LA Burning

In 1991, Rodney King had his first press-worthy run in with the law and it was certainly memorable. The California Highway Patrol attempted to stop him for traffic violations including suspected Driving Under the Influence and he wouldn’t comply. As he came into LA, our cops took over and ended up using force, a lot of which was captured on video and aired around the world.

While there were unreported factors that should have come into play, no one can argue that we (LAPD) looked anything but bad.

So in 1992 when the cops who were involved and had been brought to trial were acquitted by a jury that heard ALL the evidence, there was a great hue and cry in the southland. It all started at Normandie and Florence in South Los Angeles and at least partly because LAPD was totally unprepared to take any action and because of constant live news coverage (which really fans the flames in these kinds of situations) these disturbances quickly spread and were immediately out of control.

The afternoon the verdicts were handed down, I and several other motorcycle officers were at Central Traffic Division and about to go off duty. When we heard the verdicts, the consensus was “let’s get out of here while the getting is good.”

That night I worked an off-duty job at Dodger Stadium and Cathy paged me a couple of times and told me that Parker Center was under siege and that the Harbor Freeway was locked down. I also received word that the Department was mobilized meaning we were going to 12 hours on and 12 hours off shifts and that I was due in at 6:00 AM.

The next morning as I rode to work I could see numerous columns of smoke rising into the sky all over LA. The next morning there was only one but it was huge. The whole City seemed to be under one gigantic column of smoke.

When the Department finally figured out what to do with us, we were assigned by squads to escort fire trucks throughout the City. The trucks would go to a fire and spray some water from their on-board water canon and then move on. At one point we were sent to the station at 108th and Main because it was being evacuated and its equipment and personnel being moved. So we got them loaded up and set off to their next destination. At 108th and Broadway, one of our officer’s motorcycles died. The quick decision from our squad leader was to leave the officer and one partner behind and send them help as soon as we could. There was an angry crowd of thirty to fifty people right there and we knew we weren’t going to leave these guys by themselves with only one functioning motorcycle, so four of us stopped. We used cord cuff restraints, nylon ropes used to hog-tie violent suspects (only we don’t write it that way) to tow the dead motorcycle out of danger then we all caught up with our squad. Our squad leader was trying to be upset at us for not following orders but his heart wasn’t in it because he knew we did the right thing.

The riots lasted several days and millions of dollars worth of property was stolen or destroyed. It was hell on earth and I really hated to see it happen. And if this makes any sense, since it did happen I was really glad to have been a part of it.