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Thirty years ago this week, a 25-year-old Black man named Rodney King was savagely beaten by LAPD officers.
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What started as a routine vehicle pursuit initiated by the California Highway Patrol just after midnight on March 3, 1991, ended with a large group of officers from multiple law enforcement agencies watching as a prostrate man was brutally clubbed and kicked.
More than a few of the Los Angeles Police Department officers present had no particular reason for being there as they watched, according to the independent Christopher Commission report, and others had been on the force for decades. But they all had one thing in common: None filed a formal report of misconduct, despite what they had witnessed.