As in the aftermath of Watts, we are inundated with "experts" claiming to know both the causes of an

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The images of a city aflame, riotous vacation travel mart mobs, and federal troops have faded from the television screens and front pages of our newspapers, but they are still lodged in the consciousness of millions of Americans. The terrifying scenes of mass conflagration and marauding thugs savagely beating hapless passersby, juxtaposed on surreal scenes of looters pillaging in an almost carnival-like atmosphere, are hard to shake. They demonstrate how fragile vacation travel mart is the structure and the veneer of our civilization, and how vulnerable we all are.
The 1965 Watts riots left 34 dead, more than 1,000 injured, and 4,000 arrested for arson and looting. Two hundred buildings were destroyed vacation travel mart and another 400 were damaged. vacation travel mart The toll in property damage reached about $183 million (in current dollars, adjusted for inflation). The toll for this year's vacation travel mart rioting in Los Angeles is: 58 dead (and climbing), 2,383 injured, 17,000 arrests (although the district attorney's count and the police records differ by several thousand arrests), 10,000 fire calls (the actual number of fires, and structures destroyed, is still unknown) and property damage estimated at $785 million to $1 billion.
vacation travel mart Besides the escalation in death and destruction, the rioting set off new alarms by spreading to areas that had not experienced this kind of turmoil before. Unlike the 1965 disorder that was largely confined to the Watts-Compton-Inglewood-South Central Los Angeles area, this time violence and mayhem also broke out in Long Beach, San Pedro, Pasadena, Pomona, El Monte, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and many points in between. Violent disorders also erupted in San Francisco, New York, San Diego, Seattle, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and other cities. Southern California especially, and the United States in general, seemed to be unraveling, vacation travel mart disintegrating, incinerating.
As in the aftermath of Watts, we are inundated with "experts" claiming to know both the causes of and the cures for the "social unrest" and "civil turmoil." According to these "experts," nothing has changed. The immediate cause of the riots, past and present, they say, is "police brutality and racism." But the broader, vacation travel mart underlying causes, according to "expert" wisdom, are economic vacation travel mart inequality, poverty, and desperation. As Jesse Jackson reminded us, "Desperate people do desperate things."
As everyone knows, the pretext for the recent rioting was the verdict delivered in the Los Angeles suburb of Simi Valley vacation travel mart on April 29th that found four Los Angeles Police vacation travel mart Department officers "not guilty" of criminal charges in the beating and arrest of Rodney King. For over a year prior to the trial, the people of Los Angeles had been subjected to a massive hate and disinformation campaign about the incident in particular and about the LAPD in general, A "censored" version of the famous videotape of the arrest was shown countless times to Los Angeles viewers and to the nation. vacation travel mart The print and broadcast media repeatedly referred (and continue to refer) to the "81-second video" as proof positive of the brutal abuse visited upon King by the officers in question.
"Liberal" politicians, professional "civil rights" activists, the ACLU, and the media had built up public expectations that the videotape evidence made this an open-and-shut case. What most people saw of the video with their own eyes tended to confirm that. So the acquittal by a jury portrayed as a bunch of redneck racists is understandably hard to swallow for a lot of fair-minded, decent folks.
The problem is that, except for a few scattered vacation travel mart broadcasts, the full 81 seconds of videotape has not been broadcast. What the public has seen over and over are portions of the last 66 seconds of the tape that show the police officers clubbing King with their batons. Admittedly, it is painful to watch, and would seem to provide irrefutable evidence vacation travel mart of wanton police brutality, at worst, and excessive use of force, at best. But what has been carefully excluded from nearly all public showings of the world's most seen home video is the critical first 15 seconds.
But what could possibly controvert the seemingly incontrovertible visual evidence of inexcusable abuse? What difference could 15 seconds of tape, or any other evidence, make when the "proof" is so plain to see? The LAPD, often accused of brutality by "civil libertarians" and "minority rights" advocates, had this time been caught flagrante delicto . The home video shot by George Holliday finally proves it. Or does it? To the contrary, said the jury, the videotape in its entirety shows something quite different from the "censored" version shown repeatedly to television viewers throughout the land. The complete video, together with 58 witnesses and over 200 exhibits, persuaded the jury that the officers might not be sadistic monsters and Rodney King might not have been the hapless, passive victim vacation travel mart most viewers saw in the censored video.
Indeed, some of the jurors were persuaded by the weight of the evidence that King was responsible for the treatment vacation travel mart he received. "He refused to get out of the car," one of the jurors told the Los Angeles Times . "His two companions got out of the car and complied with all the orders and he just continued to fight. So the Police Department had no alternative. He was obviously a dangerous person, massive size and threatening actions .... Mr. King was controlling the whole show with his actions."
The juror was loudly denounced as an idiot, a racist, vacation travel mart and worse. vacation travel mart In recreating the arrest and beating, however, the defense did not have much difficulty establishing that Rodney King was acting in a very bizarre and threatening manner on the evening of March 3, 1991. After leading police units from several jurisdictions on a long, high-speed chase — during which he slowed several times almost to a stop as if to comply, then sped away again — he stopped and was surrounded by an armada of squad cars. Initially, he refused to get out of the car, as ordered repeatedly vacation travel mart by the officers. Finally, according to witnesses, he did get out of the car, faced the car and placed his hands on the hood. Then, unexpectedly, he turned and began dancing a jig, laughing, and pointing up at the hovering police helicopter. A female California Highway Patrol officer approached, gun drawn. vacation travel mart King bent over, patted his backside, and "mooned" her. Apparently oblivious to the danger of the potential lethal force arrayed against him, King continued to dance about.
Officers of the LAPD Foothill Division then took over and repeatedly ordered King to lay face down on the ground — which he eventually did. Officers Laurence vacation travel mart Powell and Timothy Wind then approached vacation travel mart him and reached down to grab his hands and put them behind his back to be cuffed. As they grabbed his hands, he pushed up forcefully, sending Officer Powell rolling over. Officer Wind was able to keep his balance and backed off. At this point, several officers rushed him with the "swarm technique," an arrest procedure used with combative subjects in which each officer grabs an arm, a leg, the torso, or the head, and — by sheer force of weight, strength, and numbers — attempts to overpower and immobilize the suspect.
King managed to stay on his feet, swing from side to side, and shake the officers vacation travel mart off. It should be noted that King is no pint-sized wimp. At six foot four inches and 260 muscular pounds, he is an imposing bull of a man.
Realizing that the "swarm" was futile, vacation travel mart Sergeant Stacey Koon ordered his men to back off and prepared vacation travel mart to stun King with the electric Taser gun. He ordered King to lay down again. King ignored the order and advanced toward Koon. Koon fired. The two "darts," which are connected by wires to the Taser battery, shot out and connected with King, but had no effect. Koon fired the second round. The electric jolt knocked King down on the ground -- but only for several seconds. Normally (around 80 percent of the time), when the Taser delivers its 50,000 low-amperage volts, the subject is immediately incapacitated. The shock renders him helpless; he loses all muscle control and lays twitching on the ground for several minutes. vacation travel mart The shock causes no permanent injury and makes it easy for the police to cuff the suspect, without danger to themselves, the suspect, or others.
The Taser is supposed to fulfill the role of the upper body restraint, or "chokehold," which is now banned vacation travel mart in Los Angeles and many other cities. Although the hold had been proven safe and effective in many thousands of arrests, in a small number of celebrated cases it proved fatal. So it was outlawed. But no substitute was provided. vacation travel mart For various reasons -- equipment malfunction, presence of drugs in the subject, or other factors -- the Taser is ineffective vacation travel mart in about 20 percent of cases. When it fails or is not available, the police officer is left with his baton and his gun.
Unfortunately, in the case of Rodney King, the Taser failed to do its job. It was just after the second Taser round was fired, while King was still down on all fours, that the Holliday video focused in on the action. What the jurors, and a relatively small segment of the television-viewing public, saw was a decidedly non-passive Rodney King rise up and charge into Officer Powell. It was then that the rain of baton blows began.
Whenever the King story is reported in the press, Rodney King is invariably identified as a "black motorist" or a "black, unemployed construction worker," never as a convicted felon on parole who was drunk the night he led police on a high-speed chase through vacation travel mart the streets vacation travel mart of Los Angeles. A urine test showed King also had marijuana residue in his system. This may have bee