Gorillas In The Mist: A Case Study

On March 2, 1991 a high speed police chased turned into a brutal police beating of the intoxicated Rodney King. Rodney King was driving down the 210 freeway at 12:30 AM when Tim and Melanie Singer spotted him. They pursude him at speeds of up to 117 miles per hour. King eventually went up a ramp and stopped at the intersection of Osbourne and Foothill Boulevard, where three more cop cars that were holding Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore Briseno, Rolando Solano, and Sergeant Stacy Koon, showed up along with a police helicopter. Singer got out of her car and ordered the suspects to get down on the ground, where Allen and Helms did as they were told who were with him in the vehicle, King did not. She told him again and he finally got out but not before he "grabbed his right buttock with his right hand and shook it" at Singer, as she recalls. Melanie Singer had her gun drawn and was going to arrest him when Sergeant Koon told her to stand back because they could handle
LAs mayor, Tom Bradley, decided that there was clearly some dangerous levels of racially motivated incidents and appointed a commission lead by Warren Christopher to investigate the LAPDs practices and regulations. The defense attorneys were working on getting the trial moved out of LA and eventually won by getting it moved to Simi Valley, under the new judge Stanley Weishing, which was a very conservative and a primarily white town, which really worked in favor for the defense. The jury for this case held about twelve African Americans out of the two hundred and sixty people, who also had no interest in serving on the jury, which really seemed to help the defeneses' case. The first trial ended on April 29, 1992 in the defenses favor by freeing all of the accused officers of all charges except Officer Laurance Powell who only had one assault