Outside the office of his Beverly Hills attorney, hundreds of reporters gathered to hear Rodney G. King make a public statement in which he deplored the street riots and urged calm.

Wearing a blue sweater, blue shirt, blue tie and blue slacks, he stepped into the swarm of reporters. Nervous and barely audible, his voice lost at times to the blasting sounds of helicopter rotors overhead, King asked “People, I just want to say … can we all get along? Can we get along?”