As I sit safely in my living room watching the current Summer 2020 protests and riots, I am reminded that I’ve seen this before in the 1992 L.A. Riots. We are very fortunate that the riots today are more peaceful and civil than L.A. was 28 years ago. Well, they are as of today. Time will tell what happens as they seem to still be ongoing…
Right: Truck crashed into
burnt and looted store.
The protests started peacefully as a march against the court ruling that acquitted four police officers of the vicious beating of Rodney King, a black man at a traffic stop after a prolonged car chase. Mr. King was hit 56 times with batons and he kept attempting to get up after each blow, so the beating continued. What made this event so different from previous violent traffic stops was that George Holliday, who lived across the road from where the stop happened, filmed the whole incident from his balcony with a camcorder – a fairly new device at the time. He gave a copy of the tape to a local TV station and it was played repeatedly with it quickly going viral globally.
Shortly after the verdict was read out, protests started near downtown L.A. Looting soon started in other areas, mostly South Central. This quickly spread into nearby communities, including Koreatown where ethnic tensions between Blacks and Koreans were already high due to a fatal shooting of a fifteen year-old black girl by a Korean shopkeeper the year before. Over the course of the six day rioting period, we saw looting and damage extend out towards Long Beach, into the north end of the Valley and towards West L.A. including heavy damage to Hollywood.
Although the then protest and looting map differs slightly to todays and the amount of looting today is much less, the two events are similar in many ways. What we luckily aren’t seeing in today’s tensions are all the arson, violence, blind racial attacks, and shootings we saw in 1992.
I remember looking from my balcony and seeing multiple plumes of smoke coming from the East as multiple fires had been started. By the second night, the arson and looting had spread from South Central heading into more middle class areas. Most stores and shops had closed early and this may have made them easier targets. There were 300-400 fires each night for the first few days and the fire department couldn’t cope. They made announcements that certain fires would be allowed to burn so they could concentrate on other fires they thought they would have a better chance at controlling.
Local citizens tried to fight fires on their own as they had no official help. Many businesses painted “Black Owned” on their storefronts in hope that they wouldn’t be attacked, but this backfired as numerious non-black owned businesses had done this as well. Some fireman and paramedics were attacked, so the authorities changed to only dispatching them with a police escort. This greatly hampered the firefighter’s efforts. The City imposed a dusk to dawn curfew, most public transport was stopped, the sale of ammunition was banned, and gasoline/petrol could only be sold in larger quantities into a vehicle. No small sales or sales into a gas/petrol can were allowed to prevent its use in arson.
The most shocking element of the riots was the blind racial attacks. A few hours after the acquittal was announced, Reginald Denny was driving his truck making a delivery. He was stopped at a light in South Central when he was pulled from his truck and severally beaten by a group of blacks. The whole incident was filmed by a news helicopter who described the attack on air. The on-air report prompted a local resident to come to his rescue and drive him to a nearby hospital.
It turned out the local police were told not to respond to calls in this neighbourhood, which created a lawless zone. With the lack of any police response, the emboldened mob and pulled several people from cars, mostly just damaging or stealing the cars. Mr Denny was the first real attack of the riot.
Attacks like this were repeated over the next few days, eventually contributing to a death toll of 63 for the riots. Just to mention a few: Fidel Lopez, a Guatemalan immigrant who was pulled from his truck, beaten and robbed, with parts of his body spray painted black. He was luckily rescued by a local Reverend. Matthew Haines and his nephew were pulled off their motorcycle, beaten and shot. The nephew survived but Mr Haines sadly didn’t. And lastly, Howard Epstein who lived in northern California. He caught a flight that morning to L.A. to check on his metal manufacturing business. A truck pulled alongside his car and a shot rang out. He was hit and his car careened into a parking lot where a crowd formed. Someone checked on him and when announced that the dead man was white, the crowd cheered. His briefcase, phone, camera and pistol were promptly stolen.
There was so much anger over discrimination, racial inequality, police brutality against minorities and the acquittal was just the last straw. Without any social media available, there was no outlet for the anger and the violence quickly spilled out into the streets.
Left: Anti-Police graffitti.
To have the riots, looting or racial attacks happen on their own would be bad, but to have them all occurring simultaneously was truly shocking to most people.
There were several shelters set up for those who were too scared or unable to go home. And most people were scared. There was a feeling of lawlessness that I don’t feel today. Many people, especially the elderly, felt helpless. Some even described this as akin to being raped.
Even with this lawlessness, my brother and I wanted to go in and see for ourselves. We wanted to help out and I was hoping to get some pictures of the aftermath. I will post a few of mine along with one from Douglas C. Pizac, who captured a haunting moment (at the top).
Right: National Guardsmen and heli-
copter protecting strip mall stores.
After things died down, people did rush in to help. They drove in from distant parts of the city with brooms, shovels, and garbage/bin bags to help with the clean-up. There was a feeling of hopefulness that things would get better – that maybe we could work on the problem of discrimination and improve the social injustice. Sadly, like the 1965 Watts Riots, the energy and will to change things petered out far too soon. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again today.