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The 1992 L.A. Riots, popularly known as the LA riots or the Rodney King riots, was sparked by the acquittal on April 29, 1992 of four officers (three non-Hispanic whites and one Hispanic) charged with the use of excessive force in the beating of black motorist Rodney King, by a mostly white jury. This caused thousands of people in Los Angeles, mainly young black and Latino males, to participate in what has often been characterized as a race riot, involving mass law-breaking, including looting and arson.

The riots lasted about four days and shocked viewers across the world as parts of the city went up in flames. Open gun battles were televised as Korean shopkeepers took to using firearms to protect their businesses from crowds of looters. A white truck driver, Reginald Oliver Denny, was dragged from his vehicle and severely beaten by an angry mob as the news helicopters hovered above, with the police nowhere to be seen (several assailants were later arrested and sent to prison). Estimates of the number of lives lost during the unrest vary between 50 and 60, and estimates of the material damage done vary between about $800 million and $1 billion. Approximately 600 fires were set, and about 10,000 people were arrested.

In addition to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), about 10,000 soldiers from the California National Guard and thousands of soldiers from the United States Army and Marines were deployed to suppress the crowds. Smaller, concomitant riots occurred in other United States cities,especially Las Vegas but also including Oakland, New York, Seattle, Chicago, Phoenix, Madison, and even Berlin.

Of those arrested, about 42% were African-American, 44% Latino, 9% White, and 2% other. These numbers are proportionate to the number of residents in the areas of Los Angeles where the events occurred, although they are not proportional to the racial make-up of Los Angeles as a whole. Stores owned by Korean and other Asian immigrants were widely targeted, although stores owned by whites and blacks were also targeted.

In addition to the immediate trigger of the Rodney King verdict, there were many other factors cited as reasons for the unrest, including: the extremely high unemployment among residents of the South Central neighborhood, which had been hit very hard by the nation-wide recession; a long-standing perception that the LAPD engaged in racial profiling and used excessive force, supported by an investigation led by former diplomat Warren Christopher; and specific anger over the light sentence given to a Korean shop-owner for the shooting of Latasha Harlins, a young African-American woman. Additionally, in the time between the public revelation of King's beating and the trial verdict, the two largest LA street gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, agreed to a truce with each other, and began working together to make political demands of the police and the LA political establishment, leading to the establishment of the Christopher Commission.

• Los Angeles history
• Riots
• U.S. history of civil unrest