The Event
Date
Place
The largest multiracial urban disturbance of the twentieth century, the Los Angeles riots brought to the fore issues of immigrant assimilation, racism, poverty, and gang warfare.
When a private citizen brought forward a videotape of a lengthy beating of African American Rodney King by four Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers on the night of March 3, 1991, television stations eagerly played the tape. The public then expected that the Caucasian officers would surely be found guilty of police brutality. The officers, however, believed that they were trying to apprehend a motorist who was resisting arrest after a high-speed highway chase.
A fire rages near Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles on April 30, 1992, during the riots.
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On April 1, 1991, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African American, decided to set up an independent commission to determine whether King’s beating was part of a pattern of racism within the police department. The report, issued on July 9, found that LAPD officers often used excessive force without being disciplined. Once again, the public expected convictions of the four officers. A key recommendation, to institute community policing, was ignored by Bradley. The report also asked Police Chief Daryl Gates to resign, but he refused.
When the four officers were arraigned on charges of excessive force, the judge moved the trial outside Los Angeles because of prejudicial pretrial publicity, including remarks by Bradley that the officers should be punished and numerous replays of the most sensational segment of the videotape on television. The venue chosen, Simi Valley, was a suburb in Ventura County. The jury, assembled from residents of a nearby community in Los Angeles, consisted of ten Caucasians, one Hispanic, and one Asian.
About a year later, on March 16, 1992, fifteen-year-old African American Latasha Harlins entered Empire Liquor Market, a convenience store owned by a Korean American immigrant family that previously experienced burglary, shoplifting, and gang terrorism. After putting a bottle of orange juice in her backpack, she approached the counter with money in her hands. Observing the bottle in her backpack but not the money, proprietor Soon Ja Du attempted to take the backpack away, whereupon Latasha knocked the woman down and put the juice bottle on the counter. As Latasha attempted to leave the store, Du shot and killed her. On March 22, Du was charged with voluntary manslaughter.
On April 21, a jury found Du guilty and recommended a sixteen-year sentence. Judge Joyce Karlin, however, reduced the sentence to five years probation, four hundred hours of community service, and a fine of $500. The verdict seemed much too light from the viewpoint of the African American community in Los Angeles.
Then, on April 29, three of the LAPD officers were acquitted and there was a hung jury for the fourth officer. Exculpatory evidence included a thirteen-second segment that had been edited out of the television broadcasts during which King got up from the ground and charged one of the officers. The officers also testified that King held all four off, but that was not on tape. Unaware of the exculpatory evidence outside the courtroom, many African American residents were incredulous of yet another apparent miscarriage of justice involving their community.
The Riots Begin
Thirty minutes after the verdict was announced, about three hundred people appeared outside the downtown Los Angeles courthouse to protest; the number doubled over the next two hours. At approximately the same time, a large crowd of African Americans assembled at an intersection (Florence and Normandie) in South Central Los Angeles. Members of the group began to loot businesses and accost those with white faces. When Reginald Denny, a construction worker, stopped at the intersection, his truck was surrounded, and he was dragged from his vehicle, severely beaten, and almost murdered by the mob in the presence of a television news helicopter. However, several African American residents rushed to the scene after watching the televised beating to prevent his death.
Construction worker Fidel Lopez, a Guatemalan immigrant, arrived at the same intersection soon afterward. Members of the mob tore him from his truck, ripped off his clothes, spray painted his body, stole nearly $2,000, and smashed his head open. Arriving on the scene as one of Lopez’s ears was being severed, an African American minister took his unconscious body to the hospital, where his ear was reattached and he regained consciousness.
Although some police arrived at the fateful intersection, they were frightened by what they saw. Lieutenant Michael Moulin, the officer in charge, ordered his small unit to withdraw from the scene. Later, firefighters were also so intimidated by the mayhem that they were not on the scene to stop the burning.
One hour after the rioting began at the intersection, local businesses were completely looted and burning. The mob then moved into other areas, blocking the path of firefighters and police by positioning burning vehicles. Carjackings occurred, and drivers were beaten as they proceeded. Other mobs emerged as far away as Inglewood, not far from Los Angeles International Airport, where flight patterns were altered. The downtown protest turned more violent, with rocks thrown at windows of buildings. Police Chief Gates, assuring the public on television that rioting would soon be brought under control, went to a political fund-raiser instead of directing a response while police donned riot gear and awaited orders to act.
Within six hours after the verdict was announced, the riots were out of control. Mayor Bradley declared a state of emergency and a curfew. California Governor Pete Wilson ordered two thousand members of the National Guard to mobilize; they arrived the following day (April 30). Korean Americans, many of whom had served in the military, organized to defend Koreatown in open gun battles as mobs moved north toward Hollywood and northwest toward Beverly Hills. California Highway Patrol officers were flown in. President George H. W. Bush also pledged to bring support.
Calm Gradually Returns
On the third day (May 1), the burning and looting continued while the National Guard presence swelled to 4,000, and 1,700 federal law-enforcement officials arrived. Rodney King, interviewed on television, asked “Can we all get along?” To assure African Americans that their cries for justice were being heard, President Bush assured that a federal grand jury investigation would consider civil rights charges against the four officers.
On the fourth day (May 2), 4,000 active-duty soldiers arrived with tanks and armed personnel carriers. A peace rally attracted 30,000 people. Calm returned to the city, though there was a lone incident on May 3. The riots were quelled before reaching Beverly Hills and Hollywood.
On Monday, May 4, Bradley canceled the curfew and banks and schools opened, but sporadic criminal activities continued for several days. California National Guard personnel left on May 14. Federal troops exited on May 27.
In all, fifty-three people died in the riots. Gunfire from rioters killed twenty-five persons, and National Guard and law-enforcement personnel shot ten dead. Six were killed in car crashes. The rest died from stabbings, strangulation, or beatings. Five women died. Among the dead were twenty-five African Americans, sixteen Hispanics, eight Caucasians, two Asians, and two Middle Easterners. Some 4,000 were wounded. The Empire Liquor store and about 2,000 Korean-owned businesses were burned to the ground. Among the 12,000 arrested for looting and other crimes, Latinos were the most numerous. There was approximately $1 billion in property damage, mostly from the destruction of a thousand buildings. Koreatown resembled a war zone because of the burning after the looting.
Observers have called the event an “urban disturbance” rather than a “race riot.” The main reason is that many participants simply took advantage of the chaos to loot nearby stores, with little interest in the political overtones that began the riots.
Impact
The Los Angeles riots made it clear that class conflict complicates racial conflict in the United States, involving immigrant Asians and Hispanics as well as the black-white conflict. Observers commented that resentment builds when some immigrants with limited English ability succeed while some articulate African Americans do poorly in American society, and indeed there were mini-riots in sixteen other American cities after the verdict. The looting by some of the poorest Latino immigrants brought to light the way in which the demographics of Los Angeles had become increasingly complex throughout the 1990’s.
The United States struggles to find a coherent concept of how to deal with a burgeoning multicultural, multiracial population. Riots are possible anywhere when events bring to the fore reminders of injustice. Indeed, disturbances continued beyond the 1990’s, notably in Cincinnati during 2001.
The 1992 riots also brought to light the practice of racial profiling, that is, the tendency of white police officers to stop black motorists and pedestrians more frequently than Asians or whites. The Rodney King incident also made television media realize the viewing potential of film car chases, and the public realized the importance of private videotaping. Subsequently, Hollywood films capitalized on the theme of race relations in Los Angeles. The film Grand Canyon , released in 1992 after the King beating but before the riots, promoted racial cooperation. In American History X (1998), the character played by actor Edward Norton speculates that there would have been no Los Angeles riots in 1992 if Gates’s successor, African American Willie Williams, had been the police chief. Crash (2005) suggests that nothing had improved in race relations since 1992.
Subsequent Events
On April 17, 1993, the verdict in the federal civil rights trial found two of the police officers guilty; they were sentenced to thirty months in prison. Three were fired and one resigned from LAPD. Gates resigned after Bradley’s office released unfavorable information about him. Williams tried to restore confidence in LAPD by establishing community policing as he had done while Philadelphia police chief. Bradley did not seek reelection. King was awarded $3.8 million in compensation, largely to pay his attorneys, but he was arrested several times thereafter. Koreatown was rebuilt. While some Koreans moved to homes outside the city, many Latino immigrants moved into their former Koreatown apartments. Some $1.4 billion was used from the Rebuild Los Angeles project, but South Central Los Angeles observers found little evidence of any major reconstruction besides a Home Depot, Wal-Mart, and new grocery stores. The Multicultural Collaborative and other groups emerged to bring African Americans and Korean Americans together.
Further Reading
Cannon, Lou. Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD . New York: Crown, 1998. The definitive account of the trials of the four Los Angeles police officers, including the impact of the missing thirteen seconds of videotape on the jury, with a conclusion about the way in which a new mayor and police chief tried to correct the city’s many problems regarding law enforcement.
Report of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department . Los Angeles: Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department, 1991. After reviewing five years of reports, the commission concluded that many LAPD officers used excessive force against the public in violation of written guidelines, while complaints were dismissed without corrective action. The commission was chaired by well-respected Los Angeles business executive Warren Christopher, who later became secretary of state.
Tervalon, Jervey, ed. Geography of Rage: Remembering the Los Angeles Riots of 1992 . Los Angeles: Really Great Books, 2002. A collection of essays written by Los Angeles residents who reflect on what happened ten years earlier.
Williams, Willie L., with Bruce Henderson. Taking Back Our Streets: Fighting Crime in America . New York: Scribner, 1996. The former police chief in Los Angeles and Philadelphia explains how community policing can restore the morale of police officers while building trust with the public.