L.A. Marks Anniversary Of Riots
It was ten years ago today that five days of riots - the worst in the 20th century - broke out in Los Angeles, sparked by outrage over the 1992 acquittal of four police officers charged in the beating of black motorist Rodney King.
President Bush joined residents marking the solemn anniversary at ceremonies in South Central Los Angeles, the neighborhood where the riots began.
The violence, arson and looting spread from South Central to Koreatown and Hollywood and even threatened the posh enclaves of Beverly Hills, leaving 54 people dead, more than 1,100 buildings destroyed or damaged, some $1 billion in property damage and the city's image in tatters.
"Can we all get along?" Rodney King asked tearfully, pleading at the height of the rioting for the violence to stop. Ten years later, the answer to that question depends largely on whom you ask.
Mr. Bush told a revival-like meeting of black, white, Latino and Korean-American Californians he aims to follow their model for turning despair into hope.
"My job as the president is to rally the spirit of the nation," the president said Monday at a church hall about five miles from the flash point of the riots.
Careful to avoid the word "riot," he drew parallels between the rebuilding in Los Angeles and the spirit of harmony nationwide after Sept. 11.
"I fully understand that 10 years ago this city — because there was some violence, a lot of violence — saw incredible destruction in lives and property," Bush said.
"And yet out of this violence and ugliness came new hope ... to show the rest of the country what is possible, what can happen in America when people put aside differences and focus on what's best for all."
Offering himself as a "humble sinner" to the murmurs and raised hands of the faithful, Bush emphasized the softer side of his agenda.
"Oh, I know there's pockets of despair, that just means we've got to work harder. It means we can't quit, it means we've got to rout it out with love and compassion and decency," he said.
"It's like trying to turn around a major cruise liner," acknowledged the irrepressibly optimistic black businessman John Bryant, who at the age of 26 formed Operation HOPE to help revitalize his devastated community. "You turn the wheel, and slowly the rest will follow."
An opinion poll published last week to mark the anniversary showed guarded optimism among Angelenos with nearly three-quarters of those asked saying that ethnic groups were getting along well, compared to one-third in 1997. But what researchers called a "shocking" 50 percent thought another riot was likely in the next five years.
"Residents feel upbeat about many aspects of life in this city," said Mara Marks author of the Study of Los Angeles poll. "But they understand that it would only take a spark to turn the city upside down again."
Despite reforms to make the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) more ethnically diverse and more accountable to public complaints, and a myriad of grass-roots initiatives to foster investment in the devastated heart of the riot area, other commentators take a much bleaker view.
"Los Angeles is just as racially divided as it was 10 years ago. The income gap between rich and poor is even larger now than then," said Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, an expert in city government and law at the University of Southern California.
"We still have a disproportionate number of African-American and Latino men behind bars. I think that so much of what gave rise to the violence of 10 years ago is still there," he said.
Recovery, redevelopment and renewal in the blighted streets of South Central Los Angeles has been patchy, complicated by political squabbling and a rapidly changing ethnic mix. The black community there has shrunk by 15 percent in a decade while Latinos now form 83 percent of the area.
A glitzy new shopping center, the largest commercial development in south Los Angeles for 10 years, opened last year bringing 600 local jobs and a Starbucks - whose exotic coffees epitomize hip middle-class American life - to the area.
Projects like Operation HOPE, and FAME - the development arm of the influential First African Methodist Episcopal Methodist Church, where President Bush will speak today - have helped low-income families buy their own homes, encouraged small businesses and taught local entrepreneurs business skills and financial planning.
The Rev. Leonard Jackson, minister of community outreach at First AME, stressed the importance of working with groups other than blacks. "The only way to be successful is to form partnerships with Hispanic and Korean communities," he said.
Despite success stories like the new multiplex movie theater opened in 1995 by former basketball star turned businessman Earvin "Magic" Johnson in partnership with Sony Pictures, long stretches of streets a mile away are still scarred by empty lots, boarded-up shops, broken sidewalks and too many youths bypassed by the economic miracle of the 1990s.
The LAPD has now been brought more firmly under civilian control. Chief Bernard Parks, the second African-American to head the LAPD, diversified the 9,000 force which now has 1,300 black officers, 3,000 Latinos, 800 Asians and 2,000 women.
Parks caused dissent in the ranks by insisting that every complaint by the public against officers be thoroughly investigated - a stance that led in part to his failure earlier this month to win a second term.
The battle over Parks' future reopened ethnic divisions, with the black community, black city councilors and black churchmen lining up behind Parks in what they saw as racism on behalf of the white mayor and the police commission.
Chemerinsky, author of a report on the LAPD in the wake of a 1999 corruption scandal in the Latino immigrant Rampart neighborhood, said further police reforms were needed.
"This is a department that exalts 'Dirty Harry' and shuns 'Serpico'. This is a department still where they want macho tough guy cops even if it means an excess of force," he said.