The Thin Blue Line

Riots erupt­ed in South Cen­tral Los Ange­les Wednes­day after­noon, April 29, 1992, when a jury found four LAPD offi­cers not guilty of assault­ing Rod­ney King. Vio­lence ruled the night and con­tin­ued into Thurs­day morn­ing when I arrived at my office at Lath­am & Watkins on the 43^rdfloor of a down­town sky­scraper. My office win­dow offered an unob­struct­ed view of LA’s south side. I count­ed sev­en­teen spires of smoke curl­ing into the sky from burn­ing build­ings. The con­flict was five miles away, so I thought it posed no risk to our loca­tion. I was wrong.

The event that led to the riots occurred a year ear­li­er, on the night of March 3, 1991. Cal­i­for­nia High­way Patrol offi­cers attempt­ed to stop Rod­ney King for speed­ing. He tried to out­run them. The CHP gave chase and LAPD patrol cars joined the pursuit.

Most of the offi­cers were white. King was black.

The police forced King off the road in the Lake View Ter­race dis­trict. He resist­ed arrest. The LAPD offi­cers tasered him and knocked him to the ground.

At that point a local res­i­dent, George Hol­l­i­day, began film­ing the action with a Sony Handy­cam from his apart­ment bal­cony. The tape begins with King on the ground. He gets up and tries to run. The offi­cers knock him down, cir­cle him, and club him with batons, land­ing 40 to 50 hard blows.

Hol­l­i­day sent the tape to a tele­vi­sion sta­tion. Media out­lets all over the world picked it up and played it repeat­ed­ly. Pho­tos of King’s injuries also went viral.

The dis­trict attor­ney charged four LAPD offi­cers with assault and use of exces­sive force. In response to a change of venue motion, the court moved the case to Simi Val­ley. The jury pool in LA would have includ­ed a large minor­i­ty pop­u­la­tion. Simi Val­ley was a pre­dom­i­nant­ly white community.

The tri­al began in March, 1992, with a jury of nine whites and three minori­ties, no blacks. The pros­e­cu­tion relied heav­i­ly on the tape. Sur­pris­ing­ly, the defense relied on it, too, play­ing it in slow motion, frame-by frame, as an expert wit­ness tes­ti­fied that King’s move­ments jus­ti­fied each baton blow.

Court TV broad­cast the tri­al live.

Racial ten­sion in LA was at the break­ing point when the court announced the not guilty ver­dicts on Wednes­day, April 29, at 3:15 p.m.

One of my friends at Lath­am was try­ing a case in Ingle­wood that after­noon. Wor­ried about a vio­lent reac­tion to the King ver­dict, the judge in his case adjourned the pro­ceed­ings ear­ly. On my friend’s way to the free­way, he drove through the inter­sec­tion of Flo­rence and Nor­mandie in South Cen­tral about 4:30 p.m. He may have been one of the last motorists to pass through unharmed.

A few min­utes lat­er, LAPD offi­cers attempt­ed to arrest a man who had thrown rocks at their car near there. They were quick­ly sur­round­ed by an angry crowd. Oth­er offi­cers arrived at the scene. The crowd threw rocks and bot­tles at them and they retreat­ed to a bus sta­tion twen­ty blocks away.

Sev­er­al men then robbed Tom’s Liquor Store at that inter­sec­tion, shout­ing, “This is for Rod­ney King.” They passed out liquor bot­tles to oth­ers on the street, and they began pulling peo­ple out of cars and beat­ing them.

News heli­copters flew to the inter­sec­tion and filmed the may­hem. Of the many vio­lent inci­dents, the most graph­ic was a live broad­cast of riot­ers drag­ging a truck dri­ver, Regi­nald Den­ny, from his rig, knock­ing him to the ground, stomp­ing him, beat­ing him with a claw ham­mer, and smash­ing his head in with a con­crete block.

Some of Latham’s staff mem­bers lived in South Cen­tral. They were afraid to go home Wednes­day evening, so we set them up to spend the night in the offices.

The riots con­tin­ued through the night. The vio­lence remained focused in South Cen­tral, so most every­one at Lath­am came to work Thurs­day morn­ing, wor­ried but not yet alarmed about our per­son­al safety.

By mid-morn­ing I was alarmed. The smoke plumes out­side my win­dow had mul­ti­plied, and they were creep­ing toward downtown.

Lath­am employed more than 200 attor­neys and hun­dreds of staff employ­ees in LA. I was the Man­ag­ing Part­ner of that office. It was my respon­si­bil­i­ty to decide whether to shut down and send every­one home. I hes­i­tat­ed, wor­ried about turn­ing off the bill­able-hours spig­ot on 200 big-time attor­neys when I didn’t know for sure the riots would reach our build­ing, but when the fires came with­in a mile of us, I pulled the trig­ger and announced a closure.

The staff bolt­ed for the doors. Most of the attor­neys packed up and got out, too, but some of them want­ed to stay and work. I went door to door, urg­ing them to leave, cit­ing Regi­nald Den­ny as Exhib­it A. Every­one even­tu­al­ly vacat­ed the office.

When I drove out of down­town at 2:00 p.m., the streets were clear. Two hours lat­er, the riot­ers over­ran our loca­tion. I sent a mes­sage to all LA per­son­nel clos­ing the office Fri­day and through the weekend.

That night, the riots spread to Hol­ly­wood and the west side. Fri­day, the vio­lence remained unchecked and out of control.

I was scared. In most of the tele­vised cov­er­age, the police were nowhere to be seen. I didn’t know how to pro­tect my family.

A Lath­am attor­ney, who lived in my neigh­bor­hood, drove his fam­i­ly 50 miles north and checked into a motel. My wife and I didn’t want to aban­don our home unless we had no oth­er choice. They’re attack­ing busi­ness­es, not res­i­dences, I told myself. At least so far.

In Korea Town, news cam­eras filmed shop own­ers tak­ing mat­ters into their own hands, stand­ing on rooftops with rifles, fir­ing down on the street. From my hunt­ing days in Vir­ginia, I had a shot­gun and a rifle in the attic. I cleaned them up, propped them by the front door, then sat on the steps star­ing at them, won­der­ing if I’d gone as crazy as the rioters.

The LAPD tried to regain con­trol Fri­day, mak­ing over a thou­sand arrests, but the riots raged on with­out skip­ping a beat.

Gov­er­nor Wil­son sent in the Nation­al Guard and Pres­i­dent Bush deployed Marines. Com­bat troops in mil­i­tary vehi­cles rolled down the street a half-block from our house.

The sol­diers restored order and brought the riots to a close on Monday.

The cost was stag­ger­ing: 63 peo­ple dead, 2383 injured, over one bil­lion dol­lars in prop­er­ty damage.

Legions of com­mis­sions and ana­lysts have stud­ied the riots since 1992, but the caus­es were clear from the out­set. Too many LAPD offi­cers used exces­sive force with impuni­ty back then. The bil­ly-club­bing of Rod­ney King was a prod­uct of that cul­ture. It went beyond the point of overkill. The jury ver­dict denied the unde­ni­able and lit a pow­der keg of pent-up anger foment­ed by decades of racism and relent­less pover­ty in South Central.

A cold hol­low place opened in the pit of my stom­ach as I wrote this post. It took me back to that help­less feel­ing of 25 years ago. I’d heard of the thin blue line before 1992, but the riots taught me what it means. The bar­ri­er between anar­chy and civ­i­lized soci­ety is thin. Law enforce­ment guards that line. With­out the police, order breaks down and all hell breaks loose. You can try to run from the chaos or you can try to fight it from the rooftops with rifles, but noth­ing real­ly works.

Bad cops must be removed, but the good ones, who are the vast major­i­ty, deserve our respect and sup­port. With­out them, no one is safe.

 

Post Script: LA paid Rod­ney King 3.8 mil­lion dol­lars in dam­ages. Hav­ing strug­gled with drug and alco­hol addic­tion all his life, he drowned in his swim­ming pool while intox­i­cat­ed in 2012. He was 47.

Regi­nald Denny’s skull was frac­tured in 91 places. He didn’t receive a dime for his injuries. The men who attacked him didn’t have any mon­ey and he lost a law­suit against LA. Despite years of ther­a­py, at the age of 63 his speech and motor skills remain impaired.

The U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment pros­e­cut­ed LAPD Offi­cers Stacey Koon and Lau­rence Pow­ell for vio­lat­ing King’s civ­il rights. They were con­vict­ed in 1993 and sen­tenced to 30 months in prison.