I was a kid in the early ‘90s. But looking back with what we know about BLM movement and everything that had happened during the George Floyd riots, the cops in Rodney King beatings were railroaded by the Feds. We had no Free Republic or Breitbart back then. Too bad.
I used to have subscriptions to National Review, the American Spectator, the Limbaugh Letter and a few other such magazines, and I recall some articles on the topic of the Semi Valley policemen trial.
According to one article, the prosecutor made the mistake of charging them excessively by charging them with a crime which could not be supported by the evidence. Something like "attempted murder" or some such. It said the jury would have been willing to convict them on a lesser charge, but not on the charge the prosecutor made.
At the time I speculated that the prosecutor did this deliberately because he knew he couldn't get a conviction on the charge, so he did this as a favor to his buddies the cops.
I've since read other articles on the subject, and what I have gathered from them is that the Semi Valley police officers were subsequently railroaded by the Feds.
And yes, the lack of alternate news sources made it harder to understand what was going on in the 1990s.