Speaker 1: This is Red Pilled America.
Speaker 2: Before we start the show, just a reminder to share, like,
Speaker 2: and subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening to it,
Speaker 2: and please give us a five star rating. It helps
Speaker 2: us beat the big tech algorithm. Also, if you love
Speaker 2: Red Pilled America, please consider becoming a backstage subscriber. You'll
Speaker 2: have access to our entire back catalog of episodes. Just
Speaker 2: visit Redpilled America dot com and click support in the topmenu.
Speaker 2: That's Red Pilled America dot com and click support in
Speaker 2: the topmenu. Support what you love or it goes away.
Speaker 1: This episode was originally broadcast on June sixth, twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: America appears to be on the brink of war with itself.
Speaker 3: Overnight, Minneapolis on fire.
Speaker 4: There's a fire.
Speaker 5: It does appear that that fire is the police station.
Speaker 6: Chaos filled Minneapolis streets for a fourth night.
Speaker 7: I have nowhere to go now.
Speaker 3: This country is on fire. We are facing an insurrection
Speaker 3: by people, but we don't quite understand who they are,
Speaker 3: but by all indications, they are violent leftists thunks.
Speaker 1: The death of George Floyd triggered riots all across America,
Speaker 1: which begs a previously unthinkable question is America headed towards
Speaker 1: civil war. I'm Patrick Carrelchi.
Speaker 2: And I'm Adriana Portez, and this is.
Speaker 1: Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 2: This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
Speaker 2: We are all about telling stories.
Speaker 1: Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.
Speaker 2: The media mocks stories about everyday Americans that the globalists ignore.
Speaker 1: You could think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
Speaker 1: and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Red Pilled America. It's becoming harder and harder to find
Speaker 1: words to describe the turmoil of our time. In just
Speaker 1: the first half of twenty twenty, we saw a pointless
Speaker 1: coup attempt on our president based on a hoax. We
Speaker 1: watched as our leaders shut down the American economy and
Speaker 1: call us Grandma killers if we protested, and we witnessed
Speaker 1: our cities burn, businesses be destroyed, and innocent people get
Speaker 1: killed over the tragic death of George Floyd, a man
Speaker 1: that once pointed a gun to the stomach of a
Speaker 1: black woman and robbed her in a home invasion. America
Speaker 1: is becoming unstable and there seems to be no end
Speaker 1: in sight for people that despise fear porn. As we do,
Speaker 1: we must admit an uncomfortable question is rising to the surface.
Speaker 1: Is America headed towards civil war? To find the answer,
Speaker 1: we're going to follow the story of one of the
Speaker 1: biggest moments of social unrest in American history and see
Speaker 1: what it tells us about the conflict of the Tay
Speaker 1: and what we will need to do to stop it.
Speaker 3: The idea that civilization would just stop was kind of alien,
Speaker 3: but it did.
Speaker 1: That's Kurt Schlickter, a trial lawyer and author of the
Speaker 1: Kelly Turnbull series of novels with today's hints of a
Speaker 1: very different America on the horizon. Kurt's work of dystopian
Speaker 1: fiction seems almost prophetic, and that might be because he
Speaker 1: was actually on the front lines of an apocalypse of sorts.
Speaker 3: I remember one cop in tears because shit was falling apart.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have to shoot people. We're gonna have to
Speaker 3: shoot people. I'm like, Serge, get your shit together. Shit
Speaker 3: was falling apart, and it can happen, and it happens
Speaker 3: so fucking fast.
Speaker 1: The apocalypse that Kurt lived through went down quickly. The
Speaker 1: city went from normal to chaos in a matter of
Speaker 1: just a few hours, and it would grow to become
Speaker 1: one of the biggest cases of social unrest in American history.
Speaker 1: The drug first entered the American bloodstream on a Tuesday
Speaker 1: in March nineteen ninety one, when a shocking video exploded
Speaker 1: into the news cycle.
Speaker 8: Story that might never have surfaced if someone hadn't picked
Speaker 8: off his home video camera. We've all seen the pictures
Speaker 8: of Los Angeles police officers beating a man they had
Speaker 8: just pulled over.
Speaker 1: The video, saturating news reports showed several police officers hitting
Speaker 1: a black man with batons, with about a dozen other
Speaker 1: LAPD officers watching on.
Speaker 9: The three police officers facing felony criminal charges who were
Speaker 9: among a group of fifteen who stopped a twenty five
Speaker 9: year old black man last Saturday night, then beat him,
Speaker 9: kicked him, and clubbed him, unaware that an amateur photographer
Speaker 9: was recording the incident on videotape.
Speaker 10: Against a growing Nashville fure over last weekend's police beating
Speaker 10: of an unarmed black motorist, Los Angeles Police Chief Darrel
Speaker 10: Gates said today that all fourteen officers in involved will
Speaker 10: be disciplined and the three will face criminal charges.
Speaker 11: The officers we believe used excessive force in taking him
Speaker 11: into custody. In our review, we find that the officers
Speaker 11: struck him with batons between fifty three and fifty six times.
Speaker 1: The Rodney King beating, as it came to be known,
Speaker 1: was a brutal show of force against a black man
Speaker 1: that appeared to be helplessly taking the blows on the pavement.
Speaker 10: Prior to his release from jail last night, twenty five
Speaker 10: year old Rodney King showed his injury to reporters, the bruises,
Speaker 10: broken legs, and the scars from the stun gun which
Speaker 10: kilded him with fifty thousand bolt shocks.
Speaker 12: I could say, after the first three good licks with
Speaker 12: you know, one with that with the shocker, and the
Speaker 12: next with the billy club across the face, I was scared.
Speaker 12: I was scared. I was scared for my life.
Speaker 10: King claims, and several witnesses support him that he never resisted.
Speaker 12: I kneeled to my knees and spread my hands out
Speaker 12: and hit the ground and slow as I could, because
Speaker 12: I didn't want to make any stupid moves, because I'm
Speaker 12: already wondering, like, I mean, why are these guys, why
Speaker 12: they'd drawn down on me.
Speaker 1: What kinds of things did you hear from the officers?
Speaker 1: Did you hear any kind of slurs?
Speaker 6: Though?
Speaker 12: What do you mean what slurs?
Speaker 13: Were there any kind of racial comments made at all?
Speaker 12: Oh, Rachel, No, I didn't know. I didn't hear it.
Speaker 14: You can cut this from the tape if you want.
Speaker 14: But Rod's family has made it very clear that they're
Speaker 14: not looking to turn this into a racial crusade.
Speaker 15: I would hope the public would not on the basis
Speaker 15: of this one tape make up their minds about the
Speaker 15: Los Angeles Police Department.
Speaker 1: But people did judge the LAPD, and the near unanimous
Speaker 1: consensus was outrageity hold answer.
Speaker 10: Since the graphic home video of the beating gained national attention,
Speaker 10: Los Angeles City Hall and the police department have been
Speaker 10: under siege, thousands of telephone calls that some.
Speaker 9: Just said they don't believe it.
Speaker 6: This is like the Nazi days.
Speaker 10: And in Dallas, all police have been ordered to watch
Speaker 10: the video as an instructional trait on how not to
Speaker 10: behave in order from the new chief of Police just
Speaker 10: two weeks ago was a member of the Los.
Speaker 16: Angeles forts The tape picture itself, I mean that is
Speaker 16: outrageous behavior. It's a gross misconduct by the police officers,
Speaker 16: probably criminal misconduct.
Speaker 1: But the people that spit the most fire were the
Speaker 1: local civil rights leaders.
Speaker 17: We the man and we said the man that chief
Speaker 17: gates be five.
Speaker 11: I have no, absolutely no thoughts of resigning. Please let
Speaker 11: all my friends out there know who think this is
Speaker 11: the time.
Speaker 15: I'm not going.
Speaker 1: The video sparked a furious national debate about police brutality,
Speaker 1: one that seemed new to the broader gen X population,
Speaker 1: but to old time Angelinos it was a subject that
Speaker 1: was heating up for years. A quarter of a century earlier.
Speaker 1: In August nineteen sixty five, the issue of police brutality
Speaker 1: went from a local issue to national news after a
Speaker 1: routine traffic stop quickly evolved into chaos.
Speaker 4: It began, as many race riots have begun, with the
Speaker 4: arrest of a Negro by white officers. In this case,
Speaker 4: two young Negroes were stopped by California Highway patrolman and
Speaker 4: charged with drunk driving. There was a scuffle and a
Speaker 4: crowd gathered.
Speaker 3: The mother of the.
Speaker 4: Two they are brothers, joined in, and she and another
Speaker 4: woman the crowd thought was pregnant, were pushed and shoved.
Speaker 1: The confrontation escalated from there until complete anarchy took over Watts,
Speaker 1: a subdivision of the Los Angeles area later known as
Speaker 1: South Central. The writing took what would become a familiar
Speaker 1: turn when black residents went to the streets and began
Speaker 1: attacking any whites that they came across.
Speaker 4: It was the most widespread, most destructive racial violence in
Speaker 4: American history. White people driving through the Riot area were
Speaker 4: considered fair.
Speaker 3: Game, whether young or old, men or women.
Speaker 4: Where cars were battered, the driver's stoned, kicked and beaten,
Speaker 4: and the cars were burned.
Speaker 17: The mobs might.
Speaker 4: Groan and curse in disappointment when a white got away,
Speaker 4: and then cheer like a football crowd when a car
Speaker 4: went up in flame. The burning and looting, the shooting
Speaker 4: and beating went on for nearly a week.
Speaker 1: A black Wats resident that torched some of the neighborhood
Speaker 1: buildings explained to a news reporter at the time how
Speaker 1: and why he burned down a local store.
Speaker 4: He took me on a tour of some of the
Speaker 4: places he said he helped to burn as casual as
Speaker 4: a stroll in the park.
Speaker 18: I threw the firebomb right in the front window right
Speaker 18: in the front window. A friend of mine went in
Speaker 18: the store towards the bag and threw a firebomb in
Speaker 18: the bag, and the place went up and flang, But
Speaker 18: it was pretty well emptied by the loots and so forth.
Speaker 4: But most things were taken out before you burn as
Speaker 4: much as we.
Speaker 18: Could possibly give. Then we would decide to burn, and
Speaker 18: to cry in the streets, was burn, baby, burn?
Speaker 4: Why would you burn out this kind of place?
Speaker 18: We decided to burn this store because we felt that
Speaker 18: this man hadn't be doing nothing in gaming on us anyway.
Speaker 1: A local civil rights lawyer at the time argued that
Speaker 1: the Wats riots broke out because the locals had no
Speaker 1: other way to get their voices heard about what they
Speaker 1: saw as rampant police brutality.
Speaker 17: A complaint of police brutality by any Negro citizen goes
Speaker 17: almost completely.
Speaker 1: Unheeded, But a government commission investigated the plight of black
Speaker 1: Americans and cited a different cause for turmoil in their communities.
Speaker 4: Daniel one Ahan, until this summer Assistant Secretary of Labor,
Speaker 4: was in charge of the study and was staggered by it.
Speaker 4: Monahan says the Negro family structure is collapsing and we
Speaker 4: asked him the reasons.
Speaker 3: We have had thirty five years of disastus unemployment for
Speaker 3: the negro of Mayle.
Speaker 17: He has never gotten over the depression.
Speaker 3: He had four fair years, fair in the middling years
Speaker 3: in the.
Speaker 4: Second World War, and maybe a good year in the
Speaker 4: Korean War.
Speaker 12: And that's it.
Speaker 4: So serious and explosive is the situation, says the Commission,
Speaker 4: that unless it is checked, the August Riots may be
Speaker 4: only a curtain raiser to what could blow up one
Speaker 4: day in the future.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy three, and what appeared to be a
Speaker 1: response to the black community's frustrations, the predominantly white city
Speaker 1: of Los Angeles elected a new mayor.
Speaker 13: Thomas Bradley was sworn in today as mayor of Los Angeles,
Speaker 13: the largest city in this country ever to have a
Speaker 13: black mayor. Bradley was elected in late May, even though
Speaker 13: blacks make up only eighteen percent of Los Angeles' population.
Speaker 13: Bradley is a former policeman and the son of a
Speaker 13: Texas sharecropper. He says becoming mayor of Los Angeles was
Speaker 13: his impossible dream.
Speaker 1: A lawyer and a former police officer, councilman, Tom Brady
Speaker 1: became the city's first African American mayor.
Speaker 19: I'm proud of our victory, but more importantly, I'm.
Speaker 17: Proud of you.
Speaker 19: I'm proud of what this city was able to do
Speaker 19: on May twenty ninth. Your rejection of those issues that
Speaker 19: were irrelevant to the campaign, your rejection of the appeals
Speaker 19: to racial prejudice, will serve as an historic monument to
Speaker 19: the political process in this country.
Speaker 16: Tonight there will be a large inaugural ball and that
Speaker 16: will end the festivities tomorrow morning. The harsh realities, the
Speaker 16: harsh realities for Tom Bradley of governing the nation's third
Speaker 16: largest city.
Speaker 1: Five years later, in nineteen seventy eight, Mayor Bradley hired
Speaker 1: Darryl Gates as Los Angeles Police Chief, and he took
Speaker 1: the position at a critical time the city of Angels
Speaker 1: plunging into hell. Drugs were pouring in and violence quickly followed.
Speaker 1: From nineteen sixty to nineteen eighty, their murder rate in
Speaker 1: the area increased by over six hundred percent. Much of
Speaker 1: the mayhem was happening in south central, a patch of
Speaker 1: land south of the ten Freeway straddling the one to
Speaker 1: ten Freeway, an area that included Watts. It was known
Speaker 1: as one of the most dangerous enclaves in California, if
Speaker 1: not the entire United States. By the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: gang violence exploded in the Ala Borough and the crack
Speaker 1: cocaine epidemic that fueled the chaos was ripping the city apart,
Speaker 1: forcing a heavier and heavier police presence. As the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four Olympics approached, there was a national desire to
Speaker 1: clean up the war zones before the world's eyes descended
Speaker 1: on the city, so Chief Darrel Gates began sweeping the area.
Speaker 1: When the games ended, the influx of drugs continued unabated,
Speaker 1: so Chief Gates enacted Operation Hammer, a law enforcement campaign
Speaker 1: to try and get the drug trade and violence on
Speaker 1: a control.
Speaker 5: They sell the rock cocaine or crack on the streets
Speaker 5: or from heavily fortified rock houses, often employing eleven and
Speaker 5: twelve year olds known as peewee's. These apprentices are used
Speaker 5: as lookouts, sometimes even as salesmen. Young boys can make
Speaker 5: more than four hundred dollars a day selling drugs.
Speaker 15: We have gangs that are taking out of the city
Speaker 15: of Los Angeles about a million dollars a week.
Speaker 5: The gangs have carved up parts of Los Angeles into
Speaker 5: exclusive sales territories, even using graffiti on walls to mark
Speaker 5: their domain and warn others to stay away. But like
Speaker 5: any successful businesses, they still compete for market share, often
Speaker 5: with violent consequences. Some three hundred eighty seven people died
Speaker 5: here in gang related violence last year. This year, the
Speaker 5: death toll is running even higher.
Speaker 20: It's getting worse.
Speaker 15: It's not getting better.
Speaker 5: Police are trying to make it better with special sweeps
Speaker 5: arresting hundreds of suspected gang members. They've even rolled out
Speaker 5: an armored battering ram to attack fortified crack houses.
Speaker 1: This effort reached a height in April nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: when over a single weekend, almost fifteen hundred people were
Speaker 1: arrested by one thousand officers. The heavy policing in the
Speaker 1: area created even more tension between South Central's predominantly black
Speaker 1: community and the LAPD charged with enforcing the law. This
Speaker 1: was the environment that gripped Los Angeles when the LAPD
Speaker 1: came across Rodney King's speeding vehicle.
Speaker 2: To everyone that saw the Rodney King beating on the news,
Speaker 2: the case against the officers appeared to be a slam
Speaker 2: dunk The video set it all and seemed so convincing
Speaker 2: that the public already made its verdict long before the
Speaker 2: evidence was presented in trial. But the incident was far
Speaker 2: more complicated than the media was portraying, and that was
Speaker 2: largely because of what went on that night in March
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one before the amateur videographer hit the record button.
Speaker 16: A fact at marbaur At.
Speaker 2: A little after midnight on that SiGe Saturday night, two
Speaker 2: California Highway Patrol officers, a husband and wife team named
Speaker 2: Melanie and Timothy Singer, were driving down the two ten
Speaker 2: freeway when they witnessed a Hundai Excel in their rear
Speaker 2: view mirror traveling at a high velocity. So they exited
Speaker 2: a freeway off ramp and then immediately re entered the freeway,
Speaker 2: following the car to gauge at speed.
Speaker 6: And as I reached the bottom of the heel down
Speaker 6: on the bottom of some one itself, my vehicle was
Speaker 6: reading on the display at one hundred and fifteen and
Speaker 6: bouncing about one hundred fifteen one hundred and seventeen miles
Speaker 6: per hour.
Speaker 2: That's then CHP Officer Melanie Singer. The officers flipped on
Speaker 2: their sirens and flashing red lights, and through the loudspeaker
Speaker 2: ordered the driver, Rodney King, to pull over. But he wouldn't,
Speaker 2: and why well, he knew he shouldn't have been behind
Speaker 2: the wheel. You see, that evening, Rodney King and his
Speaker 2: two friends were having a bit too much fun. The
Speaker 2: three were sucking down eight balls the street name four
Speaker 2: forty ounce bottles of old English eight hundred malt liquor.
Speaker 2: They weren't doing much of it anything really. They hung
Speaker 2: out at a park, chilled out in King's wife's car,
Speaker 2: moved it over to one of their mom's houses, where
Speaker 2: they continued to drink. By the time King was caught
Speaker 2: speeding down the two ten freeway, he had the equivalent
Speaker 2: of roughly a case of malt liquor in his system,
Speaker 2: or twenty four to twelve ounce cans, and he was
Speaker 2: on his way to buy more. In other words, King
Speaker 2: was driving drunk, very drunk. But that wasn't his only issue.
Speaker 2: He was also on probation for a robbery conviction. A
Speaker 2: little over a year earlier, Rodney King walked into an
Speaker 2: East LA store, pulled out an iron bar from his coat,
Speaker 2: and told the Korean store owner to open the cash register.
Speaker 2: He took the cash without resistance, but when King went
Speaker 2: for the checks, the store owner grabbed a rod from
Speaker 2: the floor and began to hit him. King dropped his
Speaker 2: bar and grabbed a pole and hit the store owner,
Speaker 2: then fled with two hundred dollars cash. A week and
Speaker 2: a half later, he was arrested, charged, and sentenced to
Speaker 2: two years in prison. He served a year. Three months
Speaker 2: after that, he found himself speeding drunk down the two
Speaker 2: ten Freeway with the highway patrol hot on his tail.
Speaker 2: Long story short, King wouldn't pull over because driving drunk
Speaker 2: would have been a violation of his parole and he
Speaker 2: didn't want to go back to jail. With King now
Speaker 2: making a run for it, the CHP officers called for help,
Speaker 2: and units from the Los Angeles Police Department joined in
Speaker 2: on the pursuit, including an LAPD helicopter buzzing overhead. One
Speaker 2: of the passengers in the car, a longtime friend of King's,
Speaker 2: begged him to pull over, but King ignored his pleas
Speaker 2: As the chase continued, the passenger began to panic and
Speaker 2: a crazy thought briefly entered his mind.
Speaker 14: At one time, I wanted to jump out the car
Speaker 14: if I didn't want to do that.
Speaker 2: Rodney King's state of mind even scared his old friend.
Speaker 2: King eventually exited the freeway, attempting to ditch the police
Speaker 2: on residential streets.
Speaker 21: Alive a failed to the.
Speaker 2: He ran a red light, nearly causing an accident, and
Speaker 2: hid a speed of eighty miles per hour in a
Speaker 2: thirty five mile per hour zone.
Speaker 13: Were forward to the beginning, but I got it turn
Speaker 13: around and again.
Speaker 2: After about eight miles and nowhere else to go, he
Speaker 2: pulled over across from an apartment complex near the entrance
Speaker 2: of a park. Now stopped on the side of the road.
Speaker 2: CHP Officer Timothy Singer ordered everyone out of the car
Speaker 2: until lie face down on the ground. The two passengers
Speaker 2: complied that Rodney King remained in the car. Melanie Singer
Speaker 2: was the first to approach the vehicle. She ordered King
Speaker 2: out again, and this time he did, but when he
Speaker 2: got out, he ignored her command. Instead, he placed his
Speaker 2: hands on the roof of the vehicle and began acting
Speaker 2: a bit defiant.
Speaker 6: When he placed his hands on the roof of the car,
Speaker 6: the helicopter was overhead. He then looked like he was
Speaker 6: saying something inside the car. Then pointed up at the
Speaker 6: helicopter itself and began to wave at the helicopter with
Speaker 6: his right hand, with his left hand still on the
Speaker 6: top of the roof of the car. He was waving
Speaker 6: and smiling. After he had begun to wave at the helicopter,
Speaker 6: my partner yelled at him. I told you get back
Speaker 6: from the car, get your hands where I can see him,
Speaker 6: get yourself on the ground.
Speaker 2: But Officer Singer said, King still wouldn't get on the ground.
Speaker 6: When he moved away from the car, he dropped both
Speaker 6: of his arms away from the car, down to his
Speaker 6: sides and turned his body almost in a north direction,
Speaker 6: away to where his left side was now facing me,
Speaker 6: to where I could not see his right hand. At
Speaker 6: that time, I withdrew my weapon pointed it at the
Speaker 6: suspect or the driver told him to get his hands
Speaker 6: away from his butt I could not see where his
Speaker 6: hand was, and at that time he turned his complete
Speaker 6: body around where his rear end was facing me. He
Speaker 6: grabbed his right buttck with his right hand and shook
Speaker 6: it at me.
Speaker 2: Now this was a problem. Rodney King was a two
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty five pound six foot three inch tall
Speaker 2: young man that tried running from the police, taking them
Speaker 2: on a high speed chase that reached upwards up one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifteen miles per hour. He was sweaty and
Speaker 2: clearly acting under the influence of something, and most troubling,
Speaker 2: even at gunpoint, he wasn't complying. The stage was set
Speaker 2: for a disaster, and a disaster was about to happen
Speaker 2: more after the break, rough Greens has given our dogs
Speaker 2: new life. We've got three very different dogs in our house. Pablo,
Speaker 2: our English bulldog, Willow our bull Mastive, and Daisy are
Speaker 2: tiny but mighty Chihuahua. So trust me when I say
Speaker 2: we notice when something actually works.
Speaker 1: Pablo has always struggled with skin issues. We tried switching foods, supplements,
Speaker 1: you name it, and nothing really stuck. But after adding
Speaker 1: rough Greens to his meals, his skin finally calmed down. Irritation,
Speaker 1: less scratching, and honestly, he just looks more comfortable in
Speaker 1: his own skin.
Speaker 2: Then there's Willow. She's our big girl, and for a
Speaker 2: while she just seemed tired, slowing down, not as excited
Speaker 2: about walks or playtime. Once we added rough Greens, it
Speaker 2: was like she got her spark back, more energy, more enthusiasm.
Speaker 2: It genuinely gave her new life, and Daisy, she just
Speaker 2: thrives on it.
Speaker 1: What I love is that rough Greens isn't dogfood. It's
Speaker 1: a live nutritional supplement packed with vitamins, minerals, probiotics, digestive enzymes,
Speaker 1: and omega oils. You don't have to change your dog's food,
Speaker 1: you just add it.
Speaker 2: I don't just recommend rough Greens. I depend on it
Speaker 2: to keep my dogs happy and healthy.
Speaker 1: Don't change your dog's food, just add Roughgreens. Rough Greens
Speaker 1: is offering a free Jumpstart trial bag. You just cover shipping.
Speaker 2: Use discount code RPA to claim your free Jumpstart Trial
Speaker 2: bag at roughgreens dot com. That's ruffgreens dot com promo
Speaker 2: code RPA. So don't change your dog's food, just add
Speaker 2: rough Greens and watch the health benefits come alive. Welcome back. So,
Speaker 2: after downing the equivalent of a case of malt liquor,
Speaker 2: Rodney King led the police on a high speed chase
Speaker 2: until he ultimately pulled over. But when Officer Singer ordered
Speaker 2: him at gunpoint to lie face down on the ground,
Speaker 2: King wouldn't comply. The stage was set for a disaster
Speaker 2: when the Los Angeles Police Department arrived on the scene.
Speaker 2: Officer Stacy Kuhn of the LAPD, now the ranking officer
Speaker 2: on site, saw CHP Officer Melanie Singer approaching Rodney King
Speaker 2: with her gun drawn and gave her an order.
Speaker 22: I ordered her to stay back because she was injecting
Speaker 22: a gun into the situation, and my tactical training had
Speaker 22: led me to believe that you don't approach suspects and
Speaker 22: not control with the gun.
Speaker 2: In the moment, Officer Kuhn said, the first thing that
Speaker 2: caught his eye about Rodney King was his build. He
Speaker 2: appeared very muscular. Combined with the fact that he'd just
Speaker 2: led them on a high speed chase and he was
Speaker 2: ignoring Officer Singer's orders at gunpoint, Officer Kuhn thought King
Speaker 2: was probably a next Khn. Two of his subordinates, Officer
Speaker 2: Lawrence Powell and Officer Ted Brazino, swarmed Rodney King, attempting
Speaker 2: to handcuff him. Stacy Kuhn described the situation at the time.
Speaker 22: Well, mister King's left arm was behind him and Officer
Speaker 22: Powell was on his back, and Officer Barsino was trying
Speaker 22: to force the arm up to meet so that the
Speaker 22: wrist would match behind the cuff, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 22: mister King's arm just came out from him and then
Speaker 22: he swayed sway to the right, and Officer Power was
Speaker 22: thrown off and the officer Bersino kind of landed on
Speaker 22: his behind. I ordered him to back off.
Speaker 2: Coon said. He shouted at Rodney King to lay down
Speaker 2: and warned him if he didn't, he would hit him
Speaker 2: with a taser, a fifty thousand volt electric charge meant
Speaker 2: to shock a person into submission. But King continued to rise,
Speaker 2: and so as promised, Officer Kuh shot a taser dart
Speaker 2: into him.
Speaker 22: No, he grimaced the he kind of gave out like
Speaker 22: a bear.
Speaker 2: Like yell, but Koon said he continued to rise. After
Speaker 2: King ignored another order to get down, Coon shot a
Speaker 2: second taser dart into King.
Speaker 22: He repeated this grown similar to a wounded animal, and
Speaker 22: then he I could see the I could see the
Speaker 22: vibrations on him, but he seemed to be overcoming it.
Speaker 2: King's ability to throw the officers off and the ineffectiveness
Speaker 2: of the tasers led many of the witnessing officers to
Speaker 2: believe that Rodney King was on PCP, a strong illegal drug.
Speaker 2: Known to give fits of violence and a burst of
Speaker 2: superhuman strength to those that take it. It's basically an
Speaker 2: officer's worst nightmare. These are the events that happened right
Speaker 2: before the amateur cameraman pressed record, and was even backed
Speaker 2: up by witnesses that were hostile to the accused LAPD officers.
Speaker 2: So when the video went viral, the general public had
Speaker 2: no knowledge of the content of the brutal baton blows
Speaker 2: they were seeing. The public was also missing another key
Speaker 2: piece of information that the amateur cameraman actually recorded. When
Speaker 2: the video was broadcasted by every news program across the nation,
Speaker 2: almost no one saw the first twelve seconds where Rodney
Speaker 2: King appears to charge the officer that would eventually hit
Speaker 2: him with the most blows. It was simply edited out
Speaker 2: of the news reports, so the video that Americans saw
Speaker 2: was a partial record of a partial record. The press
Speaker 2: oversimplified the incident, painting it as a clear case of
Speaker 2: unprovoked police brutality, with the video of the cops hitting
Speaker 2: Rodney King with batons as the only evidence needed to
Speaker 2: convict the officers. No one prepared the public for the
Speaker 2: possibility that the officers could be acquitted. Everyone thought the
Speaker 2: convictions were going to be a slam dunk, But the
Speaker 2: prosecuting attorneys, on the other hand, knew their case had vulnerabilities.
Speaker 3: Another press never picked up on that.
Speaker 13: In the first trial.
Speaker 20: It was always, you know the video, the speaks for
Speaker 20: its an easy case, and you know, the people that
Speaker 20: were working on the case in distric Attorney's office always
Speaker 20: knew it was not going to be an easy case.
Speaker 2: And the defense attorneys were about to use those vulnerabilities
Speaker 2: to flip the national consensus on its head. They started
Speaker 2: with the smart move, perhaps their single best defensive maneuver
Speaker 2: of the entire process. The defense lawyers got the venue
Speaker 2: for the trial moved out of Los Angeles Proper and
Speaker 2: into a Semi Valley courthouse, arguing that their defendants could
Speaker 2: not get a fair trial in La Proper. All of
Speaker 2: the defendants were white. At the time, Los Angeles was
Speaker 2: sixty four percent non white. Ventura County, on the other hand,
Speaker 2: where Simi Valley resided, was only thirty four percent non white,
Speaker 2: providing a jury pool that would likely be friendlier to
Speaker 2: the defendants. The area was also one of the most conservative,
Speaker 2: law enforcement friendly enclaves of California. To give you a
Speaker 2: taste of its political leanings. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Libraries
Speaker 2: in Simi Valley. If anywhere with the nan Neelley County
Speaker 2: was going to give the officers a fair hearing, it
Speaker 2: would be there. As the opening arguments began in March
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two, the Chief Prosecutor, Terry White, argued that
Speaker 2: the case was simple.
Speaker 20: This evidence will show that whatever Rodney King was, or
Speaker 20: whatever he did, it did not justify what you what
Speaker 20: you saw on that videotape. Whatever he was and whatever
Speaker 20: he did, it did not allow defendant Koon and defendant
Speaker 20: Powell to write these false reports to cover up this incident.
Speaker 20: The evidence will show that when they wrote these false reports,
Speaker 20: I'm talking about defendant Powell and defendant Coon, when they
Speaker 20: wrote these reports, they knew they couldn't justify that beating
Speaker 20: that occurred one year ago. Ladies and gentlemen. They couldn't
Speaker 20: justify it one year ago, and no defendant in this
Speaker 20: courtroom will be able to justify it now.
Speaker 23: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Each of the four former officers had their own attorney,
Speaker 2: and Stacy Coon's was the first to the podium. His
Speaker 2: basic defense was that although he was the officer technically
Speaker 2: in charge on the scene. The real person in control
Speaker 2: of how the situation would unfold was Rodney King.
Speaker 24: The evidence is going to show you that he's not
Speaker 24: in charge of this situation. There's only one person that's
Speaker 24: in charge of the situation, and that's Rodney Glenn King.
Speaker 24: You will see through still photographs and through the videotape
Speaker 24: when you see thos the disc attorney said many times
Speaker 24: that Rodney King, without warning, with no one touching him,
Speaker 24: rose to his feet and turned within two seconds to
Speaker 24: the frame in a violent charge for power.
Speaker 2: The one that had the hardest hill to climb was
Speaker 2: Lawrence Powell. Powell struck Rodney King over forty five times,
Speaker 2: but what his council argued was that he was simply
Speaker 2: following LAPD protocol.
Speaker 25: The Los Angeles Police officers, like most other police officers
Speaker 25: and departments throughout the state, are trained in the escalation
Speaker 25: and de escalation of force, and that as the suspects
Speaker 25: movements and activities create an increase in the threat to
Speaker 25: the officer, or an increase in the resistance to arrest,
Speaker 25: or an increase in the attempt to escape, the officers
Speaker 25: are taught to escalate force as the suspect becomes more compliant,
Speaker 25: or ceases the threat, or ceases the resistance. The officers
Speaker 25: are taught to de escalate the force, and you'll see
Speaker 25: you'll hear testimony that practically every level except excessive force,
Speaker 25: every level of force was used in this case, every
Speaker 25: level of force except deadly force.
Speaker 2: Most that saw the video for the first time were
Speaker 2: shocked by the officer's continued use of the baton. I know,
Speaker 2: I was why not move in with a choke hold?
Speaker 2: I thought, will That tool was largely taken away from
Speaker 2: the LAPD almost ten years earlier, in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 2: another twenty something African American led officers on a high
Speaker 2: speed chase. When the police finally caught him and attempted
Speaker 2: to switch his handcuffs from in front to behind his back,
Speaker 2: officers claimed he resisted, and to restrain him, one LAPD
Speaker 2: officer applied to choke hold. That hold deprived the man's
Speaker 2: brain of adequate oxygen, and he died two weeks later.
Speaker 2: Shortly after this tragic incident, the LAPD prohibited the use
Speaker 2: of a choke hold for all but life threatening situations.
Speaker 2: In other words, the arresting officers of Rodney King were
Speaker 2: using the batons because it was one of the few
Speaker 2: tools they had to submit him outside of the tasers
Speaker 2: that weren't working. The use of the choke hold came
Speaker 2: up when the prosecution questioned Stacy Coon, and what was.
Speaker 26: Mister King doing here that led you to believe that
Speaker 26: he was going to kill you or kill somebody?
Speaker 22: It was my belief in my perception, he was under
Speaker 22: the influence of PCB. If he had grabbed my officer,
Speaker 22: it would have been a death grip. If he had
Speaker 22: grabbed the weapon, he would have had numerous targets here.
Speaker 26: Is it your testimony that you were approaching the point
Speaker 26: where deadly force was going to be required?
Speaker 22: Yes, sure it is.
Speaker 26: And your option would have been to shoot.
Speaker 22: Him, to choke or to shoot, sir.
Speaker 26: But because of what you've just spoken about with respect
Speaker 26: to the choke hold, your only option left would have
Speaker 26: been to shoot him.
Speaker 22: Is that right, Yes, sir, I personally, I personally would
Speaker 22: have applied a chokehold to mister King prior to ordering
Speaker 22: him to be shot.
Speaker 2: Kuhn was also questioned about the baton blows to Rodney.
Speaker 22: King, it's done to control an aggressive combatist suspect and
Speaker 22: sometimes police work is brutal. That's just the fact of life.
Speaker 26: And is that the Los Angeles Police Department policy that
Speaker 26: is to keep hitting somebody with the baton until the
Speaker 26: person complies. Yes, sir, that's what the Los Angeles Police
Speaker 26: Department teaches. That's true, sir, to hit somebody until that
Speaker 26: he complies. Correct. Is it your testimony that every one
Speaker 26: of these blows the picted on this videotape as a
Speaker 26: justified use of force within the meeting of the policy
Speaker 26: of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Speaker 22: I can't honestly say that I saw every one of
Speaker 22: those blows that was on the.
Speaker 26: Videotape and watching the videotape, now, is that your testimony
Speaker 26: that every one of the blows that you see on
Speaker 26: there is a justified use of force.
Speaker 22: It's a reasonable and necessary use in the minimum force.
Speaker 22: Yesterday is my testimony.
Speaker 2: When questioning Laurence Powell, the officer that struck King the
Speaker 2: most times, the prosecution attempted to bring Race into the trial.
Speaker 2: Right before the Rodney kingchase, officer Powell was at another scene.
Speaker 2: He was questioned about the computer messages he sent in
Speaker 2: about that call, you.
Speaker 20: Replied to her sounds almost as exciting as our last call.
Speaker 20: It was right out of gorilla's in the mist. That's
Speaker 20: what you typed into her, isn't it?
Speaker 23: Yes?
Speaker 20: And she tied back, ha ha ha ha. Let me
Speaker 20: guess who be the parties? You remember that, don't you?
Speaker 18: Yes?
Speaker 20: Then you typed in, good guess, didn't you? I believe
Speaker 20: so now this incident that you're referring to, this last call,
Speaker 20: right out of guerrillas in the mist, it involved a
Speaker 20: family of African Americans, didn't it?
Speaker 15: Yes?
Speaker 22: Did.
Speaker 2: But the defense would eventually parade a series of officers that
Speaker 2: were on site that backed up Lawrence Powell's actions, one
Speaker 2: being a black officer. Chief Prosecutor Terry White, a black man,
Speaker 2: would later admit that he couldn't prove that race had
Speaker 2: anything to do with the arrest, so he didn't pursue
Speaker 2: that path.
Speaker 20: I could never prove that it was racial, and since
Speaker 20: I couldn't prove that, we didn't pursue that.
Speaker 2: After thirty five days of testimony and fifty four witnesses,
Speaker 2: it was time for closing arguments. The prosecution implored the
Speaker 2: jury to believe their eyes.
Speaker 20: And at some point, you have to look at that
Speaker 20: video and say enough is enough. Stop going there, handcuff him,
Speaker 20: stop this, this is not right, but they continue.
Speaker 7: To hit him.
Speaker 20: I issue a challenge to mister Stone, to mister defisqually,
Speaker 20: to mister Munger to play this video tape for you
Speaker 20: and to point out things in this tape that justify
Speaker 20: the continued use of the baton. They're not gonna show
Speaker 20: you the entire video tape. They probably won't even play
Speaker 20: the tired video tape for you because they're afraid of
Speaker 20: the video tape. They're afraid because they know what that
Speaker 20: videotape shows. No are you gonna believe the defendants are
Speaker 20: your own eyes? Thank you.
Speaker 2: The defense attorneys largely argued that their clients were just
Speaker 2: following protocol and doing their jobs.
Speaker 25: What do we, ladies and gentlemen, as members of the community,
Speaker 25: expect from our police. What is it that we want
Speaker 25: them to do? These officers, these defendants do not get
Speaker 25: paid to lose street fights. They don't get paid to
Speaker 25: roll around in the dirt with the likes of Rodney
Speaker 25: Glenn King. These are not robocops, ladies and gentlemen. They hurt,
Speaker 25: they feel pain, they bleed, and they die just like
Speaker 25: everyone else, and we leave it to them to take
Speaker 25: care of the mean streets so that we can safely
Speaker 25: enjoy our lives.
Speaker 2: After seven days of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict
Speaker 2: on April twenty ninth, nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 16: The jury has reached a verdict on all counts except one.
Speaker 14: We the jury in the above and titled action find
Speaker 14: the defendant Laurence M. Powell not guilty. Find the defendant
Speaker 14: Timothy E. Wind not guilty. Find the defendant Theodora J.
Speaker 14: Bassino not guilty. Find the defendant Stacey se Koon not guilty.
Speaker 14: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, are these are verdicts,
Speaker 14: So say you won so say you all.
Speaker 2: In the end, the jury sided with the officers, and
Speaker 2: the media were as shocked as the public.
Speaker 8: Jordy in the Rodney King case has delivered its verdict
Speaker 8: and not one of the four police officers seen on
Speaker 8: videotape beating mister King a year ago he is guilty
Speaker 8: of using excessive force. They've all been found not guilty.
Speaker 8: We go directly to California at abc'sjud Molly Judy the details, Peter.
Speaker 27: It was a clean sweep for the defendants, not guilty.
Speaker 27: The verdict for all of them, Sergeant Stacy Kuhn, Officers
Speaker 27: Tim Wind, Lawrence Powell, Ted Brasigno not guilty of assault,
Speaker 27: not guilty of filing false reports. Only on one count
Speaker 27: against Lawrence Powell, on excessive use of force under color
Speaker 27: of authority. Could the jury not agree on that count?
Speaker 27: The judge declared a mistrial.
Speaker 2: Jurors later explained why they believed the arguments of the defense.
Speaker 28: You say to people who around the country have been
Speaker 28: asking themselves, how could those jurors have looked at that
Speaker 28: video that we all saw so many times and have
Speaker 28: found those policemen not guilty?
Speaker 23: Well, Tad, the main reason was because the video wasn't
Speaker 23: the only evidence that was presented to us, and that
Speaker 23: we had the laws the way they were presented that
Speaker 23: we had to use as a guideline in our decision.
Speaker 28: When you finished watching and listening to the trial and
Speaker 28: you went into that jury room, you told me earlier
Speaker 28: this evening you were predisposed to find those men guilty.
Speaker 29: Right.
Speaker 23: I went in there thinking that, yes, sir.
Speaker 2: In the immediate wake of the verdict, city leaders anticipated
Speaker 2: some trouble.
Speaker 27: Well, now that the verdict is not guilty. The mayor
Speaker 27: is expected to call for calm throughout the city. Chief
Speaker 27: Gates has put aside a million dollar fund to pay
Speaker 27: for overtime for a thousand police officers who have been
Speaker 27: placed on alert following US verdict.
Speaker 8: Peter, do you know you said pretty well the fact
Speaker 8: that those police officers have been put on alert anticipates
Speaker 8: a reaction to a not guilty verdict.
Speaker 27: I don't think there's much doubt that there's going to
Speaker 27: be quite a reaction. I think this was a stunning verdict.
Speaker 27: I don't think many people were expecting this, certainly not
Speaker 27: reporters who had been observing the trial from the beginning.
Speaker 27: I think they thought it might be a split verdict,
Speaker 27: but certainly not a clean sweep of not guilty.
Speaker 2: The reaction to the acquittals was immediate, as protesters yelled
Speaker 2: at the defendants all the way to their cars.
Speaker 3: I got.
Speaker 2: Mayor Bradley swiftly expressed his disappointment in the verdict.
Speaker 19: The jury verdict will never outlive the images of the
Speaker 19: savage beating seared forever into our minds and our.
Speaker 2: Souls, and Chief Darrel Gates tried to argue to trust
Speaker 2: the process.
Speaker 15: Hopeful also that the people of this said, we will
Speaker 15: recognize that this is indeed our system of justice.
Speaker 2: But it was no use. Protesters quickly gathered outside of
Speaker 2: the LPD headquarters in downtown Los Angelesay.
Speaker 29: I'm here outside Farmer Center where protesters have descended on
Speaker 29: the place. It was during the Chief Gates news conference.
Speaker 29: They got here. It's been growing steadily with me, is
Speaker 29: one of the protesters. He cannot give his name, but
Speaker 29: tell me what exactly, how do you feel about all
Speaker 29: of this?
Speaker 30: I feel that it's the great travesy of justice. I
Speaker 30: feel that the jury and see me Balley, gave the
Speaker 30: okay to continue to abuse and oppress and suppress black
Speaker 30: people in this country. I feel that there is an
Speaker 30: undercurrent of racism and that the system is rotten to
Speaker 30: the core.
Speaker 29: You know what we have here? We have city leaders,
Speaker 29: Darrellgates included, but the council members too, Margaret Lee, Thomas
Speaker 29: Michael calling for everyone to be calm. How does that
Speaker 29: strike you?
Speaker 30: You don't? I think it's pretensions. It sounds like reverse psychology,
Speaker 30: and it's they can fit and they're comfortable places and there,
Speaker 30: and their status poles in their bourgeoisie and called for
Speaker 30: us to not be violent.
Speaker 31: We are not.
Speaker 30: We have grown since the nineteenth fifty. We are not
Speaker 30: about to rehab it on our own community. We are
Speaker 30: not about to be contained and and and in prison
Speaker 30: and in a in a in an in casion environment,
Speaker 30: and burned out our own helvet.
Speaker 21: We are not going to do that.
Speaker 2: But the protester couldn't have been more wrong. Modern America
Speaker 2: got to see for the first time how quickly a
Speaker 2: society can fall apart when a crowd migrated to the
Speaker 2: corner of Florence and Normandy in south central Los Angeles
Speaker 2: and began attacking anyone that wasn't black.
Speaker 25: Killable.
Speaker 29: No, I'm killing, No, I'm killing.
Speaker 18: On you your asses gram.
Speaker 2: The intersection became one of the most savage scenes in
Speaker 2: American history. The rabbid crowd was hell bent on killing
Speaker 2: people simply because of the color of their skin. They
Speaker 2: threw bricks at passing vehicles, tried to break into stopped cars,
Speaker 2: and cheered is Innocent people were pulled from their automobiles
Speaker 2: and beaten to within inches of death. Some even died.
Speaker 2: One Latino man was pulled from his car and brutally
Speaker 2: beaten by African Americans When they were done, he laid
Speaker 2: on the side of the street, bloodied and unconscious as
Speaker 2: locals spray painted his body and genitals black. When a
Speaker 2: helicopter arrived to the intersection, they couldn't believe what they
Speaker 2: were seeing.
Speaker 3: They're pulling the driver out of the van and they're
Speaker 3: kicking the driver and beating the driver. The driver's only a.
Speaker 5: Mistake was entering this area.
Speaker 19: He's been kicked in the head.
Speaker 20: He's laying in the street.
Speaker 15: Okay, this is it.
Speaker 3: Terrible, terrible pictures.
Speaker 9: This is what all this guy did was enter this area.
Speaker 5: That's his only crime.
Speaker 9: Hit the siren, doug.
Speaker 5: Hey, okay, this guy is laying.
Speaker 12: In the street.
Speaker 3: Hit the siren, doug.
Speaker 5: He is bleeding, unconscious in the street. Russ Us tragic.
Speaker 2: Indeed, it was the Watts Riots on steroids, and the
Speaker 2: news media couldn't get enough of the mayhem.
Speaker 21: The trouble began Wednesday afternoon at this intersection in south
Speaker 21: central Los Angeles. Cars attacked the occupants, beaten and robbed.
Speaker 21: At first, no police responded, and when they finally did,
Speaker 21: they left almost immediately. It would be hours before they
Speaker 21: were mobilized, and even then, much of the looting would
Speaker 21: continue with impunity.
Speaker 17: With the police absent from the intersection of Normandy and
Speaker 17: Florence Wednesday, the crowd starts dragging whites and Mexican Americans
Speaker 17: from their vehicles and beating them. Then the scene that
Speaker 17: came to symbolize the brutality of the riot, Reginald Denny
Speaker 17: is pulled from his truck and nearly killed. Denny appears
Speaker 17: to beg for assistance. Other Blacks later help him escape.
Speaker 2: It was the images of Reginald Denny's brutal beating that
Speaker 2: led Kirt Schlichter to believe that his National Guard battalion
Speaker 2: was about to get the call to show up at
Speaker 2: their armory in Inglewood.
Speaker 3: We had a new battalion commander and I call the UNI.
Speaker 3: I say, we're getting mobilized. They go, now, we're not
Speaker 3: getting mobilized. And I look at the I look at
Speaker 3: the TV. The man is unconscious in the street. He
Speaker 3: still people are still coming up and throwing things at
Speaker 3: this poor individual. This is attempted murder. And there's you know,
Speaker 3: Reginald Day's getting a shit kicked out of them, and
Speaker 3: Florence and Normandy. I'm like, oh fuck, we're getting mobilized.
Speaker 3: So I packed my shit.
Speaker 2: And he was right. Just a few hours after the
Speaker 2: Reginald Denny beating hit our TV screens, Mayor Bradley made
Speaker 2: the call.
Speaker 5: Everyone grew operate, stout the streets. It's anticipated that the
Speaker 5: curfew will be put into effect tomorrow night.
Speaker 16: The mayor asked for help from the state in bringing
Speaker 16: the situation under control. Governor Pete Wilson called out the
Speaker 16: californ On your Highway Patrol and National Guard.
Speaker 31: And additionally we have made available some two thousand National guardsmen.
Speaker 31: They are on standby, prepared to move. Transport has been arranged.
Speaker 3: Now I had sold all my guns. I didn't have
Speaker 3: any guns. I sold them in Germany and I'm living
Speaker 3: in Pasadena, so I got to get into Englewood. If
Speaker 3: they call me, well they call me, Yeah, we're mobilizing,
Speaker 3: come on in.
Speaker 10: Fuck me.
Speaker 2: And Kurt Schlichter was about to drive into a war
Speaker 2: zone in America without a gun. More after the break,
Speaker 2: how are you feeling about the current state of our country?
Speaker 2: Longtime listeners of Red Pilled America know that since our inception,
Speaker 2: we've been warning about the dangers of giving up the culture.
Speaker 1: Republicans abandoned storytelling art, academia, entertainment, music, literature, the institutions
Speaker 1: that define what it means to be American, and by
Speaker 1: doing so, they allowed Marxists to pump their poison messages
Speaker 1: into the American bloodstream.
Speaker 2: But there is a silver lining. Red Pilled America is
Speaker 2: the beginning of an antidote, because we're pioneering the take
Speaker 2: back of our culture. If we succeed, others will follow
Speaker 2: and will create a symphony of storytellers that restores what
Speaker 2: it means to be American.
Speaker 1: Please consider supporting the show by visiting Redpilled America dot
Speaker 1: com and clicking support or shop in the topmenu. It's
Speaker 1: time to tell our side of the story, and with
Speaker 1: your help, we will continue to blaze the trail.
Speaker 2: Visit Redpilled America dot com to help us continue the fight.
Speaker 2: Support what you love or it goes away.
Speaker 1: Welcome back. So after Kurt Schlichter saw the images of
Speaker 1: Reginald Denny being brutally beaten on TV, he knew his
Speaker 1: National Guard battalion was about to be called into the area,
Speaker 1: and he was right, so he packed up and headed
Speaker 1: for his armory in Inglewood, a city that partially reached
Speaker 1: into the Southwest border of South Central.
Speaker 3: So I drive down and I got to get off
Speaker 3: at I get off at ten and start heading up
Speaker 3: Los Sienaga by rodeo, not the nice rodeo, the other rodeo.
Speaker 3: There's this lapd prickin' roadblock and a guy who's got
Speaker 3: like a Remington eight seventy shotgun walks up to me.
Speaker 3: There's cops. All the shit's on fire. These cops are
Speaker 3: edgy as shit. My hands are like very very clear
Speaker 3: on the thing. And I'm sitting there and I'm dressed
Speaker 3: like a tree, right, I got my uniform on. And
Speaker 3: he goes, what the fuck do you think you're going?
Speaker 3: So I gotta go in Inglewood. My unit's in there.
Speaker 3: He goes, do you have a gun? And I said no.
Speaker 3: He goes, sure, you want to go in there. I'm
Speaker 3: like no. He goes, drive real fast, don't stop, and
Speaker 3: I drove in.
Speaker 1: Hope was spreading through the media that the National Guard
Speaker 1: was being deployed immediately to get control of the situation.
Speaker 16: I have a report that the National Guard has been deployed.
Speaker 13: The number that a number of troops will be two thousand,
Speaker 13: but eight hundred and fifty are already moving into.
Speaker 17: A position, and I think what you're going to see, just.
Speaker 4: Judging by this kind, it's going to be a military operationist.
Speaker 8: And it's going to move in, I think, with overwhelming force.
Speaker 1: But the problem was that they didn't have any supplies.
Speaker 3: The army, in its wisdom, in its you know, pre mobilization,
Speaker 3: had centralized all the ammunition at a base in central California.
Speaker 3: So we had a bunch of machine guns with no bullets.
Speaker 3: And I ended up everybody brought their own guns, right,
Speaker 3: So there's more guns there than you can ever imagine.
Speaker 3: Everybody's packing their own rifles, and we're sending trucks to
Speaker 3: go get the ammo. And eventually we get our shit.
Speaker 3: And I'm out on the streets with the colonel and
Speaker 3: we're just going from place to place through the riots.
Speaker 3: And we did that for three weeks. So I came from,
Speaker 3: you know, the suburb of San Francisco. The idea that
Speaker 3: civilization would just stop was kind of alien, but it did.
Speaker 3: And suddenly, you know, you know, you can't call a cop.
Speaker 3: The fucking cops ran the cop, you know, the cops.
Speaker 3: I remember one cop in tears because shit was falling apart.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have to shoot people. We're gonna have to
Speaker 3: shoot people. I'm like, Sorge, get your shit together. You know,
Speaker 3: a shit was falling apart, and it can happen, and
Speaker 3: it happens so fucking fast.
Speaker 1: By the time of the Riots, Kurt had seen a
Speaker 1: lot of the world. He grew up in San Mateo
Speaker 1: in northern California, went to UC San Diego, where he
Speaker 1: picked up writing. When he graduated, he enlisted in the Army,
Speaker 1: went to Germany and served during Desert Storm. He spent
Speaker 1: time in Asia, the Balkans, and Ukraine, so he's seen
Speaker 1: a lot. But this La Riot thing was something new.
Speaker 1: It was on American soil, and it was something his
Speaker 1: battalion never expected to experience. When he first joined the
Speaker 1: National Guard, the idea of deploying within America was laughable
Speaker 1: to his colleagues.
Speaker 3: And I'm standing there talking to these guys in the
Speaker 3: ops room and I say, Okay, what happens when we
Speaker 3: get mobile for war? And they just burst into laughter.
Speaker 3: That hadn't happened since pretty much Korea. They're likely they
Speaker 3: ain't going to happen. Standing on that same spot, like
Speaker 3: twenty some years later, as the commander, I mobilized one
Speaker 3: of the companies to go to war.
Speaker 1: But by the time Mayor Bradley called in the National Guard,
Speaker 1: Kurt was stunned by how quickly his team formed.
Speaker 3: You know, when the riots came out, and within two hours,
Speaker 3: the unit was completely ready to conduct operations. And an
Speaker 3: active duty you would take like three days to get right.
Speaker 3: These guards would come in from there. You know, you're
Speaker 3: a dock worker or an airport attendant, or an insurance
Speaker 3: salesman or a teacher, and two hours, you know, in
Speaker 3: the armory and they are ready to go out and
Speaker 3: do what they need to do. And because they everyone's
Speaker 3: their buddy, and they'd done this for years, and they
Speaker 3: were just very, very good, even though they looked like hell.
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh shit, these guys are good.
Speaker 1: By the second day, the looting and fires had spread
Speaker 1: outside of South Central. It was as if despicable peace.
Speaker 1: We'll watch news reports saw that law enforcement was overwhelmed
Speaker 1: and decided to exploit the situation. If someone lit your
Speaker 1: property on fire or broke into your store, there was
Speaker 1: no one to turn to because nine one one was
Speaker 1: completely jammed with calls.
Speaker 9: And in the New Merchant Chapter eight ninet three jacket
Speaker 9: the police department.
Speaker 2: Police flits the problem.
Speaker 5: So you shot the window, then the doors, taking out
Speaker 5: his spars and hit me with the bottle, yelling about
Speaker 5: Don Rodney kingcase.
Speaker 1: The looting became a major, widespread problem. There wasn't fear
Speaker 1: in the looter's eyes. They were giddy. It was a
Speaker 1: festive feeding frenzy. And they didn't even see it as stealing.
Speaker 1: They actually had a word for what they were doing.
Speaker 1: They called it shopping.
Speaker 20: We like to come there and this is just complete anarchy.
Speaker 3: Here have you hit three stores?
Speaker 7: Now?
Speaker 3: Boys, there's just something else numbered out here. But the
Speaker 3: crowd just moved on to another shopping center.
Speaker 30: I think it's stupid.
Speaker 19: I am forming.
Speaker 21: I'm from Romania, and this means too much democracy.
Speaker 32: This means one people.
Speaker 21: They don't know what the hell they are doing.
Speaker 5: They try, they tried.
Speaker 18: To prove, but most of them.
Speaker 4: Look, it's young society, young people.
Speaker 5: It's you.
Speaker 19: It's the future of America.
Speaker 1: At a press conference on day two, Mayor Bradley imposed
Speaker 1: a desk till Don curfew and police Chief Darrel Gates
Speaker 1: expressed his surprise at how fast the chaos spread.
Speaker 15: And I'll tell you quite frankly, I did not expected
Speaker 15: to break out that quickly. I've been involved in. This
Speaker 15: is not the first ride I've been involved in. I'm
Speaker 15: deeply involved in the nineteen sixty five riots, the sixty
Speaker 15: six and sixty seven, and I've watched them in their development,
Speaker 15: and this one, quite frankly, it went much faster and
Speaker 15: in a much broader scope than any of the ones
Speaker 15: that I've looked at in the past.
Speaker 17: This happened.
Speaker 3: Why does this violence break out?
Speaker 30: What is your analysis?
Speaker 15: You don't want to know, do you do?
Speaker 24: You want to know?
Speaker 15: Well, you know, quite frankly, I think you know. There's
Speaker 15: been an awful lot of rhetoric about this, a lot
Speaker 15: of discussion over a long period of time. A lot
Speaker 15: of tensions have been have been developed over this past year.
Speaker 15: And I think that there's an awful lot of people
Speaker 15: out there that just simply use any opportunity to go
Speaker 15: to the streets. And I think that what we saw
Speaker 15: out there last night were not the good people of
Speaker 15: South central Los Angeles at all. We were seeing a
Speaker 15: lot of young people, a lot of gang members, a
Speaker 15: lot of drunks, a lot of people who will use
Speaker 15: any any excuse whatsoever to do this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Small pockets of violence broke out all across the country,
Speaker 1: in Seattle, San Francisco, Tampa, Birmingham, Las Vegas, Atlanta, New
Speaker 1: York City, Beloit, Wisconsin, Boulder, Colorado, and Gary, Indiana, among others.
Speaker 1: By day three, in an attempt to squash the violence,
Speaker 1: Rodney King spoke out, I just.
Speaker 7: Want to say, you know, can we can we all
Speaker 7: get along? Can we can we get along? Can we
Speaker 7: stop making it making it or before for the for
Speaker 7: the older people and and the and the kids.
Speaker 32: And I mean, we've got enough smog here in Los Angeles,
Speaker 32: let alone to uh deal with the setting these fires
Speaker 32: and and things.
Speaker 5: It's just not right.
Speaker 7: It's not right.
Speaker 1: On the same day as King's plea, the National Guard
Speaker 1: came with major reinforcements.
Speaker 13: Four thousand National Guard troops have joined a contingent of
Speaker 13: police and California Highway Patrol officers on the streets.
Speaker 3: More are on.
Speaker 1: The way again.
Speaker 3: Kurch Schlickter, I remember going through South Central and the
Speaker 3: cops had a bad relationship. But all our guys were
Speaker 3: from South Central. So the army wasn't an occupying army.
Speaker 3: The army was their neighbors. And I would walk out,
Speaker 3: and I remember one woman was crying and hugging our
Speaker 3: guys because their kids could play in the in the park,
Speaker 3: because our guys, our guys did not fucking tolerate shitheads.
Speaker 3: You know, the cops had rules. We didn't have rules.
Speaker 3: We had automatic weapons. One guy tried to run over
Speaker 3: our guys. He got shot fourteen times. Okay, you did
Speaker 3: not fuck with the Ninja turtles, just what the gang
Speaker 3: guys would call us. But our guys fucking set a
Speaker 3: standard and the people loved it. They would bring us
Speaker 3: food and everything. So I had two things. There are
Speaker 3: bad people, but there are good people in these areas
Speaker 3: where you wouldn't expect a nice suburban kid to ever go.
Speaker 3: And and I was like, and I always kind of
Speaker 3: I always knew, but you know, to see in front
Speaker 3: of you that these folks, these fellow Americans, want the
Speaker 3: same thing every other America wants. They want the freedom
Speaker 3: that their kid can play in the fucking park across
Speaker 3: the street without having some crack addict, you know, shooting
Speaker 3: it out with some other gang banger. And they're denied
Speaker 3: that by the liberal establishment. There were no conservatives in
Speaker 3: power in La then there are no conservatives in power now.
Speaker 1: By May third, five days of rioting, looting, and beating
Speaker 1: came to an end. The city stabilized enough for Mayor
Speaker 1: Bradley to end the Dusk till don curfew the following day.
Speaker 1: In the end, eight hundred and sixty two buildings were destroyed,
Speaker 1: costing roughly a billion dollars. There were eight thousand arrests,
Speaker 1: two thousand plus injuries, and over fifty deaths. America had
Speaker 1: never seen anything like it. For the people of Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: it revealed just how quickly society could unravel, and it
Speaker 1: showed what it was like to have no law enforcement.
Speaker 1: It gave us a taste of what a modern civil
Speaker 1: war could look like. Almost thirty years later, reflecting on
Speaker 1: that time, Kurt Schlichter is still surprised that there are
Speaker 1: people out there that don't see how fragile society is,
Speaker 1: even one as stable as America.
Speaker 3: These people, they just think that this shit just happens,
Speaker 3: that society just sort of occurs. And you see that
Speaker 3: in so many ways. You see that why you don't
Speaker 3: need guns, you know, why would you that's under civilized
Speaker 3: We can undo, you know, we can do this impeachment
Speaker 3: undo the foundations of our political culture because it's always
Speaker 3: going to be there, because I guess smarter, braver, more
Speaker 3: resourceful people created it, and it's always going to be there,
Speaker 3: and they don't understand that when they're down there picking
Speaker 3: at the foundations with pickaxes of actually a shit falls apart.
Speaker 1: We interviewed Kurt in December twenty nineteen. After a conversation,
Speaker 1: we thought we would produce an episode on the La riots,
Speaker 1: which Adriana and I also lived through. It would be
Speaker 1: our attempt to explain to the public how quickly society
Speaker 1: can unravel. But we thought some listeners may think the
Speaker 1: idea is far fetched and that we would look like
Speaker 1: fear mongering conspiracy theorists, so we put the story on
Speaker 1: the shelf, thinking we'd wait until the right moment. Then
Speaker 1: the quarantine hit and we thought it would be a
Speaker 1: good time to get the story out. With people being
Speaker 1: forced to shelter in place, the idea that society could
Speaker 1: easily unravel no longer look so far fetched, so we
Speaker 1: began writing the episode on Saturday, May twenty third. We
Speaker 1: had no idea that two days later, another amateur video
Speaker 1: of police officers attempting to arrest a black man that
Speaker 1: was resisting arrest would trigger an insurrection throughout America. So
Speaker 1: we decided to shift the story a bit and see
Speaker 1: what we could learn from the LA riots that we
Speaker 1: could apply to the current violent disorder in America. And
Speaker 1: I'm not going to candicoat this for you. What we
Speaker 1: found was profoundly concerning. The LA riots erupted in part
Speaker 1: because the media, Hollywood, the arts, and our educational system
Speaker 1: failed to pair of the public for the potential of
Speaker 1: an acquittal in the Rodney King trial. For decades, these
Speaker 1: institutions have pumped anti American poison into our culture that
Speaker 1: has made minorities believe that they are victims of a
Speaker 1: racist system and the white man is their oppressor. The
Speaker 1: mainstream media saturated news programs with the shocking video of
Speaker 1: Rodney King being hit with batons, but did little to
Speaker 1: convey to the public that the video wasn't the whole story.
Speaker 1: They failed to express to the public that police officers
Speaker 1: have an impossible job, that the reality of carrying a
Speaker 1: loaded gun at their waist while trying to arrest an enormous,
Speaker 1: dangerous man could convince a jury to acquit The officers
Speaker 1: of excessive force, even if the officers in the ninety
Speaker 1: second video looked as guilty as hell. And here's where
Speaker 1: the problem resides. The media has done the same thing
Speaker 1: with the video of George Floyd's tragic death. They're presenting
Speaker 1: the case against the former Minneapolis officers as a slam dunk.
Speaker 1: And it's not you hearing me even suggesting this might
Speaker 1: be triggering you at this very moment. Of course they'll
Speaker 1: be found guilty. You're thinking, the officer put a knee
Speaker 1: in his neck for eight minutes. George Floyd was obviously murdered.
Speaker 1: Just look at the video, you're saying. But I'm here
Speaker 1: to tell you that there are striking similarities between the
Speaker 1: Rodney King incident and that of George Floyd. An evidence
Speaker 1: is building that could lead to an acquittal of the
Speaker 1: officers involved in his death. The media reported on the
Speaker 1: riots and protests related to George Floyd's death, but few
Speaker 1: of the networks have talked about the fact that he
Speaker 1: was intoxicated with fentanyl at the time of his death,
Speaker 1: a powerful opioid that can lead to breathing failure. The
Speaker 1: media failed to tell the public that George Floyd also
Speaker 1: had methamphetamine in his system, that he was COVID nineteen positive,
Speaker 1: and had other serious health issues, all conditions that a
Speaker 1: reasonable person, like a single juror could be convinced to
Speaker 1: believe contributed to his death. The media failed to tell
Speaker 1: you that the hold that the police officers administered may
Speaker 1: be a part of their authorized uses of force. The
Speaker 1: public hasn't been told that the officers were informed through
Speaker 1: a nine to one one caller that George Floyd appeared
Speaker 1: under the influence of something and resisted arrest, that mister
Speaker 1: Floyd said he couldn't breathe before he was placed on
Speaker 1: the ground. The media is making a martyr of George Floyd,
Speaker 1: a man that had served serious time in prison for
Speaker 1: theft with a firearm and who once forced his way
Speaker 1: into a black woman's house with a bunch of men,
Speaker 1: pointed a gun at her stomach and robbed her, and
Speaker 1: at least one of the officers likely knew him and
Speaker 1: possibly what he was capable of. This is the new
Speaker 1: poster boy of police brutality, and every bit of this
Speaker 1: will likely be used by the defendants in their trial.
Speaker 1: Cases aren't decided in the streets, They are decided in
Speaker 1: a court of law. The mainstream media is telling Americans
Speaker 1: that law enforcement is inflicting a genocide on African Americans,
Speaker 1: but not telling you that only ten unarmed black people
Speaker 1: were killed by police officers in twenty nineteen compared to
Speaker 1: twenty white people in a country of three hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty million. You aren't being told that officers like retired
Speaker 1: police Captain David Dorn risk their lives and die protecting
Speaker 1: us every day. The mainstream media isn't showing you any
Speaker 1: of these things with the same fervor as they have
Speaker 1: the video of George Floyd's tragic death. And they aren't
Speaker 1: telling you these things because they have an agenda, and
Speaker 1: that is to change the fabric of America, which leads
Speaker 1: us back to the question is America on the brink
Speaker 1: of a civil war? Well, let me answer that question
Speaker 1: with another question. What do you think will happen if
Speaker 1: the officers involved in George Floyd's death are acquitted? The
Speaker 1: spread of destruction associated with his death already outweighs the
Speaker 1: LA riots, and there hasn't even been a trial yet.
Speaker 1: And even if the officers are found guilty, what will
Speaker 1: happen the next time an unarmed black man is killed
Speaker 1: by a police officer, How will the radicals in our
Speaker 1: country react. The only way to avoid a war with
Speaker 1: ourselves is to infuse common sense into the bloodstream of America.
Speaker 1: We need to create films, documentaries, art, literature, investigative journalism,
Speaker 1: and educational systems that tell our side of the story
Speaker 1: and act as an antidote to the poison pumped into
Speaker 1: American minds by our far left cultural institutions. And in parallel,
Speaker 1: we need to prepare for the possibility of more violent
Speaker 1: conflicts to have any chance of avoiding them. This is,
Speaker 1: unfortunately the ugly truth. We aren't saying any of this
Speaker 1: to scare you. We're saying this to warn you. It's
Speaker 1: okay to hope for the best, but we must prepare
Speaker 1: for the worst.
Speaker 3: Train on Twitter is buy guns and ammunition, and what
Speaker 3: that means is society is your fucking job. I think
Speaker 3: every individual should have a real assault rifle, not a
Speaker 3: fake one. I mean a M sixteen, a one that
Speaker 3: fires fully automatic if necessary, because a free contry is
Speaker 3: a result of free citizens gathered together doing the duties
Speaker 3: of free citizens.
Speaker 2: To buy Kurt Schlichter's excellent Kelly Turnbull novels. Visit Amazon
Speaker 2: dot com or anywhere that sells books and search for
Speaker 2: Kurt Schlichter. That's Kurt sc h lic ht e r.
Speaker 2: Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's produced
Speaker 2: by me Adrianna Cortez and Patrick Carelchi for Inform Ventures. Now,
Speaker 2: our entire archive of episodes is only available to our
Speaker 2: backstage subscribers. To subscribe, visit redpild America dot com and
Speaker 2: click support at the top of the menu. Thanks for listening.