# Rodney King (1965-2012) American construction worker whose beating by Los Angeles police officers on 3 March 1991, captured on videotape by a bystander and broadcast nationally, became the defining American police-brutality case of its era. The acquittal of four LAPD officers charged in the beating, returned on 29 April 1992, triggered the [[1992 Los Angeles Riots]]. Two federal officers were later convicted on civil-rights charges in a 1993 retrial; King won a civil judgment against the city. He is remembered in public memory largely for a single plea made during the unrest — a line that has been quoted, shortened, and sentimentalized far past what he said or meant. > [!note] Stub — fill out > This page was created as a stub on 2026-09-05 while building the domestic-deployment reference cases. Audit and expand when convenient: the arrest and beating in detail, the Simi Valley venue change and its effect on the verdict, the 1993 federal civil-rights retrial and sentences, the Christopher Commission and LAPD reforms, and his later life and death. ## See also - [[1992 Los Angeles Riots]] - [[Elite Impunity]] - [[Accountability]]