Police officers were found not guilty in the Rodney King case.
The exoneration of the four police officers, whose brutal beating of black motorist Rodney King had been captured on amateur videotape and widely disseminated by the media led to outbursts of rage in many cities throughout the United States. Nowhere were the repercussions felt more strongly than in Los Angeles, in the same vast district that had been wracked by protests in 1965 and never repaired.The outbreak of rioting in Los Angeles itself was immediate and was graphically portrayed on television. Widespread resentment over the acquittal of the four offending police officers in the West Rodney King the trial was certainly the match that ignited the South Central uprising, but underlying this was poverty and fear.
