Today's Rodney King

Watching Rodney King’s beating for the first time in Professor Hong’s class really shook me. Just hearing about what happened and watching as police brutality has not improved scared me alone, but to put a visual to it added an entirely new perspective. Reading Chronology of Rage in class gave me an even deeper understanding of what happened on that night and the events that followed afterward. It’s been twenty-seven years since Rodney King’s beating, and as they say, history repeats itself.

My first exposure to the realities of police brutality was the murder of Trayvon Martin, was twelve. It might seem ironic as I am a young person of color who grew up in Compton, you would have thought I would have already known. I did not really understand at the time that it was a hate crime and that Trayvon was only seventeen. His only crime-- his black skin he wore under a hoodie on his way home. My mom later explained why it happened, and I was still too young to really understand the extent of the situation. As years went on, more names were added to the list one after the other, usually black men, and then black women started to make the list too. Michael Brown shot dead at eighteen after the robbery of a convenience store (NY Times), Eric Garner after selling cigarettes (CNN), Sandra Bland after a traffic stop and taken to a local jail (Chron Texas), and most recently Stephon Clark, shot in his own backyard while on his cell phone (LA Times). All of these people were unarmed victims of police brutality. These are only a few names of hundreds of lives lost to police brutality. Gun crazy cops reach for their holster before their taser or baton even though they have been trained. All of these things sparked protests and organizations like “Black Lives Matter.”

The police sergeant involved in the death of Eric Garner was stripped of her badge after the incident, no jail time served (USA Today). The officer involved in the case of Sandra Bland had his charges dropped and was fired, (CNN) no jail time served, Sandra’s death was ruled to be a suicide (NY Times). Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmeman, and still found not guilty, serving no jail time. By these examples, the beating of Rodney King continues to repeat itself when out of control cops use their power to do harm. The officers involved in Rodney King’s beating also did not serve jail time, even with video evidence that we can see today. “Sergeant Stacey C Koon, Officer Laurence M. Powell, Officer Theodore Briseno, and Officer Timothy Wind are found not guilty…” (Chronology of Rage) There was also video evidence in the case of Eric Garner and Stephon Clark, 911 recordings of Trayvon Martin, and surveillance footage of both Trayvon and Michael Brown. Even with solid evidence of what is being done, there is no punishment or consequences served to the men and women who are supposed to protect. You would think even with video evidence presented in court in 1991 when not everyone had camera phones in their back pocket would make a difference in the way the case was treated, but it was not when “an all-white jury” (Chronology of Rage) is to decide the outcome of your trial. Not much has changed between then and now, besides protesting instead of rioting to make our voices heard, but police brutality against black men and women continues.