Biden proposed 'Police Officer's Bill of Rights' two months after Rodney King beating

Nearly 30 years before a bystander with a cellphone caught a Minneapolis Police Department officer restraining George Floyd with his knee on Floyd's neck, police in Los Angeles were covertly taped beating a criminal suspect. And Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, proposed legislation siding with police.

The Police Officer's Bill of Rights, sponsored by Biden in May 1991, came halfway through his 36-year career representing Delaware in the Senate and while he was at the peak of his power on Capitol Hill. With Democrats in the majority, Biden headed the Senate committee with jurisdiction over criminal justice issues.

Biden, now the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee after two terms as vice president, was at the time weighing in on police-civilian relations amid an atmosphere of rising tensions between the black community in Southern California and law enforcement. Long a simmering cauldron of mistrust, accusations of police brutality were a staple of Los Angeles life for minorities stretching back at least to the 1965 Watts riots.

Early on the morning of March 3, 1991, a cameraman living near a remote freeway in northern Los Angeles recorded the beating of construction worker Rodney King, a black man. For nearly 10 minutes, King was abused, beaten, and tased by four Los Angeles Police Department officers following a routine traffic stop for suspicion that he was driving under the influence. King suffered multiple broken bones and burns on his chest.