Abstract

Let's Make It a Federal Case

On March 3, 1991, the Los Angeles police unmercifully beat a black man, Rodney King, who had been stopped for speeding, and shot him with darts from a non-lethal gun called a taser, which is supposed to be used to catch fleeing suspects: Fortuitously videotaped by a bystander, the beating was memorably broadcast on television all over this country and abroad. The resulting furor, including a condemnation of the beating by President George Bush, focused unprecedented attention on violence by local police forces. A year later, the federal government still has no clear idea of the answer to that question. Although a blue-ribbon commission in Los Angeles later found a pattern of such abuses in the LAPD, the question has sunk out of sight as a national issue. During the LAPD flap, the Justice Department's Assistant for Civil Rights, John Dunne, sought to soothe a momentarily agitated Congress.