He was drunk driving at over 100 miles per hour, didn't pull over for the cops, then he resisted arrest. No one deserves to be beaten up by the police unnecessarily, but he's not innocent in this.
If a criminally violent asshole beats up a criminally reckless asshole, I don't have sympathy for either one. The police were in the wrong, and Rodney King was also in the wrong. There's no sympathy to be had in the entire incident, not from me.
There's a huge difference here. Rodney King is one foolish idiot. The police are a massive, well funded (with our money) organization, with extraordinary powers. If Rodney King had continued to act is his idiotic manner, the consequences are vastly less than if the police continue to act outside the law, doing whatever they please.
This isn't a question of what's more disastrous for society. We're agreed on that. It's a question of sympathy, which is fundamentally a subjective question. I'm just giving my perspective.
Whether or not he was innocent has nothing to do with whether he deserves sympathy for being beaten within an inch of his life. There is no excuse for that kind of behavior from police.
You can be against police brutality without sympathizing with drunk driving morons like Rodney King just like you can be against the death penalty without sympathizing with murderous madmen like Charles Manson, or against political censorship without sympathizing with the Ku Klux Klan.
That's the essence of civil liberties--you don't have to be an object of sympathy or respect in order to have rights. You can be a common criminal, a mass murderer, or even a racist and you still have your rights, as well as plenty of people (you and me included) standing up for your rights even if on a personal level we wouldn't give you the time of day.
This sounds like a semantic issue demanding clarity; does one "not sympathise" with Rodney King specifically, particularly on account of the behaviour that triggered his arrest, or as a victim of a police beating?
It's, to me, a matter of justice versus the right to administer it. King certainly wasn't innocent and certainly deserved punishment, but democracy breaks down if punishment is ad-hoc. The LAPD has no right to beat down anyone who is submitting to arrest, or administer any sort of punishment to anyone except incarceration pending arraignment. "Rodney King was not innocent" is very different from "A jury has found Rodney King guilty by the same laws that apply to the rest of us, and may now be legally punished by the CDCR, in a manner proscribed by a judge."
That I don't sympathize is subjective on my part, in other words.
He may have actually been going faster. He was reported to be going 117mph. The LAPD's policy is to cut off chases at 120mph, as pursuit at that speed is considered more dangerous. I would not put it past the pursuing officers to fudge the numbers a bit here in order to continue the pursuit.
Incidentally, that's a large part of the reason I don't sympathize. It was unquestionably an abuse by the police to beat him, and I'm glad they caught hell, but I'm not going to shed a tear for the man. It's a travesty the way their trial went.
If a criminally violent asshole beats up a criminally reckless asshole, I don't have sympathy for either one. The police were in the wrong, and Rodney King was also in the wrong. There's no sympathy to be had in the entire incident, not from me.