*On March 3, 1991, at 12:47 a.m., Los Angeles policemen Timothy Wind and Laurence Powell decided to give a speeding ticket to a white Hyundai doign 65 mhp on city streets. The car was driven by a 25-year-old black man named Rodney Glen King and carried two passengers. The three friends had been drinking malt liquor and smoking marijuana. By the time King pulled over, 27 officers were on the scene, including Stacey Koon and Ted Briseno.
Rodney King exited his car into a nightmare. He was shot with a 50,000 volt stun gun and hit with nightsticks until he fell to the ground, where he was kicked and beaten repeatedly. 21 L.A. city police, four CHPs, and 2 Unified School District officers stood by as Koon, Briseno, Powell and Wind carried out their attack against the unarmed man. At 12:56 a.m. Koon radioed in to the night watch commander at the Foothill Police Headquarters that a suspect had been beaten by the arresting officers. The watch commander replied, "Oh, well... I'm sure the lizard didn't deserve it.. Haha."
One civilian witnessed the beating, George Holliday was testing his new camcorder and captured the entire event on black and white videotape. King was hit 56 times, which left him 11 skull fractures, brain damage, internal bleeding, missing teeth, and a broken ankle. His face was a mass of cuts, one eye swollen nearly shut. He put up no resistance, either to the arrest or the beating, trying simply to avoid the blows. As he was taken into custody, King kept thinking, "Who's going to believe you?" Unbeknownst to him or to the police, Holliday took his 81-second tape to the press, where it received nationwide exposure and outraged many citizens. *Source: Card Back