Los Angeles Riots

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will come under unprecedented scrutiny in coming months as congressional investigators try to determine why the agency was unprepared for the onslaught of calamities that struck the nation in 1992. But in a turn of events that some observers see as ironic and shortsighted, FEMA's response to Los Angeles' cataclysmic episode of 1992--the spring riots--is not scheduled to be the focus of any federal review.

In 1985, Los Angeles rapper Toddy Tee released what could be considered West Coast hip-hop's opening salvo against police brutality in black neighborhoods. The electro-grooved "Batterram," named for the battering ram that then-LAPD Chief Daryl F. Gates used to smash into homes of suspected drug dealers, was a hit on local radio station KDAY-AM. The track went on to become a protest anthem in minority neighborhoods around the city where the device was often deployed against homes that were later proved drug-free: "You're mistakin' my pad for a rockhouse / Well, I know to you we all look the same / But I'm not the one slingin' caine / I work nine to five and ain't a damn thing changed …" rapped Toddy Tee. The L.A. riots of 1992 arrived with its soundtrack in place.

In 1985, Los Angeles rapper Toddy Tee released what could be considered West Coast hip-hop's opening salvo against police brutality in black neighborhoods. The electro-grooved "Batterram," named for the battering ram that then-LAPD Chief Daryl F. Gates used to smash into homes of suspected drug dealers, was a hit on local radio station KDAY-AM. The track went on to become a protest anthem in minority neighborhoods around the city where the device was often deployed against homes that were later proved drug-free: "You're mistakin' my pad for a rockhouse / Well, I know to you we all look the same / But I'm not the one slingin' caine / I work nine to five and ain't a damn thing changed …" rapped Toddy Tee. The L.A. riots of 1992 arrived with its soundtrack in place.

I've been waiting 20 years to write these words in these pages. On a spring day in 1992, with sweet-smelling ash tickling my nose, I saw a man rolling a stolen car tire down Pico Boulevard in broad daylight. I saw a boy loot candy from a grocery store, and followed fire and mobs northward, across 10 miles of cityscape, from Slauson Avenue to Sunset Boulevard. For a few moments, to be perfectly honest, it felt exhilarating. I was thrilled by the sight of crowds and disorder.

As violence erupted across Los Angeles following the acquittal of four police officers in the 1992 Rodney King beating trial, a North Hollywood man suffered head injuries that eventually would make him the only San Fernando Valley resident to die as a result of the riots. His death was largely overlooked because it did not come until eight months later, when he was removed from life support.

Charging that rebuilding efforts since the 1992 Los Angeles riots have failed to focus sufficiently on women's concerns, a coalition of women's organizations issued a series of recommendations Tuesday including calls for expanded funding for child care and women's entrepreneurial efforts. If the cycle of poverty is not broken in neglected neighborhoods where female-led families live in desperate circumstances, additional riots are inevitable, said Abby J.

Knott's Berry Farm has frozen the wages of its 3,000 employees because of projections of continued poor attendance, officials said Monday. The attraction, a Buena Park landmark since the 1930s, informed its workers in meetings and a subsequent letter that, for an indefinite time, no raises will be granted. The wage freeze, the first in recent memory, took effect Sunday and applies to all employees, including top management.

When the riot broke out in Los Angeles on April 29, Ballantine Books publicity director Carol Fass was at a sales conference in Arizona. As she and her colleagues watched events unfold on television, one recalled the company had a title on backlist, "Black Protest: History, Documents and Analysis," a book that was published in 1965, reissued 16 times and was currently in storage. It might be an opportune time to move it back into bookstores.

It's a little strange hearing Warren Olney's resonant baritone booming from the car radio. After 22 years on the air here as a TV reporter and anchor, his is one of the most recognizable voices this side of Arnold Schwarzenegger's, and to hear it disembodied from his familiar spectacles, graying hair and anchorman suits makes one stop and look around for a phantom TV.

Eight people accused of taking part in what is believed to be the biggest disaster loan fraud case in U.S. history pleaded guilty Tuesday to trying to cheat the government out of millions of dollars after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, federal authorities said. The eight, all residents of Los Angeles County, were among 10 people charged in an indictment returned last month by a federal grand jury, said Terri Price, a special agent with the U.S. Small Business Administration.

It is the first morning of May 1992, and the air outside my Koreatown apartment is acrid with lingering smoke. I gingerly wander through the neighborhood, hoping to find a place to buy a quart of milk. Around the corner on Vermont Avenue is a now-famous ruin, a block-long strip mall whose smoking, melted contours have been broadcast around the world in the last 24 hours. Dozens of stores on the street have been stripped and looted. The day before, I had lingered on my stoop watching people stagger down the block with pillaged sporting goods, small appliances, VHS tapes, cheap furniture, toys and plastic-wrapped suits from the dry cleaners.

One of my favorite pieces of writing to emerge from the 1992 Los Angeles riots is a poem by a writer named Nicole Sampogna, called "Another L.A. " In it, the poet traces the odd dislocation of living on the Westside while so much of the city burns. "They send us home early, again," she begins, "supposedly for curfew sake, / but I know it's to beat the traffic. " And then: "over there the smoke rises, / horns blare, streets scream, / shoot, loot, / bash windows, bash heads, / lights out / knocked out / by a black & white with a baton.

This is the sixth in an occasional series of conversations with Southern California activists and intellectuals. The series and videotaped interviews with the subjects are collected at www.latimes.com/lavisions.

Damian Williams, the man convicted of beating trucker Reginald Denny with a brick during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison Friday for the killing of a man in a drug house eight years later. Williams, 30, who served four years in prison for the televised beating of Denny, returned to Los Angeles County Superior Court on Friday for sentencing in the shooting of Grover Tinner, 43. In addition to the 30-plus years for murder, Judge Curtis B.

Damian "Football" Williams, who was imprisoned for four years for beating truck driver Reginald Denny during the 1992 riots, was convicted Friday of second-degree murder. Williams faces a maximum of 35 years to life in prison when he is sentenced June 13. In a written statement, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley called it a "long and difficult case," but said he was "gratified that the jury carefully and fully reviewed the evidence in reaching its verdicts."

Ten years have passed since Los Angeles erupted in reaction to the verdicts in the Rodney King police brutality trial. Almost anyone old enough to remember those five chaotic days in the spring of 1992 has a tale to tell--of anger, of fear, of awakening, of transformation. Here, 32 people interviewed by Times staffers talk about what they'll never forget.

Religious leaders from around Ventura County prayed for peace Sunday and urged their congregations to examine why racism continues to divide American society. The Los Angeles riots that followed the Rodney G. King beating verdicts "can happen any time in any city, including Ventura," the Rev. John Baylor of the Olivet Baptist Church told 100 participants, most of them white, at an interfaith service at Ventura's First Christian Church.

Once the looters and firefighters were finished, the academic scholars began moving into riot-scarred Los Angeles. "Some flew in and flew out, but many said, 'Hey, we need to understand this in more depth,' " recalled UCLA researcher Neal Richman, who became part of that massive, ever-unfolding effort to examine what went wrong. "Few places in the world are such a grand laboratory. " Five years after the worst civil unrest in U.S. history, the books are still coming out, the papers are spewing forth.

Damian Monroe Williams, whose televised attack on truck driver Reginald Denny came to symbolize the fury of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of killing a man whose body was found in an alley in central Los Angeles. Police said Grover Tinner, 43, was shot to death after a dispute with Williams "at a house used by people selling and using narcotics."

Current government programs seem to have failed our most needy populations. It should come as no surprise that many programs ostensibly aimed at the poor fail to help them--the poor tend not to vote, and neither do they contribute large amounts of money to political campaigns. We know how to direct aid at the working poor. The earned income tax credit provides subsidies to low-income households through the tax system.