ABSTRACT
It is quite impossible to understand the events surrounding the acquittal of the four police officers accused of brutally beating Rodney King without placing them within the local and national circumstances and forces that have deepened class and racial inequalities over the past two decades. Both at the local and national level, the trajectory of economic, political, and social trends has exacerbated the ever-so-fragile social fabric of our nation's cities, making ripe the conditions that kindled the social explosion that occurred in Los Angeles on 29 April 1992.
