$2.00 DESIGNATED AREAS HIGHER
© 2016 WST
latimes.com
FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 2016
GOP elites
adopt new
anti-Trump
strategy
They aim to keep race
competitive and derail
him at convention.
By Noah Bierman
and Seema Mehta
Robert Gauthier Los Angeles Times
LORA KING recalls days after the beating when her dad came toward the then-7-year-old, his face still
swollen and one eye protruding from its socket. “He had a big smile on his face like it was no big deal.”
The dual legacies
of Rodney King
Daughter recalls life with man who became symbol of
police brutality while trying to be just a regular dad
By Angel Jennings
F
or as long as Lora King could
remember, she had to share
her father with the world.
Everywhere
Rodney
King went, people swarmed
him for autographs or asked to take
pictures with him. They offered
words of encouragement at the local
pharmacy. As he shared meals with
his three daughters, others heckled
him.
All of them, it seemed, wanted to
know one thing: What did you do with
the money?
“You don’t have to talk to them,”
she told her dad once when he was
confronted in his sport utility vehicle.
“Just roll the window up.”
But it was hard to roll the window
up on Rodney King’s notoriety, which
was based on one of the most searing
images in Los Angeles history.
Jay L. Clendenin Los Angeles Times
RODNEY KING , who died in
2012, became an unintentional
public figure 25 years ago.
Twenty-five years ago this week,
he became the public face of police
brutality when his beating by three
baton-wielding LAPD officers was
broadcast in living rooms across
America.
The videotape of the beating
transformed the unemployed construction worker into a symbol. To
some, he was a criminal who deserved the beating. To others, King
was a “black everyman” who epitomized the brutality that police visited on the African American community.
Who he was as a flesh and blood
human being almost didn’t matter —
unless you were his child.
“Rodney King as an individual
was never really the point,” said Melina Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African Studies at Cal State L.A. “People were angry for him and identify
with him, but with that they are up[See King, A10]
WASHINGTON — Now
it’s the establishment that
wants to blow up the Republican Party.
The face of the GOP’s
elite, 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, led the latest and most desperate attack yet aimed at dislodging
the 2016 nomination from
front-runner
Donald
Trump, articulating a strategy Thursday that would
force party leaders to choose
a nominee at the summer
convention.
The Hail Mary pass
would abandon their old
plan — a failed attempt to
coalesce around a single
anti-Trump candidate — in
favor of a new tactic that
would involve keeping each
of his three remaining competitors alive in hopes of preventing Trump from obtain-
USC, always striving to
reach new heights, is set to
cross a dubious milestone:
Tuition for the 2016-2017 academic year will surpass
$50,000 for the first time.
With a price tag of $51,442
for tuition and an additional
$841 in fees, USC is sure to be
in the running for the unofficial title of most expensive
place in the country to get a
college degree. According to
U.S. News & World Report,
Vassar College in New York
won that honor for the current school year by charging
$51,300 in tuition and fees.
Even Harvard, that paragon
of academic excellence,
charges undergraduates a
mere $45,278 in tuition and
fees.
The bigger tuition bill
comes as USC is rising both
in academic reputation and
as a financial powerhouse.
In two decades, it has
climbed from 51st to 23rd in
U.S. News & World Report’s
rankings of national universities. It’s now in the midst of
[See USC, A10]
Tuition and fees
University of Southern California
It’s the latest legal
setback for the L.A.
County D.A.’s office.
By Marisa Gerber
Prosecutors portrayed
the corruption case as city
officials partying on the public dime.
Irwindale employees and
council members treated
themselves to steak dinners
and Yankees tickets during
$52,283*
Vassar College
Sarah Lawrence College
Columbia University
Trinity College
$51,300
$51,034
$51,008*
$50,776
*USC figure is for 2016-17 school year. Figures for other schools are for current
school year, except for Columbia which is for 2014-15. Most USC students do not
pay the full price; nearly two-thirds of USC undergraduates receive some form of
financial aid.
Source: U.S. News & World Report, Times reporting
Los Angeles Times
Glen Johnson For The Times
THE ENTRANCE to the Zvezda Cinema, the oldest theater in Belgrade, Serbia.
OCCUPY CINEMA
Film buffs have held a sit-in at a once-glorious
Belgrade theater for 15 months to try to save it
By Glen Johnson
BELGRADE, Serbia —
In a run-down Belgrade theater, young film buffs smoke
cheap cigarettes beneath
posters of iconic Hollywood
and Yugoslav films and lament what they say is the
plundering of Serbia’s cultural heritage.
“Here, the politicians
lack the subtlety to even pretend to care,” says Vladimir
Gvojic, a 25-year-old actor
and part of a movement
bringing movies back to derelict Belgrade theaters. “All
these cinemas are just real
estate now.”
For the last 15 months,
Gvojic and a small group of
film enthusiasts have occupied Belgrade’s Zvezda, or
Star, Cinema. Established in
1911, with an Art Nouveau
front and plush red seats, it
is the city’s oldest theater —
and a point of pride recalling
the glory days of Yugoslav
cinema.
Debate coverage
Fresh off Super Tuesday,
the four remaining
Republican presidential
candidates square off in
Detroit. PAGE B8
Corruption case
against Irwindale
officials dismissed
USC tuition is set
to top $50,000
for the first time
By Jason Song
ing a majority of convention
delegates needed to secure
the nomination.
The strategy, noted in
Romney’s speech detailing
each of Trump’s perceived
faults and lacing into him as
a “phony” and “fraud,”
marked another unprecedented turn in a campaign
full of them. In this case, the
attempt from the party’s
2012 standard-bearer to disqualify its 2016 front-runner
came just two days after the
most consequential day in
the primary season, Super
Tuesday, when nearly 3 million voters around the country cast ballots for Trump.
Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 presidential
nominee, signed onto Romney’s attack, saying in a
news release that Trump is
uninformed and dangerous.
[See GOP, A13]
The young protesters are
angered by the Serbian government’s corruption-mired
privatization schemes of the
last decade, which saw the
state-owned Beograd Film
— replete with14 revered cinemas, including the Star —
dismantled and its theaters
sold off at rock-bottom
prices.
All have since closed their
doors and fallen into disrepair; some were converted
by foreign investors into
[See Cinema, A4]
lavish trips to New York that
included pricey Broadway
shows and a hockey game.
The details sparked outrage in the small San Gabriel
Valley community.
But last week, the corruption case brought by the
Los Angeles County district
attorney’s office against
three Irwindale officials collapsed when prosecutors announced they could no longer proceed.
The dismissal followed a
series of legal setbacks for
the office. An appellate
court dismissed an early
round of charges after concluding that prosecutors
failed to present grand jurors with evidence favorable
to the defendants. And the
case began to crumble again
when a judge ruled last year
that the D.A.’s office waited
too long to file criminal
charges, missing the deadline for prosecuting many of
the offenses.
A Times review of court
documents shows a former
Irwindale councilman alerted prosecutors in 2005 to officials possibly misusing
their credit cards on trips.
The office closed an inquiry
a year later and prosecuted
the officials in 2010 only after
a local newspaper reported
on the spending.
“To me, the D.A. blew it,”
Sal Hernandez, the former
councilman who sent the letter, said in a recent interview. “I’m just appalled.”
The D.A.’s Public Integrity Division has racked up big
wins in its 15-year history, including convictions of seven
[See Irwindale, A8]
L.A. could host
Super Bowl
The big game could be
held at the new Rams
stadium in either 2020
or 2021. NFL owners
will make their decision in May. SPORTS, D1
Weather
Clearing.
L.A. Basin: 69/56. B7
7
85944 00200
5