Rodney King

Before George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, before Tamir Rice and Michael Brown, before Eric Garner and Freddie Gray, there was Rodney King.

Rodney King was a Black man who was stopped for speeding in Los Angeles in the early morning hours of March 3, 1991. After a high-speed chase, officers used stun guns and metal batons to subdue King. The brutal beating, which left him with a fractured skull, broken bones in his face and ankle, and brain damage, was captured on video by an onlooker who filmed the incident from the balcony of his apartment. When a Los Angeles jury in 1992 acquitted the four white officers charged with the beating of King on all but one charge, the result was some of the worst race riots in U.S. history.

Early life

Rodney Glen King was the youngest of five children born to Odessa King and Ronald King. For much of his life, he was called Glen. His father was a janitor who struggled with alcoholism; he often forced his son to help him with his janitorial work and frequently beat him.

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Bystander Video: A History: Rodney King

After dropping out of school, King worked in construction, and he spent a year in prison after pleading guilty to robbing a convenience store. He was on parole for that crime in March 1991 when California Highway Patrol officers clocked him driving about 100 miles (160 km) per hour. King had been drinking earlier in the evening and later said that he fled from police because he was in violation of his parole.

The incident

When police tried to pull King over, he led them on an 8-mile (13-km) chase through Los Angeles. He eventually stopped, and when he emerged from his car, there were approximately a dozen officers and a police helicopter on the scene. Officers said they suspected that King had a weapon and that he was on drugs. (It was later shown that he was unarmed and had no drugs in his system, though he had been drinking.)

Over the course of the next 15 minutes, police officers beat and kicked King, using a stun gun on him multiple times. The 6-foot 3-inch (1.9-meter) King repeatedly tried to get to his feet. About this time George Holliday, awakened by a disturbance, took out his new video camera and began recording what was playing out 90 feet (30 meters) from his apartment. He captured more than 50 blows to the defenseless King. The recording changed the nature of the incident, according to University of Pittsburgh law professor David Harris:

Without that video, the incident would have really been passed up by the public. No one would have known about it, or challenged what police said about it.

Holliday took the video to a local television station, and within days it had been picked up by CNN and shown nationwide on a near-constant loop. King described how the beating felt to a grand jury, saying, “I felt beat up and like a crushed can. That’s what I felt like, like a crushed can all over.”

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The trial and the aftermath

The public outcry from the video led to the indictment of four Los Angeles police officers involved in the beating. Stacey Koon, Theodore Briseno, Timothy Wind, and Laurence Powell were charged in state court. Opening statements in their trial started on March 5, 1992, almost exactly a year after the beating. The trial had been moved out of Los Angeles to Simi Valley, and the jury included no Black jurors. After weeks of testimony, the case went to the jury, which deliberated for seven days. About 3 pm local time on April 29, 1992, the verdict was read; three officers were acquitted, and a mistrial was declared for the fourth officer. Within hours parts of Los Angeles were in flames.

Over the next four days, riots, fires, and looting raged through the streets of South Los Angeles. When it was all over, more than 50 people were dead, more than 2,300 injured. About 1,100 buildings were damaged, and total property damage was estimated at $1 billion.

At the height of the violence, King appeared on TV to appeal for calm. It would be one of the defining moments of the crisis:

People, I just want to say—can we all get along? Can we get along?…We’ve got enough smog here in Los Angeles, let alone to deal with the setting of these fires and things.…It’s not right, and it’s not going to change anything.…We’ve got to quit.

The next year the same four officers were tried on federal civil rights charges. Koon and Powell were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. King was awarded almost $4 million in damages.

Legacy of Rodney King

In the aftermath of the beating and trials, King continued to struggle. Much of the money he was awarded went to legal fees. His addictions to drugs and alcohol continued, and he faced multiple arrests related to alcohol and domestic abuse. He said he felt used by politicians and lawyers “for taking a battered and confused addict and trying to make him into a symbol for civil rights.”

When he died in 2012 in an accidental drowning, he was remembered by Al Sharpton: “History will record that it was Rodney King’s beating and his actions that made America deal with excessive misconduct of law enforcement.”

Other incidents of police brutality

While King’s beating and what came after were among the defining moments of the 1990s, the events did not bring to an end the use of excessive force by police, often against people of color. A Washington Post investigation found that, while Black people account for 13 percent of the population, they represent a quarter of all fatal police shootings. Here are some cases of police brutality that followed:

• Eric Garner: In July 2014 New York City police arrested 43-year-old Eric Garner for selling loose cigarettes on a street corner. In an incident caught on video, officers forced Garner to the ground, and one officer wrapped his arm around Garner’s neck. Garner repeatedly told officers “I can’t breathe,” and he subsequently died. The officer was fired.
• Michael Brown: In August 2014 Michael Brown, age 18, was stopped by an officer in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Wilson suspected Brown of having stolen cigars from a convenience store. A witness said that Brown, who was unarmed, had put his hands in the air, and the officer still shot him. But local and federal investigations found no evidence that Brown was shot while trying to surrender. The death touched off months of protests in Ferguson.
• Tamir Rice: In November 2014, Cleveland, Ohio, police received a report that a person was playing with a gun and scaring people. The caller noted that the gun was “probably fake” and that the person may have been a child. But when police arrived, they opened fire, killing 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who had a pellet gun. The shooting was captured on surveillance video. The report about the gun potentially being fake was not shared with the responding officers. They were not charged, but the officer who fired the fatal shot was ultimately fired for lying on his application to become an officer.
• Freddie Gray: In April 2015 Freddie Gray, age 25, was arrested by six Baltimore, Maryland, police officers for having a switchblade. Video showed officers dragging a moaning Gray to a police wagon. When the wagon arrived at the station, Gray was not breathing. He died a week later of injuries that the medical examiner determined were caused while he was being transported. Amid protests in Baltimore, the six officers were suspended and subsequently charged. None of the officers were found guilty, and they all returned to work.
• Breonna Taylor: In March 2020 Louisville, Kentucky, police officers used a battering ram to enter the home of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor as part of a drug operation. Taylor’s boyfriend, thinking the police were intruders, fired at them, hitting one officer in the leg. Police fired more than 30 times, killing Taylor. No drugs were found, and the information that led police to Taylor’s home proved to be faulty. The most serious charges against the officers were dismissed in 2025.
• George Floyd: In May 2020 Minneapolis, Minnesota, police confronted George Floyd, age 46, and accused him of trying to use a counterfeit $20 bill. As Darnella Frazier recorded on her phone, police officer Derek Chauvin pinned Floyd to the pavement, kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes. Floyd repeatedly pleaded for his life, telling officers “I can’t breathe” 16 times during his last minutes of life. The brutal killing set off nationwide protests in the summer of 2020. Chauvin was convicted of second-degree murder. It was the first time a white police officer in Minnesota had been convicted of murdering a Black person. Chauvin was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison. Three other officers involved in Floyd’s death were convicted of a range of charges.
• Sonya Massey: In July 2024, Sonya Massey called 911 to report a prowler. Illinois Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Grayson and his partner responded to the scene. When Massey got a pot of hot water from the stove, Grayson shot and killed her saying he feared she was going to scald him. Body camera video from another officer on the scene caught Massey saying to the officers, “Don’t hurt me.” In October 2025, Grayson was convicted of second-degree murder in Massey’s death. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in January 2026.