How Rodney King and the riots changed Los Angeles and the LAPD.

On a dark street, what began as a private moment between a citizen and the police became a national outrage. Rodney Glen King grew up in the Altadena Pasadena section of Los Angeles with four siblings, a loving mother, and an alcoholic father. Soon young Rodney followed in Dad's stumbling steps, beginning a lifetime of alcohol abuse. King had been drinking the night of March 3, 1991, when he engaged in a high-speed chase with the LAPD, who finally pulled him over. What happened next shocked the nation. A group of officers brutally beat King with their metal batons, Tasered and kicked him into submission—all caught on videotape by a nearby resident. The infamous Rodney King Incident was born when this first instance of citizen surveillance revealed a shocking moment of police brutality, a horrific scene that stunned and riveted the nation via the evening news. Racial tensions long smoldering in L.A. ignited into a firestorm thirteen months later when four white officers were acquitted by a mostly white jury. Los Angeles was engulfed in flames as people rioted in the streets. More than fifty people were dead, hundreds were hospitalized, and countless homes and businesses were destroyed. King's plaintive question, "Can we all just get along?" became a sincere but haunting plea for reconciliation that reflected the heartbreak and despair caused by America's racial discord in the early 1990s. While Rodney King is now an icon, he is by no means an angel. King has had run-ins with the law and continues a lifelong struggle with alcohol addiction. But King refuses to be bitter about the crippling emotional and physical damage that was inflicted upon him that night in 1991. While this nation has made strides during those twenty years to heal, so has Rodney King, and his inspiring story can teach us all lessons about forgiveness, redemption, and renewal, both as individuals and as a nation.

The causes and the aftermath of the 1992 riots.

The American public was holding its collective breath as four officers of the Los Angeles Police Department were acquitted of excessive force in the arrest and beating of Rodney King. Upon the exhale came relief for some, but for many more came a crushing grief and anger. This essential volume gives readers a strong background on the events leading up to the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. Essays also present the controversies related to the event, including whether the police department protected its citizens during the riots. The last chapter shares first-person narratives and accounts of those impacted by the riots, giving your readers a chance to go beyond simple facts and experience the event for themselves.

This title examines an important historic event--the police beating of Rodney King in 1991 and the riots in Los Angeles, California, in 1992. Easy-to-read, compelling text explores the events of March 3, 1991, when a high-speed car chase ended in King's beating, the significance of the video tape of the beating, the officers' trials, and the riots that followed their acquittal in May 1992. Key to the discussion is an examination of the racial context of the riots, including preexisting racial tensions in the city. Also discussed are the 1993 federal trial and the aftermath of the riots. Features include a table of contents, glossary, selected bibliography, Web sites, source notes, and an index, plus a timeline and essential facts. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

When the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts erupted in violent protest in August 1965, the uprising drew strength from decades of pent-up frustration with employment discrimination, residential segregation, and poverty. But the more immediate grievance was anger at the racist and abusive practices of the Los Angeles Police Department. Yet in the decades after Watts, the LAPD resisted all but the most limited demands for reform made by activists and residents of color, instead intensifying its power. In Policing Los Angeles, Max Felker-Kantor narrates the dynamic history of policing, anti–police abuse movements, race, and politics in Los Angeles from the 1965 Watts uprising to the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion. Using the explosions of two large-scale uprisings in Los Angeles as bookends, Felker-Kantor highlights the racism at the heart of the city's expansive police power through a range of previously unused and rare archival sources. His book is a gripping and timely account of the transformation in police power, the convergence of interests in support of law and order policies, and African American and Mexican American resistance to police violence after the Watts uprising.

Daniel, his mother and cat watch an inner-city riot from their apartment window. When their building catches alight they are evacuated to a church. Observations from child's point of view.