When Rodney King was on the ground, getting kicked, hit with batons and shot with Tasers by several members of the Los Angeles Police Department in 1991, the episode was captured on video by a man who lived across the street from the attack and happened to have a new camcorder.
There were police sirens, cars screeching to a stop and the sound of a helicopter “circling super low right above us,” the man, George Holliday, recalled recently. It woke up him and his wife.
Mr. Holliday didn’t realize exactly what the commotion was, he said, but he instinctively grabbed his video camera, which he had bought about a month earlier, and went out on his balcony to record the scene. “You know how it is when you have a new piece of technology,” he said. “You film anything and everything.”
Now Mr. Holliday, 61, is auctioning the camera he used to capture the attack on Mr. King. The starting bid is $225,000.
The camera is being auctioned online by Nate D. Sanders Auctions. Bids are being accepted through Thursday at 5 p.m. Pacific Time, according to a spokesman for the auction house.
The video that Mr. Holliday took that night circulated around the world and led to the arrest of four police officers. Their acquittal on state criminal charges prompted riots that resulted in the deaths of dozens of people and about a billion dollars’ worth of damages.
Later, two officers were convicted on federal civil rights charges and sentenced to prison, and a jury in a civil case awarded Mr. King $3.8 million in damages.
Twenty-nine years later, images of violent police encounters have become commonplace, largely because of social media, 24-hour cable news stations and the ubiquity of cellphones, smartphones and body cameras — all devices much less bulky than the Sony Video8 Handycam CCD-F77 that Mr. Holliday used standing on the balcony of his second-floor Lake View Terrace apartment on March 3, 1991.
The camera is about 12.5 inches long and weighs about two pounds, according to Sam Heller, a spokesman for the auction house. Mr. Holliday said the camera was “like a size 13 shoe.”
For historians and civic leaders, the current deluge of imagery tied to police brutality has its roots in the gruesome attack in Los Angeles.
“The Rodney King video was the Jackie Robinson of police videos,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said in an interview.
The camera comes with a letter of authenticity, signed by Mr. Holliday. It does not work anymore and does not include the video of Mr. King’s beating.
According to a statement from the auction house: “The foam cover of the camera microphone is almost completely deteriorated, which is the condition in which the F.B.I. returned the camera to George Holliday circa 2015. The camcorder remains in very good condition otherwise.”
Mr. Holliday owns the rights to the video he took of Mr. King’s beating, though the tape itself is still in the possession of the federal authorities. “I have not made that much” from it, he said.
Mr. King died at his home in Rialto, Calif., in 2012. He was 47.
The starting price for the camera was set by Mr. Holliday and the auction house, Mr. Heller said. It is “based on the camera’s importance,” he said. “There’s no direct comparable for it, but other one-of-a-kind pieces with historical importance sell for six figures and upwards.”
“How much does something like this go for?’’ Mr. Holliday asked. “I have no idea.”
In 1999, a federal arbitration board ordered the government to pay the family of Abraham Zapruder $16 million for the footage he took of President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination. The government acquired the video under a 1992 law that required that all records of the assassination be transferred to the National Archives for preservation and research.
How to value Mr. Holliday’s camera is an open question.
Marcus Anthony Hunter, a professor of sociology and African-American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that auctioning the camera was like asking, “How much would I pay for a slave ship?”
The “price of education is invaluable,” he said. “So there is a part of it that feels a little odd in that you’re putting a price on it, on something that is perhaps invaluable.”
He suggested donating it to the Smithsonian Institution. A spokeswoman for the Smithsonian declined to comment on the auction.
“I’ve already donated a ton of money,” said Mr. Holliday. He said he hoped the auction would “inspire people to use their cameras for everything, the bad and the good.”
“People can accuse other people of doing stuff,” he added. “But when it’s on camera, it’s different. You just can’t argue with it.”
The Los Angeles Police Department subpoenaed the camera and videotape during its investigation into the attack, Mr. Holliday said. Later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation subpoenaed the items as it proceeded with its case against the officers, he said.
With the auction money, Mr. Holliday hopes to buy a home. “I’m still a plumber, even after all of this,” he said. “I’m working my butt off crawling under houses every day.”
Mr. Sharpton said Mr. Holliday had the right to auction the camera.
“He clearly did something historic,” Mr. Sharpton said. “If he wants to monetize it, that’s a private decision.”
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He Videotaped the Rodney King Beating. Now, He Is Auctioning the Camera - The New York Times
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