LA Riots Day 1

Daily Express 1st May 1992

LA Lawless
The Jury who wouldn’t believe their own eyes
Crying Shame of Shaky City

LA Lawless

THE CITY of Angels was under siege early today as a shoot-to-kill curfew was imposed following 24 hours of looting, burning and rioting.

Armoured cars cruised the streets of Los Angeles and more than 2,000 soldiers were standing by to reinforce heavily-armed police who had failed to prevent the worst violence to hit America in decades. At least 13 people have died and hundreds more were injured in the urban warfare which hit the world's richest city.

The trouble was sparked by the acquittal of four white police officers seen on TV worldwide as they beat up a black motorist. They were found not guilty of using excessive force. last night: "The verdict has left us all with a deep sense of personal frustration and anguish. Yet it is important we respect the law and the legal processes that have been brought to bear." But his call for "alt citizens to be calm and to abide by the law as the legal process in this case continues," went unheeded.

Mob violence spread from the poor downtown districts to the elite areas of Westwood and Beverly Hills, affecting everyone. Colour or nationality played no part in the choice of victims.

A Vietnamese manicurist was pulled from her car, then robbed and beaten. Her life was saved by a black man who took her to hospital.

A Korean man covered in blood was led to safety by a group of Hispanics.
A white lorry driver was taken to hospital by the same black gang that nearly beat him to death.

Children were kept home from school and urged in televised messages to stay calm and not be upset by the havoc they saw around them. They were told: "It's not the end of the world."
At times it seemed it was. California governor Pete Wilson declared a state of emergency and ordered a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

The National Guard — about 2,000 part-time soldiers in full riot gear and using armoured vehicles — were on the streets backing up police. At least 750 California highway patrolmen were also moved in to try to restore order.

But they were powerless to protect drivers, who were pulled from their vehicles, One was beaten and kicked unconscious by four black youths and another man was left bleeding in the street after being bludgeoned about the head.

Two rioters were shot dead by police after they refused to stop when challenged. Three more died in a car crash as they fled a the scene of a robbery in Beverly Hills.

Firemen were  called to  more  than 1500fires during the night but the arson continued past daybreak with another 36 blazes, mainly in looted shopping centres.

A racially mixed crowd of about 400 who gathered outside police headquarters suddenly rushed the building, shattering windows with rocks and bottles. Police in riot gear battled to re-take the building.

Protestors burned American flags, destroyed phone booths and chanted: "No justice. No peace."
Many white groups, including Communist agitators, were identified during demonstrations outside the Los Angeles Police Department headquarters.

More than eighty schools were closed along with the campus of the University of California.

Late last night shops and offices were being boarded up as looters roamed the streets.

Extra precautions were being taken at the Halls of Justice, city buildings and the financial area in downtown Los Angeles — now nicknamed "the wild west".
The riots began in South Central Los Angeles, a violent, gang-infested area known as Vietnam — and quickly spread across the city.

Streets were littered with the blackened shells of scores of cars. There were many gas explosions as over-stretched firefighters were forced to leave buildings to burn. The flames, fanned by the Santa Ana winds, consumed many millions of dollars worth of property.

The constant blaring of police, fire and ambulance sirens only increased the Express reporting team in Los Angeles: DOUGLAS   THOMPSON,   PHILIP   FINN, TERRY CHINERY, GERARD EVANS and KEVIN SMITH.

Tension   and   frayed   already  jangling nerves. The Daniel Freeman Hospital was on emergency alert, issuing pleas for medical staff.
A nurse who saw action in the Gulf war last year said: "I'm seeing scenes worst than Desert Storm."
The violence was the worst since the 1965 Watts riots in which 35 died.
Community leaders had appealed for peace after the verdict in the trial of the four LAPD officers accused of using excessive violence in the arrest of motorist Rodney King.
But though thousands of people confined their protests to singing gospel songs and attending community meetings, many others took to the streets.
"It's very difficult to direct a message to anyone engaged in that kind of vandalism," said the city's black mayor Tom Bradley, a former police officer.
"We're doing our best to preserve peace and security in the city and using whatever resources are necessary.
"But today the system failed us. Today this jury told the world what we all saw with our own eyes wasn't a crime. Today, that jury asked us to accept the senseless and brutal beating of a helpless man."
Los Angeles prosecutors can appeal the verdicts and King is bringing a civil lawsuit against the officers.

Message
There were also promises last night of renewed FBI and Justice Department investigations into the case.
"My client and I are just outraged," said King's lawyer Steve Lerman. "It sends a bad message. It says it's OK to go ahead and beat somebody when they're down and kick the crap out of them."

In the wake of the beating, an independent commission found a pattern of widespread bigotry and brutality in the 8,400-member LAPD and demanded the resignation of its chief, Darryl Gate.

He has agreed to step down at the end of June and a new chief of police has been appointed — a black man from another state. Meanwhile British tourists were warned by the Foreign Office to stay away from troubled areas.

A glittery premiere tonight of Mel Gibson's Lethal Weapon III in Westwood may not go ahead. Other weekend charity events could be cancelled. It all depends on whether authorities can claim back the city.

The Jury who wouldn’t believe their own eyes

IT HAD always seemed indefensible.
There were 81 seconds of videotape showing grainy but clear images of Rodney King being beaten by four Los Angeles police officers.
Beaten, beaten and beaten again.
It has been seen around the world and we in Los Angeles have seen it almost every night — usually more than once.
Before the six-week trial was over it had cost the city's white police chief Darryl Gates his job.
Despite the overwhelming evidence the jury did not believe their eyes.
And their not guilty verdict on the three white officers filmed attacking a defenceless black man, turned the City of Angels into one of fires, violence and racial hatred.
Attack
Patrolmen Stacey Koon, Theodore Briseno, Timothy Wind and Laurence Powell were cleared of the assault on Rodney King in March last year, and of falsifying their reports of the incident.
The jury could not reach a verdict on another charge against Powell — using excessive force. He faces another trial.
Powell emerged as the officer who led the attack.
A nurse gave evidence that he later taunted the unemployed building worker in hospital, saying: "We had a pretty good hardball game tonight. You lost and we won."
When    the    verdict   was announced the officers were hugged and kissed by their relatives. Powell's sister Leann said: "Thank God the verdict came out as it should have. We had faith, but he should not have to go through another trial."
King's family were devastated. His aunt Angela said: "There's no justice here."
And leading black Democrat Jesse Jackson commented: "Rodney King's civil rights were violated and the whole world was watching."
The four officers were bundled out of the courtroom amid jeers and booing.
As TV and radio stations broadcast the sensational result, mobs of youths were already massing on the streets.
The jury of six men and six women were white apart from one Hispanic man and a Filipino-American woman.
They included a bank clerk, a retired real estate broker, a computer analyst, a housewife, a retired Navy pilot and a nurse.
They did not deliver their verdict in person and did not want to be identified. Each agreed not to speak publicly about their decisions.
But when Los Angeles started burning one juror felt she had to try to explain a verdict which had stunned the1 world and provoked outrage and violence.
"I know the film was horrible but there's a lot more to it than that," she said.
"The film doesn't show all the things that went on before.
"Rodney King refused to get out of the car. His two companions got out and complied with all the orders and he just continued to fight. So the police had no alternative."
The unnamed juror went on: "He was obviously a dangerous person, massive size and threatening actions.
"Mr King was controlling the whole show with his actions. He could have stopped it. When he got out of the car, he could have put his hands in the air. He wouldn't have been touched."
She added that the decision not to put King on the witness stand might have hurt the prosecution case.
"Maybe he could have offered us some insight into what his thinking was," she said.
The juror said the jury found the officers' evidence credible not and  claimed  they  did believe race was a factor. If it had been, the other two men with King would also have been beaten, they thought. They felt the policemen acted within the scope of the Los Angeles Police Department regulations — using metal truncheons, stun guns, fists and boots to subdue the terrified King.
The jury believed the injuries to King's head — he had 11 fractures — happened when he fell to the ground, not when he was beaten. And, the juror added, the officers were justifiably afraid of King.
"They're policemen, they're not angels. They're out there to do a low-down, dirty job. Would you want your husband doing it, or your son or your father?"
Verdicts
Even so, their verdict stunned and shamed America.
The trial was moved from Los Angeles to Ventura County, an upwardly-mobile community further north up the Pacific Coast after a
defence claim that a fair trial could not be heard in the city.
Legal experts last night said this was one of the main reasons for the not guilty verdicts.
In Simi Valley, where the case was heard, blacks make up around 1.5 per cent of the population.
The experts also said King not taking the stand was an important factor.
The jury heard 29 days of, evidence from 55 witnesses. The videotape of the beating was shown many times.
The trial, screened live on Los Angeles TV, became a hit for Rupert Murdoch's Fox network.

Crying Shame of Shaky City

WE WERE in a city out of control. Buildings burned but firemen couldn't fight the flames because the police were not there to protect them from gun-crazy  rioters  or  stop  the looters  who  would  torch  one structure and raid the next. It was a catastrophic Catch 22.

Cars and lorries were set afire on the streets. A State of Emergency was declared and the National Guard called in. It seemed that people were going to bring the ultimate destruction that nature has not achieved. Last week California
staged its first execution in the San Quentin gas chamber in a quarter of a century.

Major earthquakes rattled us from north to south, playing absurdly dangerous romances with the San Andreas Fault, which is also known around here as Armageddon.
We had suffered the 'storms-of-the-century' in March. The past week has seen temperatures soar into the high nineties, fanned by the Santa Ana winds that novelist Raymond Chandler, the poet of the mean streets of Los Angeles, said had housewives checking out their bread knives and their husbands' necks. What next?
Locusts? No, not at all. Simply the verdict in a court case. But a case involving all the sensitivities of today's ethnic melting-pot society. And all the problems and troubles.
It began in daylight here on busy streets. This was not dark, back alley violence.
But people were violated as well as property. Old women were knocked down and robbed. Younger women were sexually abused or almost raped, as they too were deprived of their purses, watches, necklaces and other jewellery.
Drivers were shot and spat at. Some were beaten to a pulp. One man lost an eye when his face was kicked in. Another lost an arm when crushed by a car.
President Bush said we should all be calm. There were gospel meetings where preachers said we should all be calm. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley said we should all be outraged but be calm. And the rioters shouted burn, burn, burn.
The Criminal Courts Building in down-town Los Angeles — as big a symbol here as the Old Bailey in London — was daubed with graffiti and surrounded by protesters.
Parker Centre, the headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department, was under siege by more than 1,000 people.

There was gunfire, flames, ugly moments. The police wore not gear and the people expressions of anger. On television they called for calm. On the radio stations they pleaded for people to stay indoors.

And on the streets people ran wild. One television camera focused on a street of blazing buildings, and from behind the inferno came a face, and then a finger pointing at the camera, and then lips mouthing: "You're next." It was a shivering moment for Lotus Land, for the city that lives by fantasy and for thrills — but just for the movies. The past 24 hours have been far too real.

Another earthquake hit in the California desert just as the rioting began on a bright Wednesday evening. I doubt anyone here knows or cares what it registered on the Richter scale, for this city — 'Shaky Town' in the CB language of the truckers — was too busy dealing with its own emotional, destructive and man-made holocaust.
California is the sixth largest economy in the world. It has the largest Latin population outside of Mexico City.
It has communities comprised of every slice of Asia. It has enormous black communities. It has the rich environments of Beverly Hills and Bel-Air and the upwardly mobile suburbias of the San Fernando Valley on one side of the Santa Monica Mountains, and the beach communities on the other. AND yesterday it had an almost  all-white jury bringing in  not guilty verdicts on four white police officers charged with using excessive force in the arrest of a black motorist.

Officers Laurence Powell, Stacey Koon, Theodore Briseno and Timothy Wind, were charged with assault, excessive force and falsifying reports in the arrest of Rodney King on March 3, 1991. The world witnessed their actions through a videotape of the incident taken by an amateur cameraman from his apartment balcony about 150 feet from where it happened.

The court case lasted six weeks. The jury's deliberation several days. When the verdict was reached the jury refused to appear in person for it to be read. It was sent down on a piece of paper giving not guilty verdicts.

It might have been written on blue torch paper. But people didn't stand back. The protests started immediately.

Scores of helicopters belonging to the authorities and the media chattered over the city constantly. A fire truck with nine crew was missing. There were reports of heart attacks. Of several deaths, including three who burned to death. There was no confirmation of any of it as the night went on.
We were constantly told to stay away from down-town Los Angeles and yesterday's business day was all but written off before daylight here.

The politicians weighed in, but the TV cameras would leave them to show us destructive scenes. That said, the local television coverage of the event was as restrained as I've ever seen it. Every channel seemed to be going out of its way not to incite any trouble.
You couldn't say the same for Rodney King's lawyer. Understandably angered by events, he went over the top by announcing: "If you've got the money, get out of Dodge City — this is going to be a bad place to be."

It was. And it was distasteful. That was because of the self-interested groups which used the King verdict to their own political ends, groups who — with their agents well prepared with megaphones and walkie-talkies — wanted havoc.

Back | Gallery | Star Talk | Home

Back to the top