he direction of a police sergeant who was on the scene, and twenty three other law enforcement officers were also present and watched the beating while making no effort to stop it. There were also several civilian bystanders. One of these was George Holiday, who videotaped the beating of King. King suffered extensive injuries, including skull fractures and nerve damage to part of his face (The Guide to American Law: Supplement 1992 286 289).
The videotape was compelling evidence and was described as such in the print media. Newspapers editorialized about the incident in a way that was critical to the police--the videotape made it difficult for newspapers to do otherwise. The Los Angeles Times was the closest to the scene and wrote many editorials and articles which depicted the action as a police beating and not as the subduing of a suspect. One op-ed writer stated that this was not a case of a few "rotten apples" and asked how high up in the chain of command racist attitudes and behavior went (Skolnick B7). The ACLU demanded that Chief Gates resign (Ripston B7). The New York Times printed an opinion piece that noted the importance of the videotape in shaping opinion and that asked how much police brutality went unrecorded (Gibbs A23). Time Magazine also presented the case as one of a police beating and noted how it had generated controversy throughout the nation, "creating a nationwide debate over excessive police violence" (Prud'homme 16).
From the first, there was a degree of division along racial lines, with blacks seeing the beating as an example of "business as usual," while whites, appalled at the videotape, expressed surprise that such things could occur. Los Angeles had experienced considerable racial tension in the 1960s leading to the Watts Riot, and in the years since many believed that those tensions had been smoothed over. One of the first results of the king beating was to show th
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