The Flawed Emergency Response to the 1992 Los Angeles Riots PART A

A riot is a complex civil disorder—a disaster according to some—composed of a wide variety of goal-directed activities, some of which are anti-social (that is, people working together to thwart police and carry out looting) and some of which are pro-social (groups going into their community to urge calm, care for the injured, locate the missing and monitor police-civilian contacts). Federal, state, and municipal criminal law often defines riots as “mobs, mob action, unlawful assembly, and routs” and further specifies riots as “gatherings of three or more people who share a clear intent to do violence, to terrorize, and to otherwise disturb the peace to achieve their ends.”*

1992 LA Riot. Source: http://www.kang.org/LARiot.html

Riots have been sub-typed as “communal” (collective violence is between opposing racial or religious groups), “commodity” (collective violence is directed primarily at the buildings, merchandise, and equipment of another group, rather than the people of another group), “protest” (violence centers on a specific government policy, e.g., Kent State University riot, 1970), and “celebration” (violence is directed at no particular group or category, e.g., following a sports championship).

We still don’t know a lot about why riots start and stop despite a large amount of previous research. One researcher (McPhail) suggests that future research needs to focus on the “riot assembling processes” (that is, under what circumstances and by what process people converge on the area where rioting develops or is already underway), “riot area activities” (that is, the range of individual and collective, of nonviolent and violent, activities in which people engage in the riot area), and “riot dispersal processes” (when and how people leave, and possibly return to, the riot area).** Riots need to be better examined at the individual, organizational, community, and societal levels. In this essay, we focus on riot assembling processes, including early responses by civil authorities, during the 1992 Los Angeles (LA) riots.

On April 29, 1992, a suburban LA jury acquitted three of the four police officers of all charges, and deadlocked on one charge against the remaining officer, in the case of a March 1991 beating by white LAPD police officers of a black man (Rodney King) while trying to arrest him after he was stopped for speeding. The verdict shocked LA and the US, and outraged the African-American community. The flawed emergency response of the civil authorities resulted in rapid escalation from an outbreak of anger and frustration to one of the deadliest and most costly civil disturbances in US history. During six days of rioting, officials would ultimately call in not only thousands of California National Guard troops, but also solders from the Army and the Marines to disperse the riot. Fifty-four people died and 2,000 were injured. Property damages approached $1 billion.

The riots “raised serious questions about how the city had been caught so unprepared, why local law enforcement officers had been unable to regain control and why the mutual aid system that pulled in resources from the region and the state had functioned so poorly.”*** A full appraisal of this momentous occurrence is beyond the scope of this essay. Important selected issues leading up to the riots (i.e., the riot assembling processes) are discussed below. The majority of information for this essay has been drawn from “The Flawed Emergency Response to the 1992 Los Angeles Riots (A)” written in 2000 by Susan Rosegrant for Richard Falkenrath, Assistant Professor in Public Policy, and Arnold Howitt, Executive Director, Taubman Center for State and Local Government, for use at the Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.***

Crowd control is a routine task for police; however, the control of violent or openly hostile crowds is not. Hence, according to Miller (p. 343), police departments take on many features of “expanding organizations”, which are one type of organizational response to disaster, depicted in the following table (Miller, p. 287):

In the case of the LAPD in the early hours after the verdict, the usual organizational changes required of an organization preparing for a potential disaster, and responding to an actual disaster, did not occur or occurred poorly. LAPD Chief Daryl Gates, already under investigation in 1991 by LA Mayor Tom Bradley for “policies, attitudes, and practices that bore the use of excessive force” (Rosegrant, A, p.6), had not prepared for the possibility of a riot; rather, Gates believed that the LAPD “could handle any situation.” In addition, he had a well-known aversion to requesting mutual aid from surrounding law enforcement agencies (e.g. LA County Sheriff’s Department), “considering himself the chief law enforcement officer in the County of Los Angeles.” (p. 13)

The conflict between Gates and Bradley in the months leading up to the verdict “had transformed [police] department dynamics, with some assistant and deputy chiefs disillusioned, others trying to win approval as possible successors, and others on their way out. Indeed, by the time of the jury’s deliberation, the leadership for the LAPD was in a state of near paralysis,” reports Rosegrant. Further, both Gates and Bradley reached the conclusion that “the LAPD should not make a public show of mobilizing” (p. 14) should violence occur. “This sense of cautiousness had already seeped throughout the department: LAPD arrests had dropped significantly during the previous year as police changed tactics and avoided problematic arrests that might lead to discipline or a charge of excessive force. The feeling that ‘I get paid the same for not making arrests, and am less apt to get in trouble,’ was almost a guiding rule,’ rued one police officer.” Bradley, Maxine Waters, and other black leaders opposed a highly mobilized LAPD both because they feared police might overreact and create another Rodney King-like incident, and because they worried that the mere sight of riot-ready police could incite a violent reaction among already tense residents.” (p. 14)

What did civil leadership do following announcement of the verdict? Mayor Bradley went on national TV and said, “My friends, I am here to tell the jury…our eyes did not deceive us. We saw what we saw, and what we saw was a crime. No, we will not tolerate the savage beating of our citizens by a few renegade cops…We must not endanger the reforms we have achieved by resorting to mindless acts. We must not push back progress by striking back blindly.” (p. 18) Some first responders were shocked with these words, believing that the Mayor had tacitly given approval to the people of Los Angeles to riot. Fire Chief Manning, for example, said “I think that Mayor Bradley was probably the finest mayor the city of Los Angeles has ever had. But at that moment, his emotions got in control of his normal, very reserved self, and it added fuel to the situation.” (p. 14) The Mayor never regretted his words. What he was trying to do for his citizens was say, ‘Hey, I understand your frustration. I’m an African-American man, I’m a former police officer, and I saw what happened a year ago.” Nevertheless, by 5:30 pm, the “mindless act” that Bradley had cautioned against were well underway.

Chief Gates announced at 5:38 pm “If we have disturbances, we are prepared.” But attacks quickly spiraled out of control, particularly near the famous intersection of Florence and Normandie. Police lacked bulletproof vests and had individual canisters of tear gas strapped to their belts, which were not suitable for crowd dispersal. “We had not trained to use tear gas in crowd situations,” said one officer.**** Although Chief Gates had not declared a tactical alert following the verdict, he did activate the city’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC). However, one observer later noted that “all that appears to have happened was the doors were opened, the lights turned on and the coffee pot plugged in.” (Rosegrant, A, p. 17) Moreover, two-thirds of the LAPD’s patrol captains were at a three-day seminar an hour and a half away. Although the verdict was announced near shift change (3:00 pm), LAPD had decided the risk for trouble was too low to justify holding officers over at the normal shift change. Five minutes after Chief Gates had declared the LAPD prepared, the ranking officer on the scene ordered a retreat because the increasingly violent intersection could not be retaken without far more officers at his disposal. Also, he knew of no plan for such a situation. (Rosegrant, B, p. 2)

The absence of police at the vortex did not go unnoticed by the rioters or the media, which were hovering above in no less than seven (7) television helicopters, providing television viewers, both national and local, with live coverage of the flawed emergency response. One local anchorwoman exclaimed, “I can’t believe the cops are looking at this and not doing something.” (Rosegrant, B, p. 5) Police had not closed the routes leading into the intersection, and in the absence of such traffic control, local television and radio stations tried to alert motorists to the danger. Reginald Denny had not heard, however, and, at 6:46 pm, was pulled from the cab of his truck (he was transporting sand in the truck bed) after entering the intersection, and attacked by black rioters. All of this was of course captured by the television cameramen in the helicopters. During the entire event, there were no police in sight. According to many observers, the live shots of Denny’s attack, which highlighted the absence of police, sent a strong message to viewers that anarchy ruled on the streets of LA. It encouraged others to say, ‘Hey, the streets are ours. Let’s go.” (Rosegrant B, p. 5)

Chief Gates, who appeared unaware of the seriousness of the disturbance, had left at 6:30 pm for a political fundraiser outside of LA. Gates thought there were sporadic problems, but his attitude, according to one observer, was “By God, get in there and deal with it. It’s not going to take the chief of police of the city of Los Angeles to run this operation, and if it does, I’ve got the wrong people below me. There was no centralized direction.” (p. 4) In response to a flood of 9-1-1 calls, a lieutenant at headquarters finally declared a tactical alert at 6:45 pm, a step that many believed Gates should have taken much earlier. When Gates returned to headquarters after 10 pm, he “took [Hunt] absolutely apart in public,” according to one observer. (p. 8) Gates later remarked, “Since I’d been though it, I kind of though that fellow members of the top command knew what to do. They didn’t.” Fire Chief Manning said, “We all know that a plan that people don’t know about is as bad as no plan at all—in fact, it’s probably worse. In this case, I think Daryl [Gates] believed that they had a plan. He may well have believed that his people were fully trained in it. In the real world, they weren’t.” (p.8) Later when the LAPD tried to isolate the Florence-Normandie area, the effort came too late to be effective.

Editor’s Note: This case report is well-written and eminently valuable because it provides keen insights into how the 1992 LA riots actually got started (beyond the obvious cause of the verdict). If I had to finger one cause beyond the verdict itself, it would be the abdication of civil leadership during a time of severe social stress. What is stunning about the 1992 LA riots is their uncanny resemblance to the LA Watts riots of 1965, which the civil leadership of 1992 (e.g., Gates, Bradley, Waters) must surely have experienced as young adults. Experienced and informed leadership is at no time more important than during social stress situations when managers and line staff require effective and timely direction and support.

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*Miller, David: Introduction to Collective Behavior and Collective Action. 2 nd ed. Waveland Press, Prospect Heights, IL, 2000, p 342.

**Miller, David: Introduction to Collective Behavior and Collective Action. 2 nd ed. Waveland Press, Prospect Heights, IL, 2000, pp.336-338.

*** “The Flawed Emergency Response to the 1992 Los Angeles Riots (A)” written in 2000 by Susan Rosegrant for Richard Falkenrath, Assistant Professor in Public Policy, and Arnold Howitt, Executive Director, Taubman Center for State and Local Government, for use at the Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. A copy of this report (A) may be purchased for $5 at: http://www.ksgcase.harvard.edu/.

**** The Flawed Emergency Response to the 1992 Los Angeles Riots (B)” written in 2000 by Susan Rosegrant for Richard Falkenrath, Assistant Professor in Public Policy, and Arnold Howitt, Executive Director, Taubman Center for State and Local Government, for use at the Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. A copy of this report (B) may be purchased for $5 at: http://www.ksgcase.harvard.edu/.