King’s daughter stands with LAPD
LOS ANGELES: Rodney King’s daughter was just 7 when her father was beaten bloody by officers with the Los Angeles Police Department. She was eating breakfast when it came on the morning news - video footage showing LAPD officers kicking and hitting her unarmed father dozens of times with batons. It gave her nightmares for years. In a striking scene that stood in sharp contrast to the 1991 beating, the now 32year-old Lora King stood shoulder to shoulder with about a dozen LAPD officers Thursday, hugging many of them. She was there to join them in a talk to young people who have had their own run-ins with police.
Her message: It’s more important to build bridges with officers than to stand against them. “That’s actually what my dad stood for, so I’m following in his footsteps. He had no hatred in his heart for police,” King said ahead of her talk with about 50 young adults with the Los Angeles Conservation Corps, which provides at-risk youth with job training, education and work. King, an administrative assistant at an accounting firm, said she’s had her own negative interactions with police. Despite that and her father’s beating, she said a whole police department can’t be judged by the actions of a few. “It is hard to trust,” she said. “But it’s not going to get anything resolved by hating.”
More than anything, officers need to listen to the community, and the community needs to keep an open mind, she said. Rodney King died at the age of 47 after he accidentally drowned in 2012. His beating was the touchstone for one of the most destructive race riots in the nation’s history. The 1992 riots lasted three days and left 55 people dead, more than 2,000 injured and swaths of Los Angeles on fire.