“The city did not pursue charges against King for driving while intoxicated and evading arrest. District Attorney Ira Reiner believed there was insufficient evidence for prosecution. His successor Gil Garcetti thought that by December 1992, too much time had passed to charge King with evading arrest; he also noted that the statute of limitations on drunk driving had passed.”
Maybe
this is not the place for posting things of a political nature, but it made my
blood boil, so it did not seem inappropriate.
Of
course, I grew up with horror stories about the Los Angeles “Rodney King” riots
of 1992, though I’d avoided doing any research up until recently, in part
because I saw firsthand the distorting effects of media following the Black
Lives Matter movement of 2015, and secondly because I made a futile attempt to
distance myself from politics in late 2015 after I left my college’s Debate
Team in a fury, spurned by rampant hypocrisy within the national Debate organization
and my own disgust and fears of becoming corrupted.
This
last year was a real test of my faith in people, not for the first time in my
life, though I am happy to say that each time I come back, with renewed
confidence, to the company of my fellows.
Over
the course of this year I became morbidly fixated upon car accidents and other
forms of preventable tragedy, especially after listening to a song by Brand New
called “Limousine” (See Source: Brand New) and reading its backstory: the
harrowing tale of a young girl who was decapitated on a limousine ride home
from a wedding. (Sources: DiamondDangerSoundsOff; harmonicm)
In
my supplementary research I learned that “In 2016, 10,497 people died in
alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for 28% of all traffic-related
deaths in the United States,” (SOURCE: C.D.C.), and “In 2018, there were 10,511
people killed in these preventable crashes. In fact, on average over the
10-year period from 2009-2018, more than 10,000 people died every year in
drunk-driving crashes.” (SOURCE: N.H.T.S.A.) I ALSO learned that, of the fifty
United States, the two states reported to suffer the highest number of drunk
driving fatalities were Texas and California, totaling at 13,138 and 10,327,
respectively, during an eight-year period. (SOURCE: Covington.)
“In
every state, it’s illegal to drive with a BAC of .08 or higher, yet one person
was killed in a drunk-driving crash every 50 minutes in the United States in
2018.” (N.H.T.S.A.) Finally, it turns out that MOST drunk drivers tend to be in
their early twenties or between the ages of 25 and 34: (Covington; sandeep) in
short, roughly the same demographic one comes to expect of a young Democratic Party
voter likely to engage in activism to “stop racism” and to protest “the police”.
In
light of this damning evidence, I certainly could imagine myself losing my
nerve around anyone who would even considering getting behind a steering wheel
whilst under the influence of an illicit substance, and especially my temper
would be tested if, having been caught in the act, the perpetrator made an
attempt to evade arrest, especially behind that same wheel, at a high speed, in
the midst of Los Angeles’ notoriously congested traffic. To say that “no amount
of force can be excessive” in dealing with such criminals would of course be
proto-Fascistic and reactionary, yet to convict officers of enforcement who are
tasked with apprehending such an individual of proto-Fascist tendencies, under
such circumstances, would be a far worse offence to the proverbial Human Spirit,
since no man, woman, or child could be expected, within reason, to observe any
sort of orthodoxy of reason in contending with such evils; such a berserker
rage is programmed intrinsically into the human psyche, specifically for
instances of this kind, and it can never be rightfully attributed to an
“institutional” form of discrimination or violence.
Finally,
though I can sympathize with such base instincts, I could never imagine operating
with so enduring a bias that I could rationalize such acts as being motivated
by “race”. Race remains largely a figment of the millennial imagination, a
peculiarly modern bureaucratic legal construct that has neither empirical,
rational, nor post-structural (“postmodern”) basis in an age of Science and
Ambiguity with regards to structural classifications of “Identity”. Finally, it
is obviously and self-evidently preposterous to invent diseases such as
“racism” in order to scapegoat those agents tasked with fighting an empirically
verified national epidemic. All ad hominem appeals to sociological bias
and personal background must by necessity bow before the imminent facts.
Additionally: this epidemic takes far more lives than do miscarriages of
justice, which pale before the death toll brought on by civilian crimes.
Be
that as it may, the rather limited footage depicting King’s arrest in 1991 was
somehow sufficient to spark a public outcry, especially when those officers who
were responsible for the arrest were acquitted. To date, King has yet to be
charged with driving under the influence. (SOURCE: Ford.) He passed away in
2012 after drowning at the bottom of his pool; the official autopsy evidences
that he had died from a combination of alcohol and other drugs, coupled with a
heart condition. (Wilson, Duke.) The Reverend Al Sharpton delivered his eulogy,
commemorating him as a man who “represented the anti-police brutality and
anti-racial profiling movement of our time”. (Countess.) Yet, as Jung pointed
out, what a man represents and what he is are often diametrically opposed.
While King remains a symbol for police corruption and a token in the hands of
young anarchists and drunk drivers, his victimhood was, to his dying day,
demonstrably and irresponsibly self-inflicted, only barely concealed by his
populist politics.
64
people are reported to have died in the Rodney King riots; (L.A. Times Staff.)
2383 were injured. (Sullivan.) Thankfully, none of them were law enforcement
officers, though the Los Angeles Police Department, especially in the South
Central District, remains ravaged by hostility and misinformation.
I
used to like to joke: “perhaps if we remove all Police Departments in order to
accommodate all the teenagers, Wiz Khalifa and Kid Cudi will handle the drunk
driving problem.” Yet, upon reading King’s story, the joke appears to be in
poor taste.
As a
California resident of over twenty years who has lost count of the number of
incidents wherein my colleagues and family members were involved in motor
accidents, sometimes also under the influence of hard drugs, I have abstained
from driving throughout my adult life. I have done everything within my power
to curb this epidemic, and I must stand in solidarity with those fighting it,
as must you, whatever your personal experiences (or lack thereof) might have
been. Simply remaining alive in these times is already a token of privilege, and
with that power comes responsibility. This year challenged my faith in human
reason to an unprecedented extent, yet with all of the facts available
instantly, I do not doubt that we shall soon evolve and transcend illusions
such as “racism” and come together in the disciplined resistance to real,
empirical epidemics. The George Floyd riots of this year only briefly
interrupted the Coronavirus Quarantine, though their moral toll is only rivaled
by their property damages and death toll, by far surpassing anything that his
arresting officers were convicted of either in the Legal Court or the Court of
Public Opinion. Be that as it may, proto-Fascist rhetoric threatens to silence
reason far more fatally than any “institutionalized” berserker rage. I can only
hope that, by encouraging my fellows to be MORE law-abiding citizens rather
than LESS so, sacrifices such as the loss of Floyd’s life, as well as those
killed in the aftermath, will no longer be necessary in order to prevent
tragedies like the decapitation of a seven-year-old girl by her seatbelt.
At
some point, most probably in late 2015, I walked down the street which
overlooks the South End of the High School I attended over a decade ago. I noticed a peculiar sight: the
“School Xing” sign I had grown up with lay hanging over the moist dirt, its
spine fractured, suspended by one slab of twisted metal conjoining it at its
base, like a piece of bark connecting a stump with a felled trunk of timberwood.
In the dirt, upon the lefthand side of the sidewalk, (OPPOSITE the road) the
thick tire tracks, characteristic of a heavy vehicle, most probably a pickup
truck, remained imprinted. At the time, the neighbourhood tavern was still in
business, situated atop the hill where one would ordinarily hear children
playing at the Day Care Center. It used to be a family restaurant, host to
soccer team parties. This is not the fond memory of a middle-class privilege or
an indulgence; it is an innocent lifestyle. Drinking is the privilege; drinking
is the indulgence. Someone always has to clean this up.
The
Age of Excuses is Over.
SOURCES
CITED:
Brand
New. “Limousine”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FfF9fIDqFg
Center
for Disease Control and Preventation. Impaired Driving: Get the Facts.
Countess,
Jemal. Al Sharpton to Deliver Eulogy at Rodney King Funeral.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/al-sharpton-rodney-king-funeral-eulogy-343852
Covington,
Taylor. Drunk driving statistics.
https://www.thezebra.com/research/drunk-driving-statistics/)
DiamondDangerSoundsOff.
Brand New’s Song Dedicated to the Tragedy of Katie Flynn’s Death.
https://mochamelsoundsoff.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/brand-news-song-dedicated-to-the-tragedy-of-katie-flynns-death/
Ford,
Andrea. Charges Against King
Belatedly Dropped: Law enforcement: Incidents allegedly occurred in March,
1991, before beating.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-12-23-me-2180-story.html
harmonicm.
The Story of Katie Flynn.
https://imgur.com/gallery/olUKe
Los
Angeles Times Staff. Deaths during the L.A. riots.
https://spreadsheets.latimes.com/la-riots-deaths/
National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Drunk Driving.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving
sandeep.
18 Drunk Driving Statistics That Will Make You Sober (2020).
https://policyadvice.net/insurance/insights/drunk-driving-statistics/
Sullivan,
Meg. New book by UCLA historian traces role of gender in 1992 Los Angeles
riots.
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/new-book-by-ucla-historian-traces-247266
Wilson,
Stan and Alan Duke. Police: Rodney King’s ‘accidental drowning’ involved
drugs.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/23/us/rodney-king-autopsy/index.html
Wikipedia.
Rodney King.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King#Los_Angeles_riots_and_the_aftermath
[({R.G.)}]
11.4.2020.
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