When 911 calls about the violence started coming in, police were not deployed immediately. "There were four cops in each car that passed by," Barnett told NPR in 1992. Barnett, her boyfriend and the two strangers shoved Denny back into his truck and drove him to the hospital, which saved his life.
#Riot civil unrest beat 15 m driver
She and her boyfriend - along with two other strangers, all African-American - helped rescue a white truck driver named Reginald Denny, who was beaten viciously by gang members who were rioting and had pulled Denny out of his truck at about 6:45 p.m. The riots first began at an intersection in South Los Angeles - Florence and Normandie - according to news reports and firsthand accounts in the last 25 years.Ī car burns as looters take to the streets at the intersection of Florence and Normandie avenues - considered the flashpoint of the LA riots - on April 29, 1992.īystander Terri Barnett was at Florence and Normandie that first night and remembers watching the cops drive right by rioters without stopping. "LAPD didn't even feel it was necessary to distinguish between pruning out a suspected criminal where they had probable cause to stop and just stopping African-American judges and senators and prominent athletes and celebrities simply because they were driving nice cars."
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"It was an open campaign to suppress and contain the black community," she says. "What we had was aggressive paramilitary policing with a culture that was mean and cruel, racist and abusive of force in communities of color, particularly poor communities of color," Rice says in an interview with NPR's Grigsby Bates. The LAPD at the time was almost an occupying force, particularly biased against people of color, says lawyer and civil rights activist Connie Rice. John Gaps III, David Longstreath/AP Ted Soqui/Corbis via Getty Images Armed National Guard soldiers (bottom) hold a line at a post office in South Central after the post office suspended mail delivery due to rioting. A National Guardsman (right) at a gas station near Vermont Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard. An LAPD officer (left) takes aim at a looter in a market at Alvarado and Beverly Boulevard. Police flooded the streets on April 30 as riots continued. African-Americans said they did not feel protected during times of need, but instead reported being harassed without cause. The incident heightened tensions between Koreans and African-Americans, and intensified the black community's frustration with the criminal justice system.Īt the same time, the community's anger was also deepening against Los Angeles police. The store owner received probation and a $500 fine. It was later discovered Harlins was clutching money to pay for the juice when she was killed. Tension had already been mounting in the neighborhood in the years leading up to the riots: the unemployment rate was about 50 percent, a drug epidemic was ravaging the area, and gang activity and violent crime were high.Īnother contributing factor: The same month as Rodney King's beating, a Korean store owner in South Los Angeles shot and killed a 15-year-old African-American girl named Latasha Harlins, who was accused of trying to steal orange juice. At the time, more than half of the population there was black. The reaction to the acquittal in South Central Los Angeles - now known just as South Los Angeles - was particularly violent. The remains of a commercial building smoulders as another building burns out of control behind the smoke in Los Angeles early on the morning of April 30, 1992. That what we thought was open and shut was really 'a reasonable expression of police control' toward a black motorist." "And yet, we saw a verdict that told us we couldn't trust our lying eyes. It seemed compelling," he says of the videotape. "There was ocular proof of what happened. My jaw dropped," says Jody David Armour, a criminal justice and law professor at the University of Southern California. "When the verdict came out, it was a stunner for people coast to coast.
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It ignited a national conversation about racial and economic disparity and police use of force that continues today.
#Riot civil unrest beat 15 m trial
The photo is one of three introduced into evidence by the prosecution in the trial of four LAPD officers in a Simi Valley, Calif., courtroom in 1992.įury over the acquittal - stoked by years of racial and economic inequality in the city - spilled over into the streets, resulting in five days of rioting in Los Angeles. This photo of Rodney King was taken on March 6, 1991, three days after police officers beat him savagely.