After facing a federal trial, two of the four officers were convicted and received 32-month prison sentences.
In April 1992, hours after the four police officers involved were acquitted at trial, the Los Angeles riots of 1992 commenced and resulted in 53 deaths, 2,383 injuries, more than 7,000 fires, damage to 3,100 businesses, and nearly $1 billion in financial losses.
This incident led to extensive media coverage and criminal charges against several of the officers involved. In March 1991, members of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) beat an African American suspect, Rodney King, during his arrest for drunk driving. What the average citizen thinks of when he hears the term, however, is something midway between these two occurrences, something more akin to what the police profession knows as "alley court"-the wanton vicious beating of a person in custody, usually while handcuffed, and usually taking place somewhere between the scene of the arrest and the station house. When used in print or as the battle cry in a black power rally, police brutality can by implication cover several practices, from calling a citizen by his or her first name to death by a policeman's bullet. In the United States, it is common for marginalized groups to perceive the police as oppressors, rather than protectors or enforcers of the law, due to the statistically disproportionate number of minority incarcerations. Early records suggest that labor strikes were the first large-scale incidents of police brutality in the United States, including events like the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the Pullman Strike of 1894, the Lawrence textile strike of 1912, the Ludlow massacre of 1914, the Great Steel Strike of 1919, and the Hanapepe massacre of 1924. The origin of modern policing (based on the authority of the nation-state) can be traced back to the 18th century France, with modern police departments being established in many nations by the 19th and early 20th centuries. The first use of the term in the American press was in 1872 when the Chicago Tribune reported the beating of a civilian who was under arrest at the Harrison Street Police Station. And "police brutality" is becoming one of our most "venerated institutions!"
Boys are bruised by their ferocity, women insulted by their ruffianism and that which brutality has done, perjury denies, and magisterial stupidity suffers to go unpunished. Scarcely a week passes without their committing some offence which disgusts everybody but the magistrates. The term "police brutality" was first used in Britain in the mid-19th century, with The Puppet-Show (a short-lived rival to Punch) complaining in September 1848:
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