What did you think of the 1992 LA Riots? How do you think the Riots could have been handled differently?

Question

Do you think the zero police presence was a good or bad thing?

Answer 1

I remember the riots quite clearly.

I wrote this in 1992:

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" After the initial tension had died down, the entire city felt more calm.
And if not for the nagging lump in my throat which can mean anything, I felt more calm. The clouds had come down several hundred feet, the cars were off the streets--they had to be--and I was standing outside, looking over the cooling embers of the barbecue at the darkening sky. This will mark the fourth day the city has been under a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
I noticed at dusk today crows on the wire leading to the pole by the neighbor's house, four of them, more specifically, two pair, rocking as pairs while cawing, in some form of inscrutable avian ritual. One pair took flight, and the other scrambled as they dove and wove though the air complicated paths undoubtedly either part of the ritual, or an unplanned divergence from the plan. I wondered what they were doing, and heard a call from another crow far across the field where I had videotaped ants just a few weeks ago.
Some birds which could have been mockingbirds if they tried, but were probably scrub jays, joined the crows on the wire, and dove about them, much smaller, perhaps threatening to the large, syncopated crows. One pair again broke off, several feet higher, to the top of the transformer pole, like many of the poles which exploded in the city, bringing the destruction closer to more and more of the confused people running in the streets, closer to the people, and to the things they had built.
I watched the crows, and wondered if they knew more about what was going on than it looked. It is, of course, impossible to tell. Part, it must be, of being a crow, and behaving like a crow, is to be as inscrutable as possible. By
observing them, one cannot tell if they know any more than what they look that they do, and also, one must believe, is that the crows know that they are being watched, and this must, in some way, affect their behavior.
So often, it seemed, as I was watching the looting and the rioting on the streets from the eye of a camera, the camera had a way of drawing things to it. I know this isn't the case, but it seems as though, or seemed as though, the camera brought attention to the whole event on a scale so small that all that could be seen was a city with no mind in block-square patches; people so bewildered, confused and giddy with the concept of change, that their giddiness transcended to a state of mindless drunkenness on anger itself. The eyes of the helicopters over the city were better than the eyes of the people on the ground, with lenses to amplify their field and depth of view, while minimizing the impact and drilling home the details. The news people who controlled the helicopters were telling the firemen where to go, and they went, and put out fires.
I think the fires disturbed me a great deal more than a lot of the other things. I've always know fires to be started either by the careless or the calculating. Okay, check this one out!
A guy carrying gasoline goes into a building looted of its wares, pours his gasoline, turns to a friend, and asks, *Say, man, do you have a match?:

There is no punch line.

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What strikes me, even still, about the riots, all these years later is that for so many days, nobody >did< anything other than destroy.

Anyhoo.. That's what I wrote back then, if it's any help.

Answer 2

I remember being concerned that the violence would spread. I lived in Southern California and it was interesting to observe the fear that spread throughout the region. I remember watching on TV the burning, the looting and the general lawlessness that occurred. The riots were not just about Rodney King, it was about the tensions that existed in the communities. The general feeling by the community that they were being discriminated against by a racist police department.

I think that the press should have reported the acquittal differently and not have sensationalized the story. I think the police department should have come forth and indicated that racism in the department would not be tolerated and have established a better forum for the community to express their concerns and grievances. As for the riots themselves, the failure of the National Guard to regain the streets was mainly because their equipment was under lock and key and it took way too long for them to get the access. There should have been a better system for getting the National Guard in there, properly equipped.

The zero police presence was a good thing, the police were seen as the enemy there. The National Guard on the other hand was more of the every day guy, putting order back in place. I think the idea of a NG team with a police officer to help identify and enforce the law would have been best.

Answer 3

What I remember is that the city leaders said they were not prepared because they had no idea that the verdict would cause trouble. I lived on the other side of the country and I knew the moment I heard it that there was going to be major problems. The response of government officials varied from out of touch to incompetent at all levels. Given the situation, leaving the police on the streets would have been an invitation to murder. I lived in a neighborhood that rioted in 1968 after Martin Luther King was killed. We did not see any police until after the army arrived.

Answer 4

For one thing they did not have the time to reorganize and contain, as occurred in the Watts riots.

Answer 5

yet once you seem on the streets it wasn't approximately Rodney King its this focked up challenge and those focked up police its approximately coming up and staying on perfect and screaming ONE 8 SEVEN on a mom focking cop