MAY 1963 , news footage of black civil rights protesters being attacked by police, dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham, Alabama. This footage has a profound effect on the public opinion during debates over the civil rights act in 1964, illustrating the power that media has on the public consciousness.

MARCH 1991 , two videotapes - one from an amateur's camcorder and the other from a store surveillance camera.

TAPE ONE:

SUNDAY MARCH 3rd, 1991 midnight - a speeding motorist by the name of Rodney King suffers baton blows, stomps and kicks to the head and body. Rodney King had just done less than a year in prison for trying to rob a Korean-American store with a tire iron. He got out of prison early for good behavior and found work as a construction worker. After a hard weeks, King needed to relax at a friend’s house where he drank 8ball brand malt liquor and watched some basketball. At 12 a.m. King is drunk past the limit and behind the wheel of his Hyundai. Going way beyond the speed limit King was urged by his passengers to pull over. He then notices the California Highway Patrol car was behind him, it's red and blue light strobes bouncing off Kings rear view mirror. He attempts to escape increasing his speed way beyond the limits of the Hyundai, he is then followed by a dozen squad cars, and exits off the 210 freeway near Sunland, CA, to the entrance to Hansen Dam in Lakeview Terrace. The Los Angeles Police Department officers Timothy Wind, William Powell, Ted Briseno and head officer Stacey Koon give orders to the unknown passengers of the Hyundai. King's passengers comply with the officers. King does not and the four officers begin to deliver fifty-six baton blows and six kicks to King over a two minute period in the presence of seventeen other LAPD officers and four CHP officers. That same night a man named George Holliday is awoken by the commotion outside his home, he had just bought himself a brand new camcorder. Scrambling out of bed he grabs the camcorder. Missing the first part of the standoff with King and passengers Holliday manages to get most of the beating on tape. Within twenty-four hours the videotape is broadcast natonwide.

TAPE TWO:

Two weeks later, on the morning of March 16th, 1991 , Latasha Harlins walks into the Empire Liquor Market on 9127 South Figueroa in South Central, Los Angeles, unaware that she would never walk out. Soon Ja Du worked long hours, suffered from migraine headaches and bad health. In recent months, the Du's son Joseph had been harassed by a group of Main Street Crips, some of whom went into police custody. The Du's then shut the store town for a short time in fear of Crip retaliation. Since reopening, the store had been held up more than thirty times including the previous Saturday. Du's husband had a fourteen-hour workday, which is why Soon Ja Du isbehind the counter when Latasha Harlins walks into her store. Harlins was orphaned at the age of nine. After her mother was killed in a shooting, she was sent to live with her aunt and grandmother. She was raised with love and care and had dreams of becoming an attorney. Harlins had just spent the night at a close friends house. On the way home she stops by the the Empire Liquor Market to pick up some orange juice. She puts the orange juice in her backpack and proceeds to the register to pay for the juice. Du grabs Harlins by the sweater and shouts, "you bitch, you are trying to steal my orange juice!" Harlins screamed back, "bitch, let me go! I'm trying to pay for it." In the surveillance video the two are pulling on the bottle of orange juice. Harlins swings a couple times at the storekeeper Du and then steps back. The bottle drops to the floor. Du picks up a stool from behind the counter and tosses it at Harlins. harlins manages to dodge the airborne stool. She proceeds to pick up the bottle and places it on the counter. Du pulls out a gun. Harlins tries to step back; she shudders and steps out of the frame as Du raises the gun at her. Only one minute after entering the store, Harlins is shot and killed. To many African Americans the Du's are a symbol of encroachment. In the late seventies, Korean-Americans started buying liquor stores at a rapid rate in South Central, Los Angeles. This trend was due to plunging liquor prices and profit margins. Korean-Americans were buying stores from overworked African-American business owners for almost double their original investment. one African-American store owner was quoted saying, "seven days a week, twenty hours a day, no vacations, people stealing. Thats slave labor, I would never buy another liquor store!" Part of the problem was the fact that liquor stores stores such as Empire Liquor Marketwe poor substitutes for grocery stores. Since the Watts riots in 1965 very few supermarkets reopened, and even fewer were built in the South Central area. VONS, a very prominent grocery store in Southern California had over three hundred stores in Los Angeles County. Yet only two existed in South Central. Furthermore, studies showed that these two VONS supermarkets were the most expensive. Marking up prices twenty to thirty percent higher than the VONS in the suburbs and exurbs, politicians left this matter unchecked. While immigrant liquor store owners did not provide what the community needed, they still filled a void where no one else was willing.

As time went on Korean-American business owners found themselves unwanted my South Central residents. The citizens felt that they had no place in the inner city. In 1986 a Black-Korean Alliance had been created to combat incidents that left four Korean merchants dead in the span of one month. But the Bush recession hit South Central residents hard in 1991,eliminating 300,000 more jobs. As tensions increased, eleven Korean-American shop owners were killed and fourteen were seriously injured. Ignored by the media, the Harlins-Du video shut down any opportunity for the alliance to further any discussion. The parties from the alliance urged their respective communities not to over react. With all the events leading up to this point keeping the peace would be beyond reach, because now, the Harlins-Du videotape is being broadcasted as often as the Rodney King videotape.

Late MARCH 1991 , in a press conference after King is released from the hospital, King tries to recapture the brutal scenario:King: They continued to pound on me...and beat on me...All over my body...they beat me where it hurt...and my ankles...they beat my whole body where it hurt...it hurt real bad...cause it was hit with a stick...the same with my face, my jaw...ummm...I was scared...I was scared for my life. Police radio recorded head officer Stacey koon as he calls for an ambulence for the hog-tied motorist. Over the recording you hear laughter as he is explaining the accounts of what had just transgressed.

Koon: We just had a big time use of force. Tazed and beat the suspect of the California Highway

Patrol pursuit-big time!

Dispatcher: Oh well, I am sure the lizard didn't deserve it (laughing).

Finally the ambulance came. king is rushed to nearby Pacifica Hospital. It takes twenty stitches to close his facial cuts. A concussion, his eye socket is pulverized and his cheekbone is so pushed in from blows to the face that he needs reconstructive surgery. his doctor, Edmund Chein told the press just how serious the beating was, "to have the skull itself with fractures in nine different places on the right side and two fractures on the left tells youdirectly how much forcethe brain actually took." After the videotape was distributed nationally and digested, there was no widespread shock amongst the African-American community. However, there was a sense that finally there was some proof and hopefully something would be done about the serious level of antagonism and racist policing practices of the LAPD. Police commissioner Daryl Gates went on record announcing that the Los Angeles Police Department does not train their officers to do this kindof thing and lastly they do not tolerate it.

MARCH 15th, 1991 , the four officers are indicted with assault and use of excessive force. The officers are left free on bail pending trial. The indictments intensify demands for Chief Gates' resignation. Gates wasn't going to leave, but he moves to fire rookie Timothy Wind and suspend the other three officers without pay.

A few weeks later newly released computer messages are released to add fuel to the fire. Car to car police computer messages suggested racist attitudes towards a domestic dispute involving an African-American couple that occurred just before the beating of King. One squad car messaged to another: "It was right out of Gorillas In The Mist ." Officers Wind and Powell manned that squad car. Even after the beating, another message read: "I haven't beaten anyone this bad in along time!" Also, the four officers lied about how badly Rodney King was hurt, increasing public distrust of the LAPD.

JULY 9th, 1991 , the Christopher Commision, an independent group created a few months prior by Mayor Tom Bradley, Bradley creates the Commission to investigate the LAPD. They call for the resignation of Chief Daryl Gates.

JULY 22nd, 1991 , Gates announces he will retire in 1992.

NOVEMBER 26th, 1991 , Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg orders the trial of Koon, Powell, Briseno and Wind to be relocated to the conservative and predominately anglo community of Simi Valley, CA, a small suburb in the San Fernando Valley. Many officers on the LAPD live and raise families in Simi Valley. Prosecution objects that Simi Valley has different demographics than Los Angeles, but the trial proceeds. Jury selection begins in a neighborhood in which many have friends or family who are police officers on the LAPD. Now the Prosecution has a huge task in front of them; try to convince a group of jury members who are unlikely to expect the notion that police in general are out of control with respect to certain members of the community. By the time the jury is selected it contains no African-Americans. Still, the Prosecution is confident. How can anybody with reason watch the videotape and doubt that the four officers in question had used excessive force? For the first time ever, a deep seeded element of racism has been brought to the surface, erasing many years of finger pointing and injustice to a community that has struggled so hard to be heard. The videotape is their redemption.

MARCH 16th, 1992 , Testimony begins.

APRIL 16th, 1992 , Willie Williams, an African-American and former police commissioner of Philadelphia, is named the successor of Daryl Gates as cheif of the LAPD.

APRIL 28th, 1992 , after two months of testimony from witnesses on the Defendants' side and the side of the Prosecution, Los Angelinos would wait one more day for the verdict. As this city in turmoil sleeps restlessly, we wait.