The L.A. Riots, 20 Years Later [Voices]

“No, no, we’re together today,” the anonymous Crip said, letting him and his fellow Bloods go about their business. Everyone wanted his share, and no one wanted to die. When would a chance like this come along again?

- Matthew DeLuca, The Daily Beast

Koreatown residents attempt to defend their neighborhood. Courtesy: Los Angeles Times.

Courtesy: Sacramento Bee

King was horrified. He was horrified by the verdict, which he watched on TV from his room at the Radisson in Studio City, told by his own legal team, he says, not to show up in court, ever, let alone testify. And he was horrified by the rioting that erupted hours later, though he admits in his memoir that he was also kind of gratified.“For the first few hours, before I heard about anyone getting killed or even hurt yet, I felt a certain vindication,” King writes. “I believed I was witnessing the simple fact that other people were mad as hell about the verdict.”

Any sense of satisfaction was eradicated the moment King saw a 36-year-old white truck driver named Reginald Denny dragged from his cab and beaten by four young black men. Unlike King’s assault, Denny’s was caught by live news cameras, and a local man who saw it unfolding on TV raced out of his house and stopped the attack; his name was Bobby Green Jr., and he was unarmed and black.

Everything about the absurdity of race relations in a post-Civil Rights America was distilled in that one day, and 72 hours later, as L.A. burned, King was asked by his lawyers and the LAPD to make a public statement. King agreed, and when he arrived at the press conference, he was presented with a prepared statement, four pages total.

“I took one look at those pages,” King writes, “and said ‘F–k that.’”

Instead, he made the heartfelt and confused plea that later became a punchline of the ‘90s: “People, I just want to say, Can we all get along? Can we all get along?”

- Maureen Callahan, New York Post

Courtesy: Austin Chronicle

In the aftermath, much of the blame was placed on Police Chief Daryl Gates, who resigned under pressure soon after.

Before the uprising, Gates had been hailed in national police circles as an innovator, helping to pioneer both the modern police special weapons and tactics team and the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program.

Until his death in 2010, he angrily defended his actions, accusing his officers of failing to carry out a plan he said was in place to stop any trouble.

“The captain, lieutenant, deputy chiefs, commanders — they all screwed up in my judgment,” Gates, who had been chief for 14 years, said in 2002.

After the riot, a number of reforms were instituted, including limiting a police chief to a maximum of two five-year terms. Stricter guidelines in the way the LAPD investigates civilian complaints and disciplines its officers were also implemented after both federal officials and an independent review board concluded the department had for years been guilty of a pattern of civil rights abuses.

Anger toward the department as a whole is less intense now. Violent crime fell citywide by 76 percent between 1992 and 2010, according to city police statistics.

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