La Riots

The jury acquittal of the police sparked the Los Angeles riots of 1992

The Los Angeles Riots of 1992, also known as the Rodney King riots, were sparked on April 29, 1992 when a jury acquitted four Los Angeles Police Department officers accused in the videotaped beating of African-American motorist Rodney King following a high-speed pursuit. Thousands of people in the Los Angeles area rioted over the six days following the verdict.

Widespread looting, assault, arson and murder occurred, and property damages topped roughly US$1 billion. In all, 53 people died during the riots and thousands more were injured.


Background
On March 3, 1991, Rodney King and two passengers were driving west on the Foothill Freeway and were apprehended by four members of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) after a high speed pursuit.

King was tackled, tasered, and heavily beaten with clubs by the officers. The incident, without the first few minutes during which police claim King was violently resisting arrest, was captured on camcorder by Argentine George Holliday from his apartment in the vicinity.
The police officers claimed that King appeared to be under the influence of PCP. King had led police on a high-speed car chase and, after driving through several red lights and boulevard stops, had pulled over in the Lake View Terrace district.

In a later interview, King, who was on parole from prison on a robbery conviction and who had past convictions for assault, battery and robbery said that, being on parole, he feared apprehension and being returned to prison for parole violations.
The footage of King being beaten by police officers while lying on the ground became an international media sensation and a rallying point for activists in Los Angeles and around the United States. Coverage was extensive during the initial two weeks after the incident: the Los Angeles Times published fifty-five articles about the incident, the New York Times published twenty-one articles, and the Chicago Tribune published fifteen articles.

Eight stories appeared on ABC News, including a sixty minute special on Primetime Live. The majority of the media coverage interpreted the incident as a shocking tragedy and accused the police of abusing their power.

One story even stated that the police were seen laughing and joking about the incident shortly afterwards.
The Los Angeles District Attorney subsequently charged all four police officers with assault and use of excessive force. Due to the heavy media coverage of the arrest, the trial received a change of venue from Los Angeles County to a newly constructed courthouse in the predominantly white and politically conservative city of Simi Valley in neighboring Ventura County. However, no Simi Valley residents served on the jury, which was drawn from the nearby San Fernando Valley, a predominantly white and Hispanic area, and composed of ten whites, one Hispanic, and one Asian. The prosecutor, Terry White, was black.
On April 29, 1992, the seventh day of jury deliberations, the jury acquitted all four officers of assault and acquitted three of the four of using excessive force.

The jury could not agree on a verdict for the fourth officer charged with using excessive force. The verdicts were based in part on the first two seconds of a blurry, 13-second segment of the video tape that was edited out by television news stations in their broadcast. During the first two seconds of videotape, Rodney King allegedly gets up off the ground and charges in the general direction of one of the police officers, Laurence Powell, but this allegation is disputed due to the blurriness of the video. During the next one minute and 19 seconds, however, King is beaten continuously by the officers.The officers testified that they tried to physically restrain King prior to the starting point of the videotape but, according to the officers, King was able to physically throw them off himself. Based on this testimony and the previously unseen segment of the videotape, the officers were acquitted on almost all charges.
Another theory offered by the prosecution for the officers' acquittal is that the jurors may have become desensitized to the violence of the beating, as the defense played the videotape repeatedly in slow motion, breaking it down until its emotional impact was lost.
The riots
The riots, beginning in the evening after the verdicts, peaked in intensity over the next two days, but ultimately continued for several days. Army soldiers and United States Marines were ordered to the city to quell disorder as well.
Fifty-three lives were lost with as many as 2,000 people injured.

Approximately 3,600 fires were set, destroying 1,100 buildings, with fire calls coming once every minute at some points; widespread looting also occurred. Stores owned by Korean and other Asian immigrants were widely targeted, although stores owned by whites and African-Americans were targeted by rioters as well.

Street gangs used the riot as an opportunity to settle scores with each other, and fought the police and military as well.
Many of the disturbances were concentrated in South Central Los Angeles, which was primarily composed of African-American and Hispanic residents. Approximately 51% of all riot arrestees and more than a third of those killed during the violence were Hispanic.
First day (Wednesday, April 29)
The acquittals of the four accused Los Angeles Police Department officers came at 3:15 p.m.

Michael Moulin, confronted a growing African-American crowd at the intersection of Florence and Normandie in South Central Los Angeles. Four) were later arrested and one, Damian Williams, was sent to prison.

who, seeing the assault live on television, rushed to the scene and drove Denny to the hospital using the victim's own truck, which carried twenty-seven tons of sand. Denny had to undergo years of rehabilitative therapy and his speech and ability to walk were permanently damaged.

Although several other motorists were brutally beaten by the same mob, Denny remains the best-known victim of the riots because of the live television coverage.
Fidel Lopez beating
At the same intersection, just minutes after Denny was rescued, another beating was captured on video tape. Fidel Lopez, a self-employed construction worker and Guatemalan immigrant, was ripped from his truck and robbed of nearly $2,000.

Damian Williams smashed his forehead open with a car stereo as another rioter attempted to slice his ear off. He was also instrumental in helping Lopez get medical aid by taking him to the hospital.the intersection of Florence and Normandie was completely looted, burned and destroyed, causing the rioters to move into other neighborhoods of South Central. The Los Angeles Fire Department's first fire call relating to the riots came at about 7:45 p.m.

Cars were torched to block intersections; others were carjacked and their drivers beaten. By dark, stores were being openly looted and fires burned unabated as fire officials refused to send firemen into personal danger. The LAPD ordered all officers to report for duty, and many deployed in riot gear but they were unseen in broad sections of the city. Between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m.

rioting began in Inglewood and other communities.
By 9:00 p.m., the protest at Parker Center had turned violent as rioters threw rocks and damaged some downtown buildings and windows. Also by this time, the situation in affected areas had deteriorated enough that bus service was suspended on some lines, and the flight paths of incoming jets to Los Angeles International Airport were modified because of shots fired at a police helicopter. At 10 p.m. Hundreds of rounds were fired and the V-100 rescue vehicle was sent to extract the officers safely.

The V-100 rescue vehicle then recovered the two dead bodies from the Nickerson Gardens projects that were killed during the battle.
Long-established LAPD tactics and procedures held that the opening hours of a riot were critical, and that a full-force response was required. The LAPD did not respond quickly and decisively in the opening hours, however, and suffered persistent criticism as a result during and following the riots. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley declared a state of emergency at 8:45 p.m., prompting Governor Pete Wilson to activate 2,000 members of the National Guard.
Second day (Thursday, April 30)
Although the day began relatively quietly, by mid-morning on the second day violence appeared widespread and unchecked as heavy looting and fires had started being witnessed across Los Angeles County. Open gun battles were televised as Korean shopkeepers were forced to shoot at the mob to protect their businesses, and most likely their lives, from crowds of violent looters.

The California National Guard, which had been advised not to expect civil disturbance, responded quickly by calling up some 2,000 soldiers, but could not get them to the city until nearly 24 hours had passed because of a lack of proper equipment, training, and available ammunition which had to be picked up from Camp Roberts, California (near Paso Robles). Later, they actively ran patrols, maintained checkpoints, and provided firepower for law enforcement.
In an attempt to end hostilities, Bill Cosby spoke on the NBC affiliate television station KNBC and asked people to stop what they were doing and instead watch the final episode of The Cosby Show.
The same members of LAPD Metropolitan Division C-platoon that were involved in the firefight at 114th Street and Central Avenue on the first night drove into a robbery in progress at the gas station at Vernon and Western.

One robber was killed, a second was wounded and a sawed-off shotgun was recovered.
Third day (Friday, May 1)
The third day was punctuated by live footage of Rodney King asking, "People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?" That morning, at 1:00 a.m., California Governor Pete Wilson had requested federal assistance, but it was not ready until Saturday. National Guard units (doubled to 4,000 troops) continued to move into the city in Humvees.

Bush spoke to the nation, denouncing "random terror and lawlessness", summarizing his discussions with Mayor Bradley and Governor Wilson, and outlining the federal assistance he was making available to local authorities. The Los Angeles Lakers hosted the Portland Trail Blazers in a basketball playoff game on the night the rioting started, but the following game was postponed until Sunday and moved to Las Vegas.With most of the violence under control, 30,000 people attended a peace rally. By the end of the day a sense of normalcy began to return.
Whether in response to the riots, or simply to the acquittal, on May 2 the Justice Department announced it would begin a federal investigation of the Rodney King beating.
Fifth day (Sunday, May 3)
Overall quiet set in and Mayor Bradley assured the public that the crisis was, more or less, under control. In one incident, National Guardsmen shot and killed a motorist that they said tried to run them over.
Sixth day (Monday, May 4)
Although Mayor Bradley lifted the curfew, signaling the official end of the riots, sporadic violence and crime continued for a few days afterward.

Federal troops did not stand down until May 9; the state guard remained until May 14; and some soldiers remained as late as May 27.
Underlying causes
In addition to the immediate trigger of the Rodney King verdicts, a range of other factors were cited as reasons for the unrest, including a long-standing perception that the Los Angeles Police Department routinely engaged in racial profiling and used excessive force. This analysis was subsequently supported by the Christopher Commission, an investigation led by Warren Christopher (who would become Secretary of State the following year under President Bill Clinton).
Specific anger over the sentence given to a Korean American shop-owner for the shooting and killing of Latasha Harlins, an African American girl, was also pointed to as a potential reason for the riots, particularly for the African-American/Korean-American tensions witnessed during the disturbances. Publications such as Newsweek and Time suggested that the source of these racial antagonisms was derived from cultural differences, and from the black perceptions that Korean-American merchants were taking money out of their community and refusing to hire blacks to work in their shops.

According to this view, these tensions were intensified when the Korean-American shop owner, Soon Ja Du, was sentenced to five years probation for the killing of Harlins.
Another explanation which was offered for the riots was the extremely high unemployment among the residents of South Central Los Angeles, which had been hit very hard by the nation-wide recession, and the high levels of poverty there. Articles in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times linked the economic deterioration of South Central to the declining living conditions of the residents, and suggested that local resentments about these conditions helped to fuel the riots. Social commentator Mike Davis pointed to the growing economic disparity in Los Angeles in the years leading up to the riots caused by corporate restructuring and government deregulation, with inner-city residents bearing the brunt of these changes. Such conditions engendered a widespread feeling of frustration and powerlessness in the urban populace, with the King verdicts eventually setting off their resentments in a violent expression of collective public protest. To Davis and other writers, the tensions witnessed between African-Americans and Korean-Americans during the unrest was as much to do with the economic competition forced on the two groups by wider market forces, as with either cultural misunderstandings of black anger about the killing of Harlins.
One of the more detailed analyses of the unrest was a study produced shortly after the riots by a Special Committee of the California Legislature, entitled To Rebuild is Not Enough. After extensive research, the Committee concluded that the inner-city conditions of poverty, segregation, lack of educational and employment opportunities, widespread perceptions of police abuse and unequal consumer services created the underlying causes of the riots.

It also pointed to changes in the American economy and the growing ethnic diversity of Los Angeles as important sources of urban discontent, which eventually exploded on the streets following the King verdicts. Another official report, The City in Crisis, was initiated by the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners and made many of the same observations as the Assembly Special Committee about the growth of popular urban dissatisfaction leading up to the unrest.
In his public statements during the riots, civil rights activist and Baptist minister Jesse Jackson sympathized with the anger experienced by African-Americans regarding the verdicts in the King trial, and pointed to certain root causes of the disturbances.

He also berated both major political parties for failing to address urban issues, especially the Republican Administration for its presiding over "more than a decade of urban decay" generated by their spending cuts. However, he maintained that the King verdicts could not be avenged by the "savage behavior" of "lawless vandals". hey do not share our values, and their children are growing up in a culture alien from ours, without family, without neighborhood, without church, without support."
African-American Congressional representative of South Central Los Angeles, Democrat Maxine Waters, said that the events in L.A.

Though he acknowledged that the King verdicts were plainly unjust, he maintained that "we simply cannot condone violence as a way of changing the system ... Mob brutality, the total loss of respect for human life was sickeningly sad ...

It's not about the great cause of equality that all Americans must uphold. Writers in Newsweek, for example, drew a distinction between the actions of the rioters in 1992 with those of the urban upheavals in the 1960s, arguing that "here the looting at Watts had been desparate, angry, mean, the mood this time was more closer to a manic fiesta, a TV game show with every looter a winner." Meanwhile, in an article published in Commentary entitled "How the Rioters Won", conservative columnist Midge Decter referred to African-American city youths and asked "ow is it possible to go on declaring that what will save the young men of South-Central L.A., and the young girls they impregnate, and the illegitimate babies they sire, is jobs? How is it possible to look at these boys of the underclass ...