by showing how all 56 baton strikes were justified of the man's clearly no longer a physical threat to the large team of armed police. Either way, these cops are all stupid, racist, or both. So at best, these cops are all stupid. Right. At best. Spoiler, it's not going to be at best. Nothing is about the story is at best. And then there was that one cop, you know, out of the 21 who knows that he's on camera and he sucks in his gut during the beating. So he like looks cool later on the news, but like, right. Also fun fact when a cop sucks in their gut, you can't tell.

It's literally the same. Same thing. I do look cool when I suck in my gut, whatever. You can't tell. Literally the same thing. I do look cool when I suck in my gut, whatever. Now, just to be 100% clear about this vicious beating. Here's a few more details. Rodney King is on the ground, no longer doing any of his super Saiyan moves.

The only physical motions he's making are putting his hands up to block the vicious attack and then falling to the ground after being hit some more. And then a few involuntary spasms that go along with having your bones broken by a club while you're lying on the fucking ground. At one point during this horrible, horrible clubbing officer, Koon directed his team to use quote, power strokes. Um, apparently that's something they say. Apparently they were in French tickler mode at first with their metal batons and they had to switch the mode. And, uh, this is all according to the cops who did it, by the way, officers, spoon, powell and wind thought they were explaining themselves when they said,

yeah, no, that's standard procedure. You do, you do burst of power strokes and you're trying to hit his black wrists, knees and ankles. Sorry. Just, well, just the body words that I said, not black. Did I say black? You said black. What? Stop staring at me. The, uh, what you do is you go ahead and protect and serve up an ass whooping. Yeah. Well, at it. See, that's the sick truth about them ignoring the cameras at this point, right? They actually probably did think this video would be shown on TV, but the context would be like, look how bad ass these cops are protecting you from large speeders. I bet you got to want to fuck this felt one with his chest stuck out and his gut held in.

Huh? Normal sized, butt on him, huh? We're all laughing as if this goes badly for the cops later. Like that. I just want to point that out. We're going to get to it. Yep. So yep, uh, two taser shots, a bunch of kicks and stomps, 56 batons, strikes and one hog tie later.

And the LAPD was finally able to arrest Rodney King. But instead of bringing him to the station, they went straight to the hospital because of the whole, you know, almost beating this guy to death, snafu. And that's when doctors found bruises and cuts all over him, a broken right ankle and a literal broken face. They broke his face. Jesus. It's disgusting. And according to several nurses, the arresting officers were openly bragging about how

many times they smashed their victim with their metal batons and Rodney, Rodney just kept saying, no, no, I felt on a flightist there. It's I'll be okay. I'm just really clumsy. It was my fault. I can down a flight of stairs. I'll be okay. I'm just really clumsy. It was my fault. I can plane a lot. I can plane. All right.

And the award for somehow making this paragraph less comfortable goes. And I he thank you. How many hits does it take to get to the center of a black man's face? Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, Jesus.

54. All right. Okay. Oh, I have two. All right. Okay. Oh, I have two awards. I brought two awards very tired. Oh, kind of ruined Tootsie pops just now. Whatever. So, um, today's later, George holiday calls the LAPD and he tells him about his video.

But apparently nobody had any interest in seeing it, which is not the smartest move by the LAPD because holiday just went to a TV news station instead and showed them the tape and the police didn't have a chance to get out in front of this terrible, terrible tape of them. Well, not that you can really get out in front of 17 cops standing there while four other cops beat up an unarmed man, like it was a video game practice mode. Whatever. The TV station took the video. They cut the first 13 seconds because they were out of focus, pin in that for later. And they showed the whole world exactly what happened. And this is actually sometimes cited as

the beginning of the modern surveillance age during which police brutality and institutional racism would come to an end. And nope, spoiler. All right. Well, I guess we're going to take a quick break and wait for racial equality in the application of justice in America shouldn't take more than a skitter to so we'll be back soon. He's on the ground, swarm technique, swarm technique. All right, now power strokes. Hey, Steve, what you doing there? I just a little tactical practice, you know, police stuff. I'm trying to stay sharp, keep on my A game.

You never know when some huge black guy probably hopped up on melanin and bath salts, impossible to subdue. We'll run out and flash his butt at your tactical helicopter, thus endadering the lives of nearly two dozen of LAPDs finest. Yeah, yeah. No, I can see that. That's actually pretty obvious. But what I was wondering about, we spent the, we spent the afternoon manfully polishing our clubs. Right. Right. But no, no, no, let me just spit polish. That seemed like the least we could do. Not sure. That's true at all. But still,

let me just get that we all decided to just getting some cross training. You know, lunch, lunch. What exactly? That's, that's not, I mean, technically true. But like, okay. So we're working on now as our big finish, you know, the big. Yeah. Yeah. Four on one swarm power strokes ready your aim. Then the big finish standard police stuff. That's just standard police stuff. Get out of my wife. Let the lady speak for herself. All right, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.

Now that we're all set up in the jury room, I just wanna let you know a few things. First thing, bathrooms are in the back there. You each have a pad and paper to take notes in front of you and you can call on me if you want any parts. The trial transcript read back to you or anything else you think you need to make a decision. Okay, if that's it, I'm just going to head on out. You guys need me.

Sorry, I'm sorry, one quick question before you go. What is this slide rule thingy? Oh, oh, that. Yeah, that's a tool to help you decide if an officer is guilty of a crime or not. How the hell does that work? What? Well, you just set the police officer to white and the suspect to black and see what it says. Not guilty.

Right away. Work. Okay. Okay. You folks good then? Wait, no, no, no. I moved it from black to Asian. It still says not guilty.

Yeah, and mine is not guilty. If the suspect was Latino, I don't, yeah, I don't know if yours does this guy's, mine looks like it's not guilty, no matter what I do if I select cop, all the other, the rest of it doesn't seem to matter on the ruler thing.

Oh, yeah. Right? Yep, yep. Any other questions? Wins lunch? Depends on how quick you can write innocent on these slips. Already vivid.

Very quickly. And we're back and we've already gotten 11 emails from people more incensed about this episode than they were about the actual dude getting beaten speaking of which heath. That wasn't my email. No, I was coming around with a different thing. I believe you were about to expound on the aftermath of this whole thing. Yeah. So Rodding King is recovering from a large series of terrible injuries and the city of Los Angeles had to figure out how to handle this giant scandal. And apparently they weren't sure about how the etiquette works on prosecuting the guy who almost got murdered by your police force. So their DA had to release

a statement explaining that there wasn't enough evidence to pursue charges against Rodney King for drunk driving and evading arrest. Uh-huh. Because otherwise that explanation would have to involve the phrase because we almost murdered him with clubs. Yeah, right. Yeah. Filing charges would be a faux pas at that point. So yeah, they didn't try to get him for J walking or broken tail light or anything like that, either, even though, you know, they'd started writing the ticket. So sloppy, but classy, I guess. And one of the thing, the city of Los Angeles found confusing is somehow they just couldn't decide what to do with those little scams, so almost murdered a guy on tape. But surprisingly enough, they actually started with the right move.

I guess they charged those four officers, Coon Powell, Wind and Brzehno with assault and with using excessive force. Well, okay. So I guess they started with a small fraction of the right move and decided that the other 17 officers who watched that all happen were just doing their jobs, not doing, I guess. They were undoing their jobs, so they got charged with anything. It's confusing. Kind of gets zen at this point. Very tricky. Yeah, it was sad. That's how I was also going to describe it. Yes.

No, I mean, the real problem is like, you obviously, I mean, you need 21 people to arrest one person. So they used 84 guys to arrest the four cops. And then at that point, it's like their batons were all bent and fucked up and everybody was working over time. You got to stop some. It's not a control. I just want to point out here, spoiler. You know who else watched it and did nothing. The legal system, the legal system did the same thing.

So the first thing to happen with the trial of those four officers was a change in venue. The defense for the officers argued that the media coverage was too large to have the trial happen in the city where the crime happened or translated back out of racist euphemies with not a jury with anyone darker than pale Filipina. somehow this worked. So they ended up moving the trial to semi-valley in the suburbs. And the jury ended up being nine white people, one by racial person, one Latino, and one Asian American. So that's half a black person max, not even 0. six like you'd hope. Why? Because the media wasn't covering this in white America. Jesus. I remember. You guys remember then unless one of your options wasn't plucking a jury from the Sentinel Islands or the 1700s. How the fuck do you even make this argument? So,

successfully, I guess. Yeah. Being a cop and defending yourself in quarters got to be like playing Contra with 30 lives, you know, they tell you the cheap. Oh, as you go away, I know right? That's part of like the training. I just like, uh, excuse me, but you've been charged with being awesome. Let's get a beer with the FW guys after they give you that not guilty award or whatever. So again, maybe half a black guy on the jury, maybe not. We don't know which races were the biracial guy. That being said, there was one entire black person involved, but he was the prosecutor and his name was Terry White. Just to make it. This is great. I love that. Yep. Just to make it sound extra stupid on TV, the news is like, okay, this is, yeah.

So a black DA named White is trying to prosecute a white cop named. Jesus Christ. Said that all correctly. But who is on. Yeah. First place. Yeah. Well, the final verdict came out after seven days of deliberation and all four officers were acquitted of assault and three out of four were acquitted of using excessive force. What? And the jury couldn't agree on that last charge for that last cop.

So and result nobody goes to jail from this trial. Jesus Christ, the defense just asking everyone on the stand. You see that man over there? Is he black? Yes, the defense rests. Oh, God. Yeah. And the part that I'm confused about though is like, what the fuck take seven days to decide how racist you are? Like, how does that take a week? I mean, like a guilty or not, this seems like something you can sort out on a smoke break.

Yeah. Well, but to be fair, though, if you did decide not guilty, I'm a giant racist during the smoke break, I can see how you might want that last week before everyone else knew it. The lack of a single conviction from that trial. That's obviously insane. The excuse given by those supporting the officers was that the jury was heavily swayed by those 13 seconds of blurry video from the George holiday tape that were cut by the TV news. The jury got to watch those 13 seconds.

And according to the defense team, this section showed Rodney King running at officer Powell at one point. But according to that makes no sense. It showed Rodney King just trying to run away because he was getting a violently attacked by a gang of heavily armed assailants. Yeah, I just, we got to be a little clearer because like if somebody runs away from the cops, is the rule infinite beating time after that? Like, sorry, he's some dude. Stop it. Oh no, he was jogging earlier this afternoon. Oh, well, carry on.

Yeah, well, early on, on after, on afternoons. He's a blurry tape of a black man jogging. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's a few frames of this a prudert film that are obscured by a sign. So we have no idea of JFK did something in there to deserve it. So. Right. Exactly. Yeah. No, Abe might have been open and hard

candies in the middle of that fucking play. You know, no. So fucking judgmental from from from from here. One of the people on stage shoots at him first. Ah, fuck, do you got that? Well, right, yeah, no, because it wasn't actor, right? If anyone was gonna go after him. Just an understudy that got told, hey, run up there, man, just fix that. If you just take care of this thing,

I know it's gonna be a fucking president. It's ridiculous. We don't even have $5 bills yet. Bring those words back down though, those, I mean, if he's got more, that sounds good. So they announced the verdict on the afternoon of April 29th, 1992. And in the crowd that day was movie director John Singleton. He made boys in the hood among others. And Singleton was quoted as saying,

by having this verdict, they lit the fuse to a bomb. And unfortunately, he was all the way correct about that. And the fuse was about two hours long later that afternoon, the 1992 LA riots started. Obviously mass riding is going to be terrible, regardless of the location. But this is Los Angeles in 1992. The people in charge of the city are the same people in charge of hiring officer Stacy Coon. Yeah, there's that. So just keep that in mind. And the riots ended up lasting for six days and resulted in 63 deaths, over 2000 injuries, about 7,000 fires, major damages to over 3000 businesses, and a grand total of almost a billion dollars in financial losses.

Wow. It's not clear exactly how the scoring works, but everyone lost the riots. I guess it's the lesson. Don't riot. You shouldn't riot probably. Yeah, but if you do try requesting a change of venue to the white suburb, just give me a word. Playing a way game. Yeah. I changed my vote. That's like the funniest way to riot if you're going to do it. What time? Yeah, I think it's amazing. We found a way to sum up the black experience in this country is six days of rioting and not two centuries of systematic racism and oppression. That marketing team of white white and white is really paying off, you know. Yeah,

right. Right. Right. If only those black people in LA had thought to ask an Irish guy what they should do. I feel like I wasn't clear about what I meant just now. I was saying, like I get the matter. You said it matters how I care. I understand the mentality of the riding for it, but I would, it's not a good strategy wise to get what you want. Anyway, my sentence is done. Next sentence. Um, so the news of the verdict, it also caused smaller riots to break out elsewhere, including San Francisco, Las Vegas Seattle, Atlanta and New York City. And there's actually even a small riot in Toronto, which was no doubt adorable. Yeah. And that was just, that was actually just two good Canadian guys who bumped into each other and neither apologized. Like it's still

a scandal to this day. It's just some guy in Toronto standing over a knock trash can screaming at America. I learned it from watching you. And he picks up all the garbage and it puts it back in very carefully. Sorry. This is it's all in the order I founded it. Yeah. A little plaque with like a Tim Horton's coffee right there shows that this is where it was dropped.

They they cleaned it up though. But none of these riots made things better is kind of the point I was making. Uh, in case it wasn't obvious, doesn't really help improve the situation for an oppressed minority. If a bunch of businesses get destroyed in the neighborhood where lots of people from that oppressed minority live, um, even Rodney King agreed with that at the time three days into the riots. He actually went on TV and gave a speech telling everyone to cut that shit out. Here's some of his exact words.

Quote, I just want to say, can we all get along? He actually coined that. People say it can't we all just get along, but I believe that's Rodney King who kind of coined that phrase. Continuing, can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids? We've got enough smog in Los Angeles, let alone to deal with setting these fires and things. It's a weird angle, whatever. Continue again. It's not going to change anything.

We'll get our day in court and that's all we want. And I love, I'm neutral. I love every, I love people of color. It's another weird comment. Whatever. Continuing one more time, we can all get along. We just got to end quote. Yeah. A lot of what he said that day. Spoiler alert. We cannot all get along. Yeah. And not to argue with the guy who just got his fifth birthday party knocked out of his memory by a building club that's, we're really worried about air quality. Folks, the ball count is up.

I just want to take a second to think about what we're doing here. No, we are not worried about air quality, Cecil. No, no, no. No, no, no. Fast, fall, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, speech. There would be another day in court, at least he was right about that. So soon after the riots ended, the US Department of Justice got indictments on those four officers for violating Rodney King's civil rights. Okay, maybe the riot, maybe that help. Anyway, again, the other 17 are fine somehow, at least it was something, at least something, unfortunately, it turned out to be more like a half of something, I guess the second trial

found officer Koon and officer Powell guilty, but officers wind and brazano were once again acquitted of doing the thing they did on video that we all saw just to be clear. It wasn't even really half of something good because the sentencing of Koon and Powell was complete nonsense. Despite existing guidelines that called for a sentence in the range of 70 to 87 months, US district judge John Davies only gave him 30 months each. According to Judge Davies, the first 50 clubings were totally legal. 50 clubings were legal. He said that out loud during a hearing, only the final six clubbing's were excessive

according to this judge. Is there a weight conversion chart they use or something? No, I know. You know, like there was that one guy counting like 46, 47, 49 shit, I lost. Oh, well, no one will ever know it's not on video. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why that cop in the Laquan, McDonald case was so bewildered, he thought he

had 34 more bullets to go. So he's going to be so. Oh, yeah. So Judge Davies also ruled that the specific baton strike that broke Rodney King's leg was also legal. That one was legal, not only because it was within the perfectly reasonable and not at all excessive 50 allowable clubbings of an unarmed citizen on the ground, but also because breaking bones is actually standard protocol. According to Judge Davies, quote,

Powell's baton blow that broke King's leg was not illegal because King was still resisting and rolling around on the ground. Jesus. Agressive ground, writhing is what the judge just described. He was writhing aggressively. And then he continued breaking bones in resistance suspects is permissible under police policy. End quote from a judge, a federal judge.

Okay. Just what I like was anybody actually really genuinely watching that video pretending to seriously ask like, okay, know what about that one? That one, okay, we good. Yeah. Yeah. Right. That one. Check out and a slow it down. We're going to each one.

He value each one on their own merit. That's what was happening. That was literally part of the trial. Yes. Judge Davies realizes that you keep flinching until they kill you, right? So would you get beaten? They keep giving them to. They're like 25 to for flinching until they kill you, right? So would you get beaten? They keep giving them to, they're like 25, two for flinching. Yeah, I was gonna see.

Or it's like a slug bug drives by. He just keep it. Okay, just see, it's every time. It's like he only flinched 25 times. You can't get into fifth. Two for flinching is an exponential rule, judge. If the six isn't even numbered, it would have to be an odd number to be illegal

because you get two at a time for flinching. Yeah. And one of the detail on Koonan Powell's jail time, the prosecution appealed the absurdly short sentences and the ninth circuit court of appeals actually ruled in their favor, rejecting the bullshit excuses that Judge Davies gave. So the prison terms got extended. But then the case got appealed again. And the Supreme Court flipped it back to the original tiny little bullshit sentence. The white sentence. We the people find the defendants white. I mean less guilty, less synonym synonym. So, okay. So once the dust settles in the Embers burn out, whatever happened to Rodney King. Ah, yeah. So following the incident, Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley offered Rodney King $200,000 and four years of college tuition as an apology.

So in which point Rodney King folded up piece of paper and slid it back across the table to mayor Bradley that said, hey, go fuck yourself. There's a fun diagram of how to do that. it back across the table to Mayor Bradley that said, Hey, go fuck yourself. Yeah. There's a fun diagram of how to do that that I wrote at the bottom of that paper. Cool. And instead of taking that bullshit lowball, King sued the city, winning a settlement of $3.8 million, which still seems super low, but glad he won, I guess, something. And one last thing, my favorite part of King's story happens over the next couple

decades before he died in 2012. This time includes some serious mental trauma and a struggle with addiction. So I'm obviously not talking about that part. That's not my favorite part. But during this time, I'm pretty sure Rodney King was just driving his car around Los Angeles, getting into stupid accidents and then taunting the shit out of the LAPD when they showed up. This happens like a dozen different times, including a traffic stop on the literal 20th anniversary of the beating. And so he's just like handing over his license like, yep, the Rodney King. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Some on your shirt there. Ah, face slick.

Just bugging with you guys. I poked. Sorry. No, you come over here too. I'm going to poke you in the eye. Cool. Cool. I'm free to go.

Great. That's what I thought. I thought I would be free to go. So you get it. Get out of jail free card. If you get beat about the head back in community chest. Okay. Like I'm not saying that like that's worth it because clearly that is not worth it,

but I am saying I'm glad he's having fun. Right. Right. Very nice. Yeah. Right. Find the good and all right. So Heath, if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be?

Be white. I bet this essay, I just, I didn't mean through all of life, but I'm not like, you, it's, I'm not, like you should choose, if you could choose, don't, in your America, don't, it's on, I'm not saying one's better. I'm saying it would be better. You get what I mean. I'm not assuming. Doesn't matter what you mean, he, that he said, okay, so are you ready for the

quiz? Ray for the quiz. All right. I will start this whole unfortunate incident could never happen today because a, we've fixed the systemic problems of institutional racism done with b, we've addressed the race based disparities in trial and sentencing. C or C, he would have been shot before anyone had a chance to beat it. Definitely.

See, yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Funny. This a funny show. Great topics. Good one. Thank you.

Yeah. Definitely C, but also because cops are a little busy with California being on fire right now. Way more than once during the riots. So, yeah, right. This is the gay set. But see, yes. All right.

I've got one for you as well here. He's many of the jurors from the Rodney King trial have gone on to prestigious careers in other fields, which of the following is a job currently held by a former Rodney King juror. A, fact checker on goop. Which of the following is a job currently held by a former Rodney King juror? Hmm. A, fact checker on goop. B, gastroendrologist for Eli Bosnick or C, refereeing the NFC championship game. Um, actually, I'm going secret answer D. uh, Rodney King's widow was actually one of

the jurors who awarded him $3.8 million from the city of Los Angeles. Amazing. That's actually true. That's that work. It's a tricky one. I feel like it's after after. Yeah, they got married after. Two ordered.

Uh, that's shit. So she's saying, so I hear you got some money. I feel okay. I feel like I threw some shade on Rodney King's whole thing like again by accident. That's just, but that is a fact what we just said. Well, that's too awesome to be wrong. Okay. So yeah, you nailed my question. And here's the question.

What is the name of the Rodney King feature film? Oh, Jesus. A, beat you to a pulp fiction. B, fight club. C, citizen Cain or D, monster's ink. Oh, all right. Well, I was thinking about a musical, um, the Rodney King and I, but, uh, yeah, it's definitely citizen Cain.

That's, uh, fantastic. Yeah, it's definitely citizen Kane that's Fantastic sorry. Sorry continues this day monster's in oh All right, oh, I feel so bad that I now have to after he made those series of jokes announced Cecil as the winner I feel like we're all For me by that but Cecil it's a way that this whole thing works you will want apparently so congratulations for the game. Okay well I think I should probably pick somebody who didn't have to sit through this so I'm gonna pick Eli Bosnick. Alright well for Cecil Tom and Heath I'm Noah thank you for hanging out with us today we'll be back next week and by then shitch smear will be an expert on something else.

Noah then you can hear from more from Cecil and Tom on the Cognitive Disnance podcast you You can hear more from Meheath and Meal, along with that other dude from over at Skating Aide, the Skydolphin movies, and the Skeptocrat. And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make our per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citationpod.com. All right, just, all right, try setting it to a white officer, black suspect selling cigarettes choked to death.

Try that one. Not guilty. You're, okay, white officer, 12 year old toy gun hit toy. And then not guilty. Fuck, all right, What about Hispanic officer black suspect streamed on Facebook live. That's gonna not not guilty. Yeah, these are all innocent. Doesn't I know I found one. I found one white officer black suspect 16 shots to the back guilty of murder. Well, second degree murder. I think the system is broken.