Police Brutality and Rodney King

These new patterns of action are spreading gradually across the United States. The 1980s saw the arrival of many programs inspired by community policing. Pedestrian patrols, the creation of nearby police stations or neighborhood meetings with local groups become common practice in different major cities, improving the image of the police as well as the behavior towards the officers.

This growing interest in community policing does not spare the LAPD. Although far from this philosophy, the latter sees some of its executives interested in these ideas, aware that a reform of the methods of their organization is essential.

But to apply these ideas to the LAPD, it was necessary to open a window of opportunity in which the actors favorable to an organizational change within this body as prestigious as controversial could rush. This change of context occurred on March 3, 1991, with the beating of Rodney King. It is therefore appropriate to first see the impact of this event on the political scene in Los Angeles, before looking at the difficulties encountered since 1992 by this new policing.

• Rodney King’s incident: the detonator

Throughout this section, it will be necessary to show that the triggering of the LAPD reform would not have been possible without the video of the beating of Rodney King and the riots that ensued.

By showing white officers hitting a black man to hundreds of millions of viewers, the video of Rodney King’s beating is a sort of shocking and mediatized summary of a latent social problem for years. The issue of LAPD methods then becomes a priority political issue, which the mayor Tom Bradley, hostile to the police chief and eager to reaffirm his leadership with the African-American community, is quick to seize, something that he could have done so far. Chief Gates has three important resources, which made any reform impossible.

First of all, politics can not interfere in the police field in Los Angeles, for one simple reason: the special status enjoyed by the police chief. In 1923, he was awarded the status of the civil service, and therefore irrevocable, to fight against corruption, endemic at the time. In addition, Gates and the LAPD are massively supported by whites, the majority in the electorate, which makes it politically difficult for the mayor to attack them frontally. Not to mention that Gates was very popular within his officers. It makes sense for officers to support their leader and especially do not question the methods they were used to. (LAPHS, 2018)

With the problem of the Rodney King incident, the chief of police can no longer pretend to ignore the problem of police brutality. In addition, the mayor himself a former police officer, takes advantage of emotion generated by the event in the public opinion, to challenge the police chief and the methods of the LAPD. Betting on a change of opinion of whites because of the brutality of the facts, he takes opportunity to try to make it a municipal political problem. This allows other actors, political, media or community, favorable to police reform to take advantage and opportunity that presents itself to them.

•  LAPD: a public problem

The question of police brutality is no longer just a technical issue, discussed within the hierarchy of department. As we have seen, because of his independent status, the chief of police was the only real guide to security policies within the department, with no public debate about this issue. It was difficult for politicians to interfere in the police sphere, especially when the leader, like Gates, had significant resources. After the Rodney King affair, the role and functioning of the police, which until then had been a social problem, is becoming a political issue, involving politicians, the media and public opinion.

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