When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s

by John Ganz

the tape that showed a Black motorist named Rodney King being swarmed and beaten by four LAPD officers—Theodore Briseño, Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell, and Thomas Wind—while dozens more stood nearby. At first King is prone, and he suddenly gets up in what looks like an effort to escape or the response to a shock. He later said he was scared for his life. The officers claimed that King was attempting to charge them. Then the cops start to beat and kick him—fifty-six times in all as he lay flat or tried to crawl away. The wires of a taser are visible. An overhead LAPD helicopter obscures almost all the sound, but the metal baton blows were so hard that a clear clink on the pavement from one of the strikes across King’s legs can be made out on the video. Emergency room physicians later reported that King’s fillings had been knocked out by the blows. One of King’s eye sockets was shattered; his cheekbone was fractured, his leg broken; there were burns where the stun gun had been used; he had a concussion and nerve damage in his face. The negligence suit that King would file alleged “11 skull fractures, permanent brain damage, broken bones and teeth, kidney damage, and emotional and physical trauma.”