The la riots were one of the biggest events to happen in history which took place in Los Angeles California. People were angry about the Rodney king trial. Rodney king, born on April 2 1965 born in Sacramento California was in a high-speed chase on march 3, 1991. When he finally stopped, and was pulled over the police men pulled him out of the car and started beating him really badly when he was finally caught by a Los Angeles police. He got a brutal beating while a nearby amateur camera man by the name of George Holliday caught it all on video tape.
Four Los Angeles police officers were involved in this case of Mr. king’s beating. The four L. A. P. D officers that was involved in the case were indicted and charged with assault of a deadly weapon and excessive use of force by a police officer. But not too long after the beating a three months’ trial just resulted to an allwhite jury acquitting the officers. The was the initial spark of the LA riots. After all these years from slavery until now, people got tired of being pushed around and having not much justice.
It’s been happening for too long and people were just tired of protest and having rallies like from the old days. For example, the last thing that happen in California was the riots back in 1965. An African American motorist by the name of Marquette Frye was pulled over on suspicions of drunk driving in a watt’s neighborhood by a officer by the name of Lee W. Minikus a white patrol man. A roadside argument broke out and escalated into a fight by the extra police and the extra people that gathered as the situation escalated, and the community responded in outrage to allegations of police brutality.
This event was called the watts riot also known as the Watts rebellion which lasted form august 11 to august 16 1965. This riot resulted in more than forty million dollars in property damaged. The Watts rebellion left 34 people dead and over 1,000 injured. For several days rioters looted varies stored burned and overturn cars and buildings bringing chaos to the streets. It got so bad to the point where national guards were mobilized the California streets to tame the problem. There’s a difference in between the generations that riot versus the earlier generations that use to do peaceful protests.
The generations from the 1960’s on up wasn’t having it the seen their people suffer through the civil rights movement so much and been doing peaceful nonviolent protest so much to the point that they felt like the only way is to end police brutality is of the actually fought back. That was the mindset of a lot of those people going through it at that time. So, they were doing what they felt like they had to do in order for equality. The la riots started on April 29 1992 and LA hasn’t been the same since. It was the biggest riot to hit California.
The whole city was in chaos from people being beaten to death to people being in shoot outs with store owners in the area where looting was getting out of hand. A lot of things where getting burned fired and smoke everywhere from houses to business to cars. People were going in to stores that were previously broken into by looters before them. Lots of people who weren’t black was stopped in the middle of the roads while getting rocks and bricks from rundown buildings thrown through their window at them. People were getting beaten then robbed after without any explanation as to why they were getting treated so badly.
The streets were not safe at all at this time to be out so a lot of families trying to avoid it had to stay in hiding. One of the biggest things that took place during the L. A. riot is the incident with the trucker driver. A delivery man by the name of Larry Tarvin was on his way to make a delivery for his company he works for. He was coming down Florence avenue with load of medical supplies and then he gets stopped at a red light at Normandie, then he gets ambushed by a group of African American men that was standing in the road terrorizing the streets and was pulled out of this boxy white truck and beaten, icked, stomped on, and he was also beaten badly with a fire extinguisher that was snatched from his car .
After the guys were done beating him they then looted his delivery truck as he laid there bleeding in the road. He was beaten so bad it took him a whole three months to recover from the incident. He later started doing his job again being a truck driver for an air freight company. This riot didn’t stop some people from closing down their business.
A Korean business owner by the name of Kee Whan Ha armed himself and his employees of his business called Korea town. Him and his fellow business owners adapted to what was going on in the streets by arming their selves at all time during the riot. They wasn’t backing down to no one and put up a good fight during shootouts with looters who were trying to rob them. They would shoot in the air at first to scare the looters off but if that doesn’t work they would have protect the property at all cost.
Another thing the L. A. riots brought throughout the process was bringing people together during the time when it was needed. The African American race came together during this time especially at a time like this when you have gangs and the crime and violence between them that just started to surface to the media and the drugs on the streets was really bad at that time too but gang violence mostly. In gang’s people are taught to only represent the one that they are in and not show any love or compassion to the other gangs in the area.
Territory, drugs and women play a big part in gang violence. For example, bloods and Crips are the two main gangs in the area terrorizing the streets and they both are dominantly black gangs in the area. Also, though during this time there is a change in their perspective when the L. A. riots starts to take place in their community. Usually they have so much hate for each other that they end up killing each other most of the time but when the riots start the violence between the two gangs start to slow down.
The decided to put their differences aside because they see a bigger problem going on that affects and harms everyone including them. So, the Crips and bloods calla truce between them while these riots were going and that not the only thing. Also, this was a big moment in time where police brutality was talked about in hip hop by artist such as Tupac, N. W. A, and KRS1 who involved their music highly with police brutality and has dealt with run ins with the cops during their life.
The L. A riots change the city forever but it showed that if something wrong is done repeatedly eventually it will end in disaster. the riot over five days of spring in 1992 listed more than fifty people dead and more than 2,000 iniured, which was more that the Watts rebellion. The rioting also destroyed or damaged over 1,000 buildings in the area. The estimate cost of the damage was over 1 billion dollars. To gain order back from the chaos in the L. A. streets there was a dispatch of 9,800 national guard soldiers to L. A.
