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King had been pulled over for driving recklessly through a residential neighborhood. Later tests showed he was drunk and had marijuana in his system. When police ordered him out of the car, he refused charging one of the police officers and throwing other officers on their back. Twice, the police attempted to subdue him with 50,000 volt tasers, such high voltage was considered to be enough to put any man down, but these did not succeed, making officers believe that King was on pain numbing drug, PCP, which was later proven to be false. Next, the police kicked King and struck him 56 times with night sticksLernaean Hydra with a club A club or cudgel is perhaps the simplest of all melee weapons. Essentially, a club is simply a large conic instrument to hit things with. Related melee weapons such as maces, and flails are variations upon the club. Typically, a, first to knock him down, then to keep him there as he attempted to lift his head while he lay on the ground.

In addition to the three officers personally involved in delivering blows, 24 other law enforcement officers allegedly watched the beating; some of them were said to have assisted in holding King down by placing their feet on his back. Two other African-Americans who were in the car with King cooperated with police and were not harmed.

Three officers and a sergeant were indicted on March 15March 15 is the 74th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (75th in Leap years). There are 291 days remaining. In the Roman calendar March 15 was known as the Ides of March. Events 44 BC Ides of March: Julius Caesar, General of the Roman Republic, was for "assault by force likely to produce great bodily injury" and with assault "under color of authority," and two were charged with filing false police reports. Three of the men charged were non-Hispanic whites, and one was HispanicHispanic as used in the United States, is one of several terms used to categorise US citizens, permanent residents and temporary immigrants, whose background hail either from Spain or the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America. The term is used as a.

The defense successfully filed for a change of venue away from Los Angeles County, where the incident occurred and where, it was argued, the policemen could not receive a fair trial, to suburban Ventura CountyVentura County is a county located on the U. state of California's Pacific coast, just northwest of Los Angeles. As of 2000 it had a population of 753,197. Its county seat is Ventura. This county is part of the Greater Los Angeles Area. The Conejo Valley (Simi Valley), whose population is more affluent, contains a much smaller proportion of African-Americans, and contains a disproportionately large number of law-enforcement officers. At trial, the defense argued that the officers had legitimate reason to believe King was extremely dangerous and possibly on a mind-affecting drugThis article is about chemical substances. For other meanings of the word "drug", see Drug (disambiguation A drug is any substance that can be used to treat an illness, relieve a symptom, or modify a chemical process or processes in the body. The word "dr such as PCPPneumocystis carinii pneumonia, disease phencyclidine, a drug also known as Angel Dust Probabilistically checkable proof, a notion in the theory of computational complexity theory Partido Comunista del Peru, a. Shining Path Post correspondence problem, an and that the force used was justified by that threat. Although media coverage had repeatedly emphasized the racial aspect of the case, King testified at trial that he did not believe the police beat him because he was black.

On April 29, 1992, three of the officers were acquitted by a jury of 10 non-Hispanic whites, one Hispanic, and an Asian. The jury could not agree on a verdict for one of the counts on one of the officers.

The verdict shocked much of the country. The President of the United States, George H. W. Bush, made a rare statement on a trial, saying that the verdict "has left us all with a deep sense of personal frustration and anguish." The verdict triggered massive rioting in Los Angeles, which left hundreds of buildings severely damaged or destroyed and dozens dead. Smaller riots occurred in other U.S. cities. King made an appearance before television news cameras to plead for peace, saying, "Can we get along here? Can we all get along?"

On May 1, as the unrest continued, President Bush announced that he would most likely charge the officers with violating King's civil rights. King testified in this Federal trial on March 9, 1993. Then on August 4, a federal judge sentenced LAPD officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison on this charge. The other officers were not convicted, and there was no rioting.

King's actual first name is Glen, not Rodney. The media referred to him as "Rodney King" because in either initial police reports or initial news reports, he was mistakenly called Rodney King, and as the news was rebroadcast, the error was rebroadcast as well. The name "Rodney" was not associated with Glen King (Glen being King's birthname) until after his 1991 car stop by police.

Since the 1991 incident, King has been arrested several times for drug infractions, violence, and motoring offenses.

The video of the incident is an example of inverse surveillance (i.e. citizens watching police). To the extent that the bystander was initially capturing the incident serendipitously, the recording was a form of sousveillance, in both the sense of inverse surveillance as well as the sense of personal experience capture. The video was first broadcast on the local Los Angeles television station KTLA Channel 5.