Conversations With Enrique Cerna

It has been 25 years since Los Angeles police officers were videotaped beating Rodney King after a high-speed chase. It was the first police brutality video to go viral. Four officers were criminally charged for the beating, but then acquitted by a mostly white jury. The acquittal set off the Los Angeles riots on April 29, 1992. Two days later, Rodney King pleaded for calm, asking “Can we all get along?” As a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Kurt Streeter wrote about King and eventually became closely acquainted with him. Streeter talks about the Rodney King he came to know and how the beating, the acquittal, the riots and his death affected law enforcement and race relations in America.