On March 3, 1991, an African-American motorist, Rodney King, was pulled over for speeding. After a brief chase, King was met by twenty-one police officers, including members of the California Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles Police Department. In full view of all who were present, King was severely beaten by three white LAPD officers, in the presence of a sergeant and the remaining seventeen officers. Unknown to the police officers, the event was videotaped by an amateur cameraman, George Holliday, sold to a local television station, and subsequently broadcast on television thousands of times. Since then, the Rodney King case has become the defining instance of police brutality in Los Angeles, despite the fact that the city paid more than $20 million between 1986–1990 in judgments, settlements, and jury verdicts against Los Angeles police officers in over 300 lawsuits dealing with the excessive use of force.

Despite the frequency with which the Rodney King videotape was broadcast, the build-up to crisis was more gradual than during the uprisings of 1965 or 1992. This can be seen by examining news coverage during the first week after the precipitating events for the three crises. For the six newspapers of the study, the first week's news coverage totaled 203 articles for the 1965 Watts uprisings and 375 articles for the 1992 uprisings, but only forty-one articles during the first week of the 1991 Rodney King crisis.