US: March 3, 1991 - Sgt Stacey C. Koon and three other white LAPD officers repeatedly beat the prone figure of black motorist Rodney King. That beating, caught on film, would be played again and again on TV to an angry LA.
They had waited while what they were told was "a colour-blind" justice system prosecuted the four officers. And then, on April 29th, 1992, they had watched a jury acquit three men and partially exonerate the fourth.
Within hours, south central Los Angeles exploded in a wave of rioting and looting that would take a week and the National Guard to subdue and cost 54 lives and $1 billion in damage, much of it to local black and Korean-owned businesses. By the time it was over, the hated LAPD had arrested 12,000.
The city and its communities are marking the anniversary of the trauma with meetings and commemorations, and varying interpretations of what happened.
Recovery, redevelopment and renewal in the blighted streets of south central have been patchy, complicated by political squabbling and a rapidly changing ethnic mix. The black community there has shrunk by 15 per cent in a decade while Latinos now form 83 per cent of the area.
A decade after the riots, half the city's residents, but only one third of blacks, say race relations have improved, according to a Los Angeles Times poll.
What researchers called a "shocking" 50 percent thought another riot was likely in the next five years.
