Sergeant Charles Duke Character Analysis

Sergeant Charles Duke, Special Weapons and Tactics Unit of the LAPD, served as a defense witness in both the Simi Valley and Federal trial as the LAPD’s use-of-force expert. Duke defends the LAPD officers’ physical altercation with Rodney King. He interprets Officer Powell’s action of repeatedly striking King with his baton as proof not of excessive use of force, but of Powell’s “weak and inefficient” handling of his baton. Had Powell properly handled his weapon, Duke asserts, he could have administered fewer—but more efficient—blows to King. Duke also maintains that police wouldn’t need to resort to batons in the first place if they were able to use upper-body-control holds, which the Police Commission banned in 1982 after a report associated this restraint technique with a high level of deaths, predominantly among Black people. Duke suspects that Daryl Gates encouraged officers to engage in more altercations like King’s to get back at the Police Commission for its ban on upper-body-control holds. That institutional squabbles and politics take priority over the humane treatment of Black citizens speaks to the level of corruption and dysfunction within the LAPD in the 1990s, as well as the systemic racism that informed their practices.