Obama, he wouldn't have been in office without what happened to me and a lot of black people before me. He would never have been in that situation, no doubt in my mind. He would get there eventually, but it would have been a lot longer. So I am glad for what I went through. It opened the doors for a lot of people.

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Mitigation cited by the judge in the determining the length of the prison sentence included the suffering the officers had undergone because of the extensive publicity their case had received the impending loss of their careers as police officers their vulnerability to abuse in prison and their having been subjected to two trials. King is then placed in handcuffs and cordcuffs restraining his arms and legs. After a judicial finding that a fair and impartial jury could not be impaneled in Los Angeles County the case was given a change of venue to the city of Simi Valley in Ventura County where they were tried.

The videotaped footage shows five Los Angeles area officers surrounding King and several of them striking him repeatedly. The videotape also increased public sensitivity to and anger about police brutality racism and other social inequalities throughout the United States. The riots ended after soldiers from the United States Army National Guard along with United States Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton California were called in to assist local authorities and quell the riots.