Some people have blamed me for the disturbances. What's on the tape caused the disturbances, not the tape itself.
― George Holliday, in response to claims that he caused a race riot.
George Holliday is an Canadian-American plumber who is known for exposing police brutality in Los Angeles in the 1990s. He was responsible for providing the first ever video of police violence against black people anywhere in the world.
Biography[]
Holliday was born in Canada to a British oil executive and a German woman. He briefly lived in London and Indonesia, but spent most of his childhood in Buenos Aires after his father retired. He left in the 1980s and ended up living in Los Angeles, America.
On March 3, 1991, Holliday was outside his apartment when he witnessed four police officers attempting to arrest an African-American named Rodney King. He quickly grabbed his Sony Handycam 8-millimeter video camera and recorded what he saw. The four officers pulled King out of his car and tasered him to get him on the ground (although Holliday did not record this part because he was getting the camera). They then violently beat him with their batons and kicked him. In total, King was hit 33 times and kicked seven times, leaving him with permanent brain damage. The officers then handcuffed King and dragged him to the side of the road.
A few days after the incident, Holliday reached out to a local police station about the incident, but got no reply. In response, he contacted a TV station called KTLA and asked if there was a police operation in the area. Holliday sent them the footage of the beating and they played it on air the next night. The video sparked outrage, with so many people wanting an interview with Holliday that he had to disconnect his phone. The four officers were arrested for assault and using excessive force, but were acquitted by an all-white jury (although two of them were later jailed for violating King's civil rights). The decision to release the four led to a six-day race riot and 60 people dying.
One year after the incident, Holliday and King came face to face for the first time. While buying fuel at a garage, Holliday heard a voice calling his name. “Hey, George! Do you know who I am?” Holliday said of the incident: “I didn’t recognize him, I had only seen him in photographs with his face swollen. He said to me, ‘You saved my life.’ I didn’t know what to say. We shook hands and said goodbye.”
In 2021, Holliday was interviewed by The Sun about the police killing of African-American George Floyd. He was saddened by the news that race relations had not tremendously improved, but commended Darnella Frazier for filming the incident and encouraged people around the world to do the same when witnessing police brutality.
Trivia[]
- Holliday speaks fluent Spanish.
- He was present during the filming of the famous "Your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle" scene from Terminator 2, and took several pictures of it with the same camera he recorded King's arrest with.
- Years after King's arrest, Holliday still makes small amounts of money from the video he took.