15 Years Later, Rodney King Looks Back [6min]

Fifteen years ago Friday, grainy video images were broadcast showing white Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King during a traffic stop. King and Milton Grimes, his attorney in the days after the attack, look back on that night and the days that followed. King's saga began on March 3, 1991, when he was pulled over for driving recklessly in Lake View Terrace, a residential suburb of Los Angeles. King reportedly resisted arrest and charged at one of the police officers. An amateur videotape captured the end of the arrest, with three officers holding King down on the ground and beating him. The video sparked a nationwide uproar when it was broadcast, and four LAPD officers were indicted two weeks later for assault and filing false police reports. More than a year later, three of the officers were acquitted and the jury couldn't agree on a verdict for the fourth. That verdict triggered a massive riot amid accusations the beating was racially motivated and the acquittals just another example of pervasive racial bias.