The Los Angeles Riots: Lessons for the Urban Future,

The Los Angeles Riots: Lessons for the Urban Future,
Book by Mark Baldassare; Westview Press, 1994

1 Introduction

Mark Baldassare

Why study the Los Angeles riots? There are several reasons for this inquiry into the April 1992 violence and unrest that occurred after a jury acquitted the police officers who were accused of using excessive force in the Rodney King beating. First, the Los Angeles riots are among the most violent, destructive and frightening episodes in twentieth century American urban history. Next, the Los Angeles riots have been regarded by some observers as a sign of a dangerous turning point in the history of U.S. cities. Lastly, many have said that there are lessons to be learned from the events that took place in Los Angeles for improving policies toward U.S. cities.

When I began this search for knowledge more than a year ago, however, there were few publications dedicated to increasing understanding of this important urban event (see for example GoodingWilliams , 1993; Hazen, 1992; Los Angeles Times, 1992). By contrast, the 1965 Watts riot has been reviewed, analyzed and interpreted in many places ( Cohen, 1970; Cohen and Murphy, 1966; Crump, 1966; Fogelson, 1969; Oberschall, 1968; Sears and McConahay, 1973). What I discovered instead were recent studies that had not yet found their way into print, and scholars whose expertise made it possible for them to offer unique analyses of the riots. My task, then, was to organize and integrate new works by several authors into a collection of essays.

This book represents the first, comprehensive study of the Los Angeles riots. It is an edited volume of original works by urban scholars seeking to answer these basic questions: what were the causes of the Los Angeles riots, what actually took place, and what are the consequences of the riots for Los Angeles and other U.S. cities? The authors also offer suggestions for avoiding future unrest similar in size

2 A Riot of Color: The Demographic Setting

Peter A. Morrison and Ira S. Lowry

When the police officers who beat Rodney King were exonerated by a predominantly white suburban jury on April 29, 1992, street corner disturbances immediately erupted in two black neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles. Within a few hours, these disturbances escalated into a three-day riot that damaged people and property over an area of almost 60 square miles. Since then, these three days of mob violence, arson, and looting in Los Angeles have usually been represented in the press and other public forums as a political protest by blacks against manifest injustice to a fellow black, brutally mistreated, by white police officers. However, a careful look at the sequence of events and the actual participants in terms of race and ethnicity suggests that this view greatly oversimplifies and misrepresents the civil tensions that erupted on April 29, 1992. Although whites who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time were harassed and beaten, the truly systematic targets of violence were retail establishments, ranging from neighborhood convenience stores to discount houses and supermarkets; Korean shopkeepers were especially at risk. And over half of those arrested by the Los Angeles police during six days of civil disturbance were Hispanic, not black.

2 A Riot of Color: The Demographic Setting

Peter A. Morrison and Ira S. Lowry

3 Los Angeles Coalition Politics

Raphael J. Sonenshein

When an amateur cameraman captured Los Angeles police officers beating black motorist Rodney King on March 3, 1991, remarkable events unfolded within Los Angeles politics. The seemingly unassailable police department faced mounting calls to reform its practices. Within two years, a large group of the city's political leaders had left office, to be replaced by very different people. The most dramatic changes were the election of a new Republican mayor after twenty years of Democrat Tom Bradley's dominance, and the selection of an outside police chief to lead the previously closed LAPD. These surprising political developments were all influenced by the beating of Rodney King and the civil unrest of 1992.

The politics of the Rodney King case and of the urban violence that grew out of it provide an extraordinary window into the evolving coalition politics of Los Angeles. My research uncovered the historical evolution of an extraordinary biracial coalition led by black mayor Tom Bradley, linking African-Americans and liberal whites, particularly Jews ( Sonenshein 1989; 1993a). The development of a strong biracial coalition in Los Angeles challenged the dominant pessimism on interracial politics and required an expansion of models based on midwestern and eastern cities ( Sonenshein 1989). Indeed, the rise of the Bradley coalition and its later difficulties helped explain the failure of biracial politics in New York City ( Sonenshein 1990).

In New York City, there was a conflict of interest between blacks and white liberals and interracial leadership networks were poorly developed. The situation was quite the opposite in Los Angeles. Before the rise of the liberal coalition, blacks and white liberals were both political outsiders and their shared political interests complemented

4 The Rodney King Beating Verdicts

Hiroshi Fukurai, Richard Krooth, and Edgar W. Butler

As a landmark in the recent history of law enforcement and jury trials, the Rodney King beating trials are historically comparable to the 1931 Scottsboro case (Norris v. Alabama, 294 U.S. 587, 1935) or the 1968 Huey Newton case ( Newton v. California, 8 Cal App 3d 359, 87 Cal Rptr 394, 1970). The King beating cases are also similar to Florida trials that led to three urban riots and rebellion during 1980s in Miami, Florida in which police officers were acquitted of criminal charges in the death of three blacks: Arthur McDuffie in 1980, Nevell Johnson in 1982, and Clement Anthony Lloyd in 1989. The 1980 McDuffie riots, for instance, resulted in eighteen deaths and eighty million dollars in property damage (Barry v. Garcia, 573 So.2d 932 933, 1991). An all white jury acquitted police officers of all criminal charges in the face of compelling evidence against them, including the testimony of the chief medical officer who said that McDuffie's head injuries were the worst he had seen in 3,600 autopsies ( Crewdson, 1980). The verdict triggered violence because it symbolized the continuation of racial inequities in the criminal justice and court system.

Similarly, in the King beating trial and jury verdict which was rightly called "sickening" by then-President Bush and condemned by all segments of society, the King embroglio also provides an opportunity for evaluation and reform of police procedures, law enforcement structures, and jury trials.

In the first state trial, on April 29, 1992, a predominantly white jury had tried and exonerated four Los Angeles white police officers on assault charges for the beating of a black motorist. This was both despite and due to visual court evidence of the continuous beating of King by police officers, images that had been captured on videotape by a resident of a nearby apartment. The acquittal by the predominantly

5 Public Opinion Before and After a Spring of Discontent 1 <53256979>

Lawrence Bobo, Camille L. Zubrinsky, James H. Johnson, Jr., and Melvin L. Oliver,

Yet to do all of these things and spend the sums involved will all be for naught unless the conscience of the community, the white and the Negro community together, directs a new and, we believe, revolutionary attitude toward the problems of our city.

-- The McCone Commission, 1965

This alternative will require a commitment to national action -- compassionate, massive and sustained, backed by the resources of the most powerful and the richest nation on this earth. From every American it will require new attitudes, new understanding, and, above all, new will.

-- The Kerner Commission, 1968

Can we all get along?

-- Rodney King, 1992

The Los Angeles rebellion of 1992 differed from its predecessors of the 1960s and 1980s not merely in terms of the magnitude of the devastation and the level of the emergency response needed to quell the civil unrest, but in several other important respects ( Johnson et al. 1992). 2 <53256979>

First, the participants in the civil unrest represented a range of ethnic groups. For example, more Latinos were arrested and killed than were blacks.

Second, the violence had a much more systematic quality and was targeted at another ethnic minority: Korean entrepreneurs.

Third, events in Los Angeles ignited deep and powerful grievancesacross the nation. Many cities, some with quite small minority populations (e.g., Omaha and Minneapolis), experienced large scale protests and violence.Fourth, the rebellion was conveyed to the rest of nation and the world with unparalleled speed and often in shockingly...

6 A Profile of Those Arrested

Joan Petersilia and Allan Abrahamse

The riot 1 <53256996>that took place in Los Angeles between Wednesday, April 29, 1992 and Monday, May 5, 1992 was sparked by the acquittal by an all-white jury of four white police officers charged with the 1991 beating of black motorist Rodney King. Other recent events in Los Angeles add to the impression that the riot was an instance of racial conflict-for example, a Korean grocer had recently shot and killed a black teenager but was given a probationary sentence instead of a prison term by a white judge. And in an eerie and perverse parallel, the televised images of the Rodney King beating were reflected in the televised images of a white truck driver, Reginald Denny, being beaten almost to death by blacks in the early hours of the riot. Moreover, memories of the "Watts Riots" of 1965 remain fresh in the minds of many, and in 1965 the area known as Watts was mostly black and the images that survive involve black rioters battling white policeman. All these facts contribute to an initial impression that the 1992 Los Angeles riot was a race riot-a conflict between races.

But while there can be little doubt that the anger felt by black people concerning the Rodney King verdict provided the spark that started the riot, there is considerable evidence that by the next day, April 30, the riot had spread well beyond the bounds of race. Plainly, it was not the case that only black people were rioting; television coverage of looting plainly showed non-black persons engaged in looting. Many of these non-black persons appeared to be Latinos. But, of course, television images provide only anecdotal evidence, at best.

Another critical theme raised early, and still a subject of vigorous investigation and debate, was the alleged lack of police response in the early stages of the riot. This allegation is supported, though hardly proved, by the searing television image mentioned above of the beating

7 Property Damage and Violence: A Collective Behavior Analysis

Kathleen J. Tierney

The Los Angeles unrest is widely considered to be the most serious episode of race-related crowd violence in the U. S. in this century. In the aftermath of the disturbance, the city continues to face major challenges related to community recovery and reconciliation.

In many respects, the unrest was almost a textbook case, the prototypical big-city riot, resembling episodes of collective violence that occurred in Washington, D. C., Detroit, Newark, and scores of other U. S. cities during the 1960s. Like many of these earlier racial disturbances, including the 1965 Watts riot, the 1992 unrest was triggered by an event that highlighted conflicts between a minority community and the law enforcement /justice system (see National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders 1968 for a discussion of common features of these earlier riots). The unrest also closely resembles the 1980 Miami riot, which followed the acquittal of police officers in the killing of Arthur McDuffie, a black man. That case also involved a change of venue -- to Tampa. The jury, which was all white and all male, discounted the testimony of eyewitnesses, including police officers, who testified that McDuffie had been beaten to death by police following a high-speed chase. (For accounts of the origins and dynamics of this collective violence episode, see Ladner et al. 1981 and Porter and Dunn, 1984.)

As was the case with the riots of the 1960s, including Watts, and like Miami in 1980, the 1992 Los Angeles unrest was initiated within the minority community by local residents, and the looting and burning of business establishments were the major forms of property crime. And like these earlier episodes, most of the people killed in the unrest were black.

8 Black-Korean Conflict

Regina Freer

The startling video-taped shooting of a young African American woman by a Korean American grocer; the portrayal of contentious relations between an African American customer and a Korean American merchant in Spike Lee "Do The Right Thing"; and the sight of Korean American merchants in predominantly African American neighborhoods desperately attempting to defend their stores with guns during the recent Los Angeles rebellion are all images which served to bring the long-standing conflict between the members of the African American and Korean American communities into the nation's consciousness. Such conflict is an unfortunate reality in this nation's cities. Urban residents who simultaneously cope with decreasing federal funds for cities and a nationwide economic downturn are also coping with the challenges engendered by increasing diversity and population growth. Cultural misunderstanding, coupled with the perception and reality of competition for scarce resources, unfortunately ensures that the path leading to conflict is the one most frequently travelled. As reflected in the aforementioned images, a recent example of such explosive conflict is the flaring of tensions between African American customers and Korean American merchants in Los Angeles before and during the recent rebellion. On the heels of the shootings of two African Americans by Korean American merchants, leaders in the black community organized boycotts of selected Korean American-owned stores. Tensions flared on all sides of the conflict; one such boycott lasted for more than 90 days, eventually shutting down the store. While this conflict can be and has been painted simply as an example of cultural misunderstanding, I believe that it is far more complex and multifaceted. While cultural insensitivity and ignorance do play a significant role in the conflict, it is important to view this conflict in the context of the economic disparity and racism which stretch well beyond the interaction of these two groups alone.I argue that this conflict has a fundamentally economic root cause and that it is

9 Community Coalition-Building

James A. Regalado

Mayoral Race 1993 brought the "City of Angels" a public leader whose private-sector background and leadership style are consistent with the business regime model of local governance associated more with Dallas, Texas ( Elkin 1987) and Los Angeles in the first five decades of this century ( Sonenshein 1993), than with Los Angeles over the last thirty years. Is a moderate to conservative Republican, a successful business leader and consummate insider on the city's governing coalition in the city's "Bradley years," truly "tough enough to turn L.A. around?" Richard Riordan's campaign theme has been commonly interpreted as the new mayor's recipe for preventing another riot while symbolically assuring a more tranquil existence for the city's middle and upper class voters. This would largely occur through placing 3,000 more cops on the beat while promoting ordinances that may be seen as further "gating" communities of color. The Riordan administration has proposed funding this "vision" through the selling of city assets (like LAX), contracting out city services and jobs to private bidders, and the anticipated largess of President Clinton's anti-crime urban agenda. Is this the tone-setting and tonic needed by a city whose various communities and groups are seemingly more at war with each other than in ongoing critical introspection and dialogue? Not according to L.A. writer Mike Davis (author of City of Quartz), who has contended that the city has learned little from the fires of Spring 1992, if the election of Richard Riordan as mayor is any indication ( Mendez 1993).

Judging by Riordan's appointments to his inner-circle of Deputy Mayors and advisors as well as to Commissions and Departments running the city, the city's public leadership is becoming more class and race exclusive than it has been in the past twenty years ( Connell

10 Urban Rioting in Los Angeles: A Comparison of 1965 with 1992

David O. Sears

The nation is rapidly moving toward two increasingly separate Americas. Within two decades, this division could be so deep that it would be almost impossible to unite: a white society principally located in suburbs, in smaller central cities, and in the peripheral parts of large central cities, and a Negro society largely concentrated within large central cities.

-- Kerner Commission ( 1968, p. 407).

I read [the] report. . . . of the 1919 riot in Chicago, and it as if I were reading the report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot of '35, the report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot of '43, the report of the McCone Commission on the Watts riot. I must again in candor say to you members of this Commission -- it is a kind of Alice in Wonderland -- with the same moving picture re-shown over and over again, the same analysis, the same recommendations, and the same inaction.

-- Kenneth B. Clark (In Kerner Commission report, 1968, p. 29).

Many commentators have referred to the police brutality verdict and rebellion as a strong 'wake-up call'. . . . Sadly, our data provide no substantial indication that this 'wake up call' has been heard.

-- Bobo et al. (Chapter 5). Can we all get along? -- Rodney King, 1992

At 7 PM on August 11, 1965,a black man, Marquette Frye, having had several "screwdrivers" celebrating his brother's return to Los Angeles from military service, was weaving his way home down the freeway at a speed exceeding the legal limit. A motorcycle officer ofthe California Highway Patrol pulled him over at 166th Street and Avalon Boulevard, in the heart of the Los Angeles neighborhood known as "Watts." Frye's behavior was somewhat boisterous, though humorous and cooperative, but it attracted a crowd on a...

About the Book and Editor

The Los Angeles riots in the Spring of 1992 were among the most violent and destructive events in twentieth-century urban America. This collection of original essays by leading urban experts offers the first comprehensive analysis of the unrest that took place after a jury acquitted the police officers who were accused of using excessive force in the Rodney King beating.

This book addresses three questions: What were the causes of the Los Angeles riots, what actually took place, and what are the consequences and meaning of the riots for U.S. cities? The findings presented throughout this volume provide strong evidence that the existence of an inner-city "underclass," the persistence of black-white tensions in U.S. society, and the emergence of inter-ethnic hostilities in urban neighborhoods are critical to understanding the Los Angeles riots and their implications.

While sounding an urgent warning signal to the governments and citizens of other U.S. cities, The Los Angeles Riots presents solutions and policy recommendations for avoiding a repeat of such unrest in the future. The book is crucial to everyone's understanding of the contemporary urban environment and will be ideal as a supplementary text in urban politics, sociology, and urban planning and policy courses as well as in current affairs.