Official Negligence is a best-selling book by Washington Post reporter Lou Cannon that probes the infamous Rodney King episode. Cannon convincingly documents what the endless TV replays edited out or never recorded: After an eight-mile chase, partly through residential neighborhoods, at speeds sometimes topping 100 mph, the Los Angeles Police Department confronted a furious, intoxicated, muscular ex-con who fought off multiple cops and two 50,000-volt blasts from a stun gun before a home owner started to film him finally being subdued by more force than needed to stop the average perp.
OK, maybe with a few added licks of vengeance, which few of us would have resisted had we been in the beleaguered cops’ shoes. Had the fateful home video recorded the whole scene, it’s almost certain that the public would have reacted more sympathetically to the L.A.P.D. and less kindly to the thug who morphed into America’s favorite victim.