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

Riots are complex civil disturbances that have a beginning (riot assembling processes), middle (riot area activities) and an end (riot dispersal processes). SEMP Biot #142 at http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_142.html focused on the beginning component of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. In this essay, we turn our attention to the middle component (riot area activities), as described in Part B of the John F. Kennedy School of Government case titled “The Flawed Emergency Response to the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.”*

Viewers watched as news helicopters captured the beating of truck driver Reginald Denny.
Source: http://html.nbc4.tv/sh/slideshow/_auto/sh1904s2.html

During the first night of the riot on April 29, 1992, the emergency operations center (EOC), though officially activated, became “kind of an isolated island of non-information” according to the LAPD’s Commander Bayan Lewis (B, p. 6). Officers gleaned information from the television coverage of the riots and tended to dispatch resources to locations being featured on television to the detriment of other areas of the city that also had needs. The EOC communications system, which consisted of handwritten notes sent by runners to various officials in the main room or satellite rooms, rapidly became overloaded so that many requests were never delivered.

Protesters attempted to throw a garbage can through the doorway of Los Angeles City Hall.
Source: http://html.nbc4.tv/sh/slideshow/_auto/sh1904s7.html


Demonstrators set a U.S. flag on fire in downtown Los Angeles.
Source: http://html.nbc4.tv/sh/slideshow/_auto/sh1904s10.html

At about 7 p.m., LAPD officers began to set up the first field command post in a bus yard close to the riot’s center and requested two mobile telephone vans carrying high quality radio communications equipment. “Halfway to the command post, though, a mob heaved rocks and bottles at the vans, and the drivers refused to continue without a separate police escort.” (B, p. 6) This resulted in the failure to establish a dedicated line to the EOC. The few phones available in the bus yard were tied up with 9-1-1 calls that were directed to the command post by another police officer. Faced with inability to establish communication via phone, police officers at the command post ended up sending runners to carry information to and from the EOC.

Buses at the bus yard were directed away from the congested center to allow emergency vehicles entry. Unfortunately, “no one had thought to assign someone to collect patrol car keys from officers as they reported for duty. As a result, police who went back out in a different car often did so with their own keys in their pockets, leaving locked cars behind. The stranded cars were not only useless, they worsened the immobilizing congestion of the yard.” (B, p. 7)

The order from headquarters to police was to maintain a strong visible presence without making arrests, since to do so would further tie up officer resources. “As a result, live news programs continued to show apparently powerless police parked in cars or driving by slowly as looters broke store windows and filled their vehicles with stolen goods.” (B, p. 8) The no-arrest edict was lifted later that night after more officers were mobilized.

The LA fire department, the nation’s third largest with 2,855 uniformed personnel, 377 civilian workers, and 411 paramedics, operated the city’s ambulances, which were based in about half of the city’s 102 fire stations. Unlike Police Chief Gates, Fire Chief Donald Manning in early April 1992 with the Rodney King trial underway, created an ad hoc fire department committee to prepare contingency plans for a possible disturbance, and held several meetings to address tactical operations and personnel security. When Manning heard the verdict and noted the growing unrest, he returned to his office at 7 p.m., recalled his staff, and enacted operating procedures designed to protect the safety of firefighters and paramedics (e.g., no ladders or working on roofs because of possible exposure to gunfire, and fire companies in riot areas were to respond in teams). At 7:45 pm, Manning asked LA County officials to begin to bring in mutual aid strike teams and at 8:05, he established a departmental command structure.

One fire department commander who was called to a structure fire in the Florence-Normandie area just minutes after the Reginald Denny attack, was temporarily blocked by a crowd from which a pick axe was thrown, piercing the roof of his car above his head. When he finally reached the blaze a few blocks from the intersection, he noted that only two police sergeants were present to protect the firefighters. His first radio message was for all fire crews to wear body armor, and to operate with a police escort. Unfortunately, fire department dispatchers could not request police escorts as they were largely unable to get through to LAPD dispatchers. Direct communication between the LAPD and LAFD was impossible because radio channels used by the two departments were incompatible. At 8:15 pm, the fire commander ordered all resources in the area to pull out of South Central and report to a police command post, which increased congestion. At 9:43 pm, when 20 to 30 structure fires were burning unchecked and 200 LAPD officers were awaiting direction at the command center, the first firefighting team got a police escort. Victims who called 9-1-1 for paramedic assistance gave up and drove to the hospital themselves, either because they’d been unable to reach a dispatcher or because no ambulance ever arrived.

There were more than 12 documented attempts to kill firefighters and paramedics in just the first three hours of the riots. At 9:48 pm firefighter Scott Miller was shot in the face as drove a fire truck toward a blaze. By 10 pm there were at least 47 fires. When police escorts finally became available, Chief Manning instructed firefighters to use a “hit-and-run” approach, dousing fires and then moving on, rather than devoting the time it would take to make sure each fire was completely extinguished.” (B, p. 12)

The city’s four public information officers (PIOs) were recalled to headquarters and then dispatched to individual locations. They lacked police protection and usually pulled out soon after arriving at a fire. Almost as soon as the riot began, the media began to criticize the LAPD and LAFD for a slow and ineffective response. “We were being just ravaged by the media,” recalled one fire department battalion chief. (B, p. 14). The battalion chief finally met with the PIOs and instructed them “to phone each of the news outlets, television first, and state here’s what’s happening and here’s what we’re doing and here’s what our problems are. We were talking about specific examples of the problems that firefighters were facing, getting the message to the public that we’re trying to get a handle on this and bring back the calm as much as we can. The PIOS used the press to warn people to stay home if possible, and to avoid the areas where there was severe unrest. After making calls for about two hours, and arranging for immediate appearances at local television studios of uniformed fire officials who could discuss the developing crisis, the tenor of the new stories abruptly changed. By about 11:30 pm, we turned the story around. Then it was like a wave—the outpouring of support was incredible.” (B, p. 14) The LAPD, overwhelmed with the riots and the speed at which they spread, was unable to provide information to the press for 24 hours.

Meanwhile, California Governor Pete Wilson was watching the riots unfold on his television set in Sacramento. He, like many critics of the LAPD, was upset over the LAPD’s “unwillingness or inability to retake the streets of South Central and protect the area’s residents. Indeed, in the first day of rioting, officers from the Central and South LAPD Bureaus together arrested only 131 people.” At 7:00 pm, Wilson called Mayor Bradley’s office to offer to provide him with California National Guard troops. Wilson recalls, “[The attack on Denny] was an ugly scene, and the viciousness and the violence were unnerving…it scared the hell out of a lot of people. What we wanted to do, frankly, was to have the kind of show of force that would intimidate anybody who was seeking to take advantage of the apparent default on the part of law enforcement.” (B, p. 15) Bradley agreed to talk with police and give the governor a call back. At 8:45 pm, Bradley called Wilson to accept the offer.

Wilson’s offer and its acceptance by Bradley skirted the protocol of the state’s mutual aid system, which asserts that an appeal for National Guard troops originate with the LAPD and progress through the mayor to the county sheriff, the Office of Emergency Services, and finally to the governor. Initially, no one in the EOC was even aware that the mayor had requested National Guard troops. One highly placed observer applauded direct contact between the mayor and the governor. “You don’t say, ‘Wait a minute, you didn’t follow the right protocol here. This guy should have called this guy, and this guy should have called this guy…I don’t want to hear excuses about the niceties of protocols and procedures.’” (B, p. 16)

Editor’s Note: Absent a functioning police force, the riot spun out of control.

* “The Flawed Emergency Response to the 1992 Los Angeles Riots” A, B, and C parts were 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 (2000). Each part is available for purchase for $5 at: http://www.ksgcase.harvard.edu/.