Here in Australia we got the same news reports as were aired in the US. We go the few minutes grab of the video of the incident. I remember being in pretty high dudgeon at what I'd seen. Now I have to say I had visited some police establishments in LA (several times to the Academy) on my trips to the US and found the LAPD cops to be highly trained and professional, if a bit military gung-ho for my liking, but that's just me, I don't believe in militarism in policiing. But LA isn't like anywhere in Australia so I figured they were reflecting the hazards of their job.
Anyway I watched the news and read the papers and I thought they were goners.
I returned to LA while the Simi Valley trial was under way and discussed it with an ex-LAPD friend of mine. I couldn't help it, I just blurted out how the King incident looked really bad and the cops were out of control. He took issue with me. He'd been watching the whole trial on Court TV (he's a writer) and told me that what had been seen on the news and portrayed in the press was a fraction of what had happened and that in his opinion the cops had used appropriate tactics and force. I still wasn't convinced but all I had was the news footage so how was I to argue?
I remember the day of the acquittal. It was my last day in LA on that trip before flying out from LAX in the early evening to come home. I was poodling around downtown LA in the rental car, just having a last look around before heading home. I remember driving through what looked in retrospect suspiciously like the area where Reginald Denny came to grief. I remember remarking to my then wife that it was very quiet. I'd forgotten that the trial was ending.
I took the rental car back to LAX and caught the shuttle back to the terminal and did all those pre-flight things you do. I remember sitting in a lounge in the airport drinking beer and watching a yuppie couple trying to talk to the Vietnamese lady in the bar. Problem was they were speaking Spanish to her. She just looked at me and rolled her eyes. I had no idea that at that moment LA was burning. When I got back to Aus I was stunned.
I went back on another trip not that long after. I saw my friend again and we discussed the whole thing at length. I bought Stacey Koon's book (yes, I know you could call it self-serving) and read it when I got back home again. This was after the federal trial if I remember rightly. I read much of what Koon's attorney wrote about both trials. I read the reports of the plea bargains and deals that were going on in the federal process.
I believe the cops were victims of political necessity, I really do. I saw the longer version of the tape. Koon was in control and giving orders. Yes they were striking King with PR24 batons but it wasn't an out-of-control pile-on, it was cold-blooded application of force.
Many of you will dispute this. Fair enough, all I can do is tell you what my experiences were. I'm not a reflexive knee-jerk defender of the police, I'm not too happy with the speed with which the taser seems to being used in various jurisdictions these days (I'm told I'm close to becoming a dinosaur) but I do believe that injustice was done to the cops.
The irony of the CHP being involved in the start of the King situation wasn't lost on me at the time. I remember reading accounts of the events that precipitated the Watts riots of 1966, CHP was at the beginning of that one too. An eerie historical echo.
Interesting analysis here -
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/trials24.htm
