Today in class we continued with our topic on Los Angeles riots and how it is a very important part in history. Initially we looked at the Rodney King trial where police beat up Rodney after they claimed "he wasn't complying and resisting arrest." He then later was rushed to the hospital and spent two months recovering from the beating. They moved his trial away from Los Angeles because they knew that the jurors have seen the video of him being beaten. They moved the trial to a conservative community composed of mainly white elderly people who gave the police the benefit of the doubt. During all of this Los Angeles was in a riot for six days, about fifty people died and caused over 1 billion dollars in damage. African-Americans were just tired of constantly being oppressed by the police. One of the key reasons why was because of William Parker, the police chief for LAPD during the time. He recruited racist southern veterans as police officers to LAPD in order to control "these people." He taught military tactics which is not what LAPD is supposed to train their officers. He wanted to separate whites from black people. Since these riots I feel that in America today we have progressed in racial equality, but there are still some incidences with police brutality. These cops who do commit these crimes are not being charged in the legal system. In order for this to change we need to either change who ever is judging these cops or create a separate group of prosecutors used specifically for cases regarding police brutality. If this keeps going and doesn't get put to an end I don't see why not there wont be another riot like there was during Rodney King trail.
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