Stacey Koon - Rodney King Incident

Rodney King Incident

On March 3, 1991, in Los Angeles, a high-speed chase was initiated by California Highway Patrol officer Melanie Singer after motorist Rodney King was observed behind the wheel of a 1988 white Hyundai Excel allegedly traveling at a high speed. The chase ended on the right shoulder of Foothill Boulevard. Koon and four other officers (Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore Briseño and Rolando Solano) attempted to arrest King. The officers stated that King resisted arrest and Officers Powell, Wind and Briseño had to use force to subdue him. The incident was videotaped by a nearby resident, George Holliday, who gave it to local TV station KTLA. The station aired parts of the video and CNN aired it the next day. The police officers were tried for the use of excessive force in state court in Simi Valley in 1992 and acquitted on April 29 that year. Later the same day the 1992 Los Angeles riots erupted, which went on to claim the lives of fifty-three people. In 1993, the four officers were tried in a federal court in Los Angeles; Koon and Powell were convicted of violating King's civil rights and sentenced to 30 months in prison.

In his 1992 book, Presumed Guilty: The Tragedy of the Rodney King Affair, Koon defended his actions and blamed the riots on the media and community leaders.

The initial sentencing of officers Powell and Koon was appealed to the United States Supreme Court on the issue of whether the Federal District Court properly applied departures from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines when it granted two downward departures to 30 months from section 242 of the sentencing guidelines, in Koon v. United States, 518 US 81 (1996). Ultimately, the Court affirmed the lower court and allowed the officers' sentences to be significantly reduced to 30 months due to four factors: King's own provocation, the officers' susceptibility to abuse in prison, their successive prosecutions in state and federal courts, and the unlikelihood of them repeating the same crime, as any felony conviction rendered both of them ineligible for future law enforcement employment.

Koon served his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, and the Federal Work Camp in Sheridan, Oregon. He was released on 15 October 1995 to a Riverside County, California halfway house.

In November 1995, a gunman entered the halfway house and demanded to know where Koon was. Koon was on a holiday pass at the time. The gunman took three hostages, one of whom he later shot and killed.

Koon eventually moved to suburban Castaic.

Both Koon and his fellow LAPD officer Laurence Powell have been used as symbols of racism in hip hop and related music. The activist alternative rap-metal group Rage Against the Machine mentions Koon in their song "Vietnow" (Evil Empire, 1996), which criticizes the foreign and domestic policy of the United States as violently racist.