Los Angeles, Thursday.
POLICE called off a 24-hour city-wide alert today as Los Angeles
remained calm, though tense, in the wake of the sentencing of two white
officers for beating black motorist Rodney King.
King, in a television interview, said he was not satisfied with the
two-and-a-half-year sentences meted out to Sergeant Stacey Koon and
Officer Laurence Powell, but was glad that they were going to spend some
time in jail.
''If it had been me, I'd be doing almost 10, 15 years,'' King
observed.
Black leaders said their community was waiting to see whether was any
disparity between the sentencing of the officers and that in two months'
time of black men accused of beating a white lorry driver, Reginald
Denny, during the riots.
The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People and
the Rev. Jesse Jackson were among those who criticised the leniency of
the sentences.
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