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Offensive language has been bleeped since this audio was originally broadcast. This programme first aired on 28 May, 2012.

Matthew Bannister is in conversation with Rodney King, the black motorist whose brutal beating by police sparked the Los Angeles riots in 1991.

When an all-white jury acquitted the police officers involved, violence erupted in which more than fifty people died, thousands were injured and the damage ran into hundreds of millions of dollars.

Rodney King became a symbol of police brutality towards black people, and the incident has taken its place in the history of the American civil rights movement.

Rodney recalls those momentous events, and talks about his own battles with alcohol and crime.

(Image: Rodney King. Credit: Reuters)