Quote:
Originally Posted by Tombot
No. He wasnt able to get up at that point. Not anymore.
In the footage i saw, Rodney King was just lying on the ground, trying to protect his head. And they still took turns beating & kicking him from several sides for minutes. What does that tell me ?
Maybe that it had nothing to do with legal and just police-work.
Its a crime in itself, when policeofficers feel like they are the judge, too.
Personally i never saw americans as barbarians in terms of their laws.
Still, i am glad, that i dont have to "freeze" in my car, every time i am stopped in traffic, or else...
I guess thats about gun-laws and the habits of people wearing them (and being a potential threat) - but thats going to far, for a RPG-related forum...
I wont get into an argument about death-penaltys and all that.
But to quote an actionfilm-cyborg on this... well, whatever you say  |
Tombot,
I've got A LOT of family in the law enforcement community, and if the letter had arrived a week and half sooner... i'd have gone to College instead of boot camp in 1989 and become a State Highway Patrol officer and went on an entirely different career path. What happened with King is something that 99% of the people have only seen the last 50% of what was happening with his time with the police. If you can get to see the entire video, please do. King was zooming on PCP, he attacked the police when he got out of his car. One of the officer's he attacked was one of the first female officers. He knocked her down and did bodily harm to her. The other police tried other forms of restraint, but they didn't work and they ended up going over the edge and beat him like a drum. That's not an excuse. But an explaination for what happened.
Dealing with someone hopped up on PCP isn't easy... hell, I've talked to officers who've stated taht they've had to SHOOT the person (both males and females) multiple times... because they just were not stop advancing on them. And this was officers using .45s and .38s and not the little wimpy 9mm they are using today. One first hand story i was given, was the PCP junkie was IN THE POLICE STATION being booked when they had a flashback (not completely zooming on the stuff) and they started throwing cops and dectives all around the squadroom. It took EVERYONE in the room (and others from out of the station jumping in) to bring this guy down.
The other story I was told dealt with a zoomie who had JUMPED OFF the roof of a thrid story building, he broke his leg and kept running. When the officers cornered him he fought them off and nearly killed one of the officers when he threw them through a windshield (the broken glass cut his throat, he had a massive concussion). Three officers started shooting when the Zoomie jumped on said officer and started to bash his head in. They emptied their pistols into the guy, and he was still trying to kill them.
What happened with King wasn't the worse case of Police overreacting. And when it happens I get really pissed off. And I can get you links of cases where officers acted in bad faith... and give you essays on just how screwed up tey were and how they should have gotten the book thrown at them. But usually that comes only after I've seen or read EVERYTHING dealing with the incident so I can get into their heads and try to figure out what they where thinking... and then make a judgement on what happened.
All I'm saying is that the Rodney King beating wasn't the worse case... But trying to say that the cops were dealing with someone who was fighting them, and then when they finally started to get control of the situattion they were hyped up on adrenile and didn't back off. It's why they were not found guilty of criminal charges, but brought up on civil ones.
One of the worst problems with what happened in this case was that the media hyped up the back end of the incident, and didn't show the first half where King attacked the officers... I put all the bad things that came out of the incident into the hands of the damn media who did not show everything that happened.
The media went for sensationalism, and not facts.