The LA Riots, 25 years ago this week

[cfbandyman]

9/11 and OKC bombing (which there is a good documentary on Netflix about it) are the two things in my mind are most there. I would be too young to remember the riots. I also remember the white ford bronco of OJ, but not really knowing the meaning other than like everyone talking about.

[Cartierfor3]

From my youth, Columbine is the news story that probably impacted me the most.

[SdK]

9/11 for me. We sat in the library, the senior class, and watched the news all day.

[star seed 7]

From my youth, Columbine is the news story that probably impacted me the most.

Yup, 9/11, columbine, and then in college I was super interested in the DC sniper. Probably the closest I've ever followed a news story as it was happening.

[chum1]

what failure by gates/lapd are you referring to?

All of them! But mostly large scale. Their significant contribution toward creating an environment that would cause people to want to riot.

that's a tough one.  i think you have to look a lot higher up the food chain than the LAPD.  they're an easy target, for sure.  but imo in my opinion, imo, they didn't create the environment at all.  they were players in the game but this crap goes well beyond daryl gates and i don't think he could have done a thing to prevent the riots. he got paid to protect the neighborhoods that he and his superiors lived in and frequented and that's what they did.  watts burned just fine in the 60's without any help from dg.

i'm not trying to say that i don't think that the lapd wasn't complicit but gates and the lapd didn't sit on that jury in simi valley and deliver the verdict

America being America led to the riots.

There are lots of contributing factors to a riot in any city. Police are one. The degree to which the police are a contributing factor varies. The LAPD had a relatively high degree of contribution.

DG's mentor was chief during Watts and it was the same crap.

[Gooch]

The Showtime doc I referenced earlier spelled it out pretty good. The indictment on Gates was that he could have gone in sooner and probably squashed the riot before it really got going but did not cause he wanted to show people what it would be like without his police force doing what they do in the hood.

As for Gates he was a protege of the previous Chief that was a giant racist douche. That is why after the riots when Gates was pushed out they went outside the department for a new chief. The Mayor and Council felt that the entire force was so corrupt that they had to go outside.

[cfbandyman]

From my youth, Columbine is the news story that probably impacted me the most.

Oh yeah, forgot that one. Shouldn't have forgot it but alas i did 

[pissclams]

The Showtime doc I referenced earlier spelled it out pretty good. The indictment on Gates was that he could have gone in sooner and probably squashed the riot before it really got going but did not cause he wanted to show people what it would be like without his police force doing what they do in the hood.

As for Gates he was a protege of the previous Chief that was a giant racist douche. That is why after the riots when Gates was pushed out they went outside the department for a new chief. The Mayor and Council felt that the entire force was so corrupt that they had to go outside.

whether or not gates could have slowed the riots is not really an indictment that the riots were his fault.  racial tension in los angeles and across the country had come to a boiling point and were going to release eventually.  the rioters weren't going after koreans and vice versa because of daryl gates and the lapd. 

[chum1]

A big indictment of Gates and the LAPD is all of the talk about them from the black community in relation to the cause of the riot. Those people are not just making things up, looking for a scapegoat. They know why they are outraged.

I get the impression that the LAPD was quite a bit worse than average in areas like racial discrimination and excessive force. But even if all police departments were equally bad, the LAPD could still be blameworthy.

[nicname]

Roger Guenveur Smith's spoken word "Rodney King" on Netflix is very good. Takes a little getting used to at first, but hard to turn away from once he gets going.

[MakeItRain]

Saying the riots were the effect of America being America bails LA out on two very crucial things the city did very wrongly, both rooted in the 40s through the 60s. The first was the housing discrimination crisis and the second was how Gates' mentor viewed blacks and Hispanics who were victims of the housing discrimination. They pushed all of the Mexican migrants and blacks moving into LA to escape the Jim Crow South. William Parker was an awful racist and he ran the department that way and it continued under Darryl Gates. The neighbourhoods that backs and Mexicans were crammed into weren't policed, they were treated like occupations. This is what Parker said about the influx of blacks into LA.

"They came in and flooded a community that wasn't prepared to meet them, despite the fact that we got all this relief money going in there," Parker said. "We didn't ask these people to come here."

[pissclams]

LA 92 on national gel at 10 tonight is pretty good

[I_have_purplewood]

LA 92 on national gel at 10 tonight is pretty good

Just watched and it was very good.  I don't remember the Korean's arming themselves to protect their shops like they did.  Crazy.