"You talk to people in the black community here, and they say, 'This is not news,' " said Joe Hicks, an American Civil Liberties Union spokesman who grew up in the community. "They say, 'Why are all the white people so surprised? A guy got his butt beat by the cops. It happens all the time.' "; Behind the shrug, though, emotions run deep. "There's nothing you can imagine the guy had done that would justify that kind of response," Hicks said.; Rodney Glen King, the victim of the beating, on Wednesday was released from Los Angeles County Jail after prosecutors said police had failed to prove their charges that he resisted arrest after a high-speed chase. The officers involved in the beating have been taken off patrol.; Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates, long controversial for racial statements he has made, called the brutality depicted on the tape "an aberration."; "Anyone who viewed this tape would hasten to make a quick judgment," Gates said Tuesday. "I would hope the public on this one case not make a judgment on the Los Angeles Police Department."; The department issued no statements Wednesday. Agencies including the FBI, the LAPD, Los Angeles District Attorney's Office and the California Highway Patrol are investigating the beating. A city councilman also has asked for a council committee review of the larger issue of police brutality throughout the city.; The stunning videotape was recorded by George Holliday, a plumber who was awakened about 12:30 a.m. Sunday in his suburban Los Angeles home by the sound of police helicopters overhead. Holliday went to the terrace of his second-story apartment and, seeing police in the street below, decided to get some practice with his new videotape recorder.; Holliday took the tape to a local television station, which aired it Monday night and passed it along to the Cable News Network. By Tuesday night, the horrifying images had been piped into more than 30 million homes: There, the 25-year-old King was lying on the ground, struggling to his hands and knees, then writhing on the ground under a hail of police night sticks and kicks. Witnesses said police also used a stun gun on King. Three or four officers had at King in the two-minute tape, while as many as seven others stood by to watch. King is black. The races and identities of the police officers involved have not been revealed.; King, who had been released from jail in December after serving 2 1/2 years on a second-degree robbery conviction, had been pursued to the spot outside Holliday's apartment by CHP and Los Angeles officers in a chase police said reached speeds over 110 mph. Before his release Wednesday, the father of two reportedly lay in the county jail's hospital ward with a broken jaw, broken leg, disfigured face and badly bruised body.; "When I saw it on TV, I thought, 'Is this something happening in South Africa or Kuwait?' " said Keith Huling, 35, who lives in the same apartment complex as Holliday. "Then I looked a little closer, and said, 'Hey, that's the park across the street.' "; Police have said King resisted arrest. Witnesses have said he did not.; Huling said he knows of other police beatings that he believes are racially motivated. A prevailing sense in his neighborhood this week, he said, is that "if I come home from work and make a turn on a red light, I'm going to get my butt kicked."; The perception that non-Anglos are the targets of police brutality has been chronic here.; "Whether that's a perception or a reality is almost beside the point, because the perception is the reality," said Zev Yaroslavsky, the councilman who has requested public hearings on brutality throughout the city. "I am troubled by the fact that when I learned the person beaten was black, I wasn't surprised. . . . It is rare that there's an Anglo that gets the crap beat out of him with a billy club."; Yaroslavsky pointed to recent incidents of harassment of black people. Just last December, businessman and former Laker Jamaal Wilkes was handcuffed during a routine traffic stop. The police department's subsequent apology to him came on the heels of a federal jury award of $540,000 to former major league baseball player Joe Morgan, who said Los Angeles police in 1988 had grabbed him by the neck, thrown him to the ground and cuffed him at Los Angeles International Airport when they thought he was a drug courier.; Last year, 55 residents of one of the city's streets accepted a $3 million settlement for damages from a 1988 police drug raid in which officers allegedly wrecked apartments and beat several people.; "I don't think the body politic in Los Angeles has been willing to address it," Yaroslavsky said. "But what the public has seen in black and white, no pun intended, leaves nothing to the imagination, leaves nothing to interpretation, (and) probably is the one event that may sensitize" the politicians.; The Police Misconduct Lawyer Referral Service so far this year has received 531 complaints of police misconduct, including 127 involving officers in the LAPD, according to Karol Heppe, the non-profit organization's executive director. The total number of complaints is 75 percent higher than it was at this time last year, Heppe said.; The complaints range from illegal search and seizure to verbal abuse to death, Heppe said. Most do not lead to prosecution.; "The only difference between those and this one is that this one was caught on videotape," she said.; Heppe lamented that the Los Angeles police chief's attitude does not enhance the department's reputation. Among the racial controversies he has stirred was the suggestion that blacks die in choke holds because they have abnormal necks.; The ACLU's Hicks said the organization plans today to ask for Gates' resignation.
Los Angeles police wanted prosecutors to charge King with firing on an officer and resisting arrest , according to his attorney , Mr. Rentzer , but the DA refused . He sent the case back to police for further investigation . He also said officers failed to interview available witnesses , including King 's passengers . The ten officers involved were taken off patrol . King stated he was struck at least forty times as he begged them to stop , and denied the high speeds he was accused of in the chase . Two local residents witnessed the incident and one of them recorded it , then released the tape to national media .