The Rodney King effect
In Los Angeles Rodney King was totally violated after being pulled out of a car after a high speed chase. The cops were originally acquitted of the charges but later were found guilty in a federal court of violating King's rights. The video struck outrage around the country, because of the fact that Rodney King was hit like 50 times with a nightstick while he was still down on the ground. The main important implication of this incident is that it outlined widespread profiling and violence on the part of the police. In my opinion, OJ Simpson got away with killing Brown and Goldman because of the grilling that police witnesses got during cross examination. The evidence of the blood in the Bronco was there, the evidence was overwhelming. Dennis Fung had mishandled evidence and the defense was able to claim that it was a setup of OJ. The jury was very inclined to believe this because of their confirmation bias against the LAPD that stemmed from this Rodney King incident. Secondly, 2 years ago when I was a sophomore at Homestead, I took law at school, and for one of the field trips we got to visit 2 murder trials in one day. One of the trials was for Sierra Lamar and the other was the Michael Tyree case. In the Michael Tyree case, Tyree was an inmate at the Santa Clara county jail for a petty charge. Tyree was mentally ill, and a lot of inmates used to give him extra trays of food. On August 26th 2015 Tyree was in his cell when 3 officers Jereh Lubrin, Rafael Rodriguez and Matthew Farris stormed his cell because Tyree was screaming. The three officers then beat the crap out of Tyree, and left him to die in his cell. The officers were also accused of assaulting Juan Villa another mentally ill inmate that same night. While the officers used the defense that Tyree died because he plunged from his jail toilet into his stainless-steel sink. The defense did not work at all and all 3 guards were subsequently convicted of 2ND DEGREE MURDER and sentenced to 15 years to life each. Another tactic the prosecution used was the searched Rodriguez had on his phone which included stuff like "Can you die from being punched in the armpit". The prosecution combined that with inmate testimony, and it got them a conviction. The Santa Clara county sheriff did not stand behind their sadistic actions and said that the three guards tarnished the reputations of the 1400 other officers who do there job with professionalism. With that example, I say that justice for victims of police brutality has made progress.
Just wondering, what doing you think should be the penalty for all cops who commit these actions. I personally feel that they should be eliminated permanently from the department. I think that this incident was a setting scene for all police officers everywhere and now there are more cautious of what they do since things nowadays can get passed on from one person to another so easily.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was very interesting the way that you connected what happened to Rodney King, which we learned about in class, to its effects on other cases we haven't learned about. It helps to show how important and widespread each event can be.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the way you related these separate incidents but one can clearly see they are similar because they deal with people with power in the justice system abusing this power by hurting and in some cases killing others. I believe that the justice system favors police officers above many victims, even when there is clear evidence because the justice system does not want to admit that they have inherent flaws. I agree with you though, that awareness is being raised for the cause and I think that very slowly, it is changing the way cases go when it comes to incidents like police brutality.
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