Racism is one of the ugliest aspects (if not indeed the ugliest aspect) of life in, and the history of, the United States. This is especially true among the African-American community with respect to dealing with law enforcement officers who are almost invariably White. Los Angeles is one city that has had an especially ugly history, especially with respect to the 1965 Watts riots. But on April 29, 1992, when four LAPD officers were acquitted in the early 1991 beating of motorist Rodney King, which was videotaped by a resident in Lakeview Terrace, the City of Angels exploded with even more ultra-violent results. The 1992 riots, which were widespread over the entire city, lasted for five days, resulting in sixty-three deaths, nearly 2400 injuries, 11,000 arrests, and property damage of over a billion dollars. In April 2017, the 25th anniversary of the riots, National Geographic TV documented the horrific events in the made-for-TV documentary "LA 92".
In all too vivid and graphic detail, filmmakers Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin detail the build-up to the 1992 riots, which actually had their roots in what happened in 1965. A pull-over of two black men by two white CHP cops at the intersection of 116th Street and Avalon Boulevard in Watts that resulted in those men getting beaten up sparked that particular uprising. But relations between the African-American community and the largely White corps of the Los Angeles Police Department would never fully be mended after 1965; and in many ways, both subtle and decidedly unsubtle, in part thanks to the thinly veiled bigotry of LAPD chiefs William Parker and Darryl Gates, the situation only proceeded to get worse. The March 1991 videotaped beating of King was followed two weeks later by the videotaped shooting of a black teen by the name of Latasha Harlins by a Korean-American storeowner who thought Harlins was shoplifting. The powder keg was there, and it had been lit. And at 3:15 PM on April 29, 1992, officers Lawrence Powell, Stacet Koons, Theodore Brisceno, and Timothy Wind were acquitted by a largely White jury in a courthouse in Simi Valley, in Ventura County, where the trial was moved due to possible jury bias in Los Angeles. The jury hung on one other charge. The reaction was swift, angry, merciless, and extreme.
Using a great deal of raw footage, some of it shown without sound, that the vast majority of the public had rarely if ever seen prior to this, "LA 92" then moves to the building violence that began outside the Simi Valley courthouse; took shape outside of LAPD headquarters at Parker Center in Downtown Los Angeles, and then exploded when hyper-violent African Americans took matters into their own hands and began beating and assaulting motorists at various intersections in south central L.A., notably truck driver Reginald Denny, who was almost killed with a brick to the head at the intersection of Florence and Normandie. Then we get to the Korean-American merchants who become the targets of the vandals and the looters because of the Latasha Harlins incident, and thus have to become their own militia to protect themselves and their businesses. The scenes of horror, madness, violence, and rage are all too vividly brought together in such a way as to be not only a not-all-too-distant memory but also a reminder that race relations in the 21st century, even after having had an African-American in the White House from 2009 to 2017, are still nowhere close to where they should be, and could still explode into extreme violence once again as they had done in 1992 and 1965.
Although done matter-of-factly, without any commentary or narration, "LA 92" is nevertheless an extremely upsetting examination of the second biggest city in America in constant turmoil over a period of decades, as part of the larger microcosm of America as it stood in the waning seven and a half years of the 20th century, going into the 21st century. As the film shows, well before the 1992 insurrection, there were already smaller but nevertheless visible spasms of violence and anger occurring: an L.A. City Council confrontations with Gates; extreme anger in community meetings with police brutality; televised excerpts from Simi Valley; and overt reactions outside the courthouse just before the verdicts. The fact that "LA 92" aired on the National Geographic Channel on April 21, 2017, just prior to the 25th anniversary of the riots, and just three months after the United States saw the swearing-in of its most overtly bigoted commander-in-chief in the form of Donald Trump, made revisiting this dark chapter in recent American history all the more necessary. America is still emphatically not the land of the free for all; and until it lives up to that creed, we can easily have a repeat of what we saw in 1992 at any point in the 21st century.
In all too vivid and graphic detail, filmmakers Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin detail the build-up to the 1992 riots, which actually had their roots in what happened in 1965. A pull-over of two black men by two white CHP cops at the intersection of 116th Street and Avalon Boulevard in Watts that resulted in those men getting beaten up sparked that particular uprising. But relations between the African-American community and the largely White corps of the Los Angeles Police Department would never fully be mended after 1965; and in many ways, both subtle and decidedly unsubtle, in part thanks to the thinly veiled bigotry of LAPD chiefs William Parker and Darryl Gates, the situation only proceeded to get worse. The March 1991 videotaped beating of King was followed two weeks later by the videotaped shooting of a black teen by the name of Latasha Harlins by a Korean-American storeowner who thought Harlins was shoplifting. The powder keg was there, and it had been lit. And at 3:15 PM on April 29, 1992, officers Lawrence Powell, Stacet Koons, Theodore Brisceno, and Timothy Wind were acquitted by a largely White jury in a courthouse in Simi Valley, in Ventura County, where the trial was moved due to possible jury bias in Los Angeles. The jury hung on one other charge. The reaction was swift, angry, merciless, and extreme.
Using a great deal of raw footage, some of it shown without sound, that the vast majority of the public had rarely if ever seen prior to this, "LA 92" then moves to the building violence that began outside the Simi Valley courthouse; took shape outside of LAPD headquarters at Parker Center in Downtown Los Angeles, and then exploded when hyper-violent African Americans took matters into their own hands and began beating and assaulting motorists at various intersections in south central L.A., notably truck driver Reginald Denny, who was almost killed with a brick to the head at the intersection of Florence and Normandie. Then we get to the Korean-American merchants who become the targets of the vandals and the looters because of the Latasha Harlins incident, and thus have to become their own militia to protect themselves and their businesses. The scenes of horror, madness, violence, and rage are all too vividly brought together in such a way as to be not only a not-all-too-distant memory but also a reminder that race relations in the 21st century, even after having had an African-American in the White House from 2009 to 2017, are still nowhere close to where they should be, and could still explode into extreme violence once again as they had done in 1992 and 1965.
Although done matter-of-factly, without any commentary or narration, "LA 92" is nevertheless an extremely upsetting examination of the second biggest city in America in constant turmoil over a period of decades, as part of the larger microcosm of America as it stood in the waning seven and a half years of the 20th century, going into the 21st century. As the film shows, well before the 1992 insurrection, there were already smaller but nevertheless visible spasms of violence and anger occurring: an L.A. City Council confrontations with Gates; extreme anger in community meetings with police brutality; televised excerpts from Simi Valley; and overt reactions outside the courthouse just before the verdicts. The fact that "LA 92" aired on the National Geographic Channel on April 21, 2017, just prior to the 25th anniversary of the riots, and just three months after the United States saw the swearing-in of its most overtly bigoted commander-in-chief in the form of Donald Trump, made revisiting this dark chapter in recent American history all the more necessary. America is still emphatically not the land of the free for all; and until it lives up to that creed, we can easily have a repeat of what we saw in 1992 at any point in the 21st century.