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Los Angeles riots: 20 years later
This March 31, 1991, frame from a video shot by George Holliday from his apartment in a suburb of Los Angeles shows a group of police officers beating a man with nightsticks and kicking him as other officers look on. The videotaped beating of Rodney King led to charges against four Los Angeles police officers. Their April 29, 1992, acquittal sparked days of rioting that spread across the city and into neighboring suburbs. By the time order was restored, more than 50 people were dead, 2,300 injured and more than 1,500 buildings were damaged or destroyed.
Los Angeles Police Department officers Theodore J. Briseno (second left) and Laurence M. Powell (right) are escorted through a media room, April 29, 1992, after they and two other officers were acquitted of all charges in the Rodney King beating case, except for one against Powell in which the jury could not decide. Riots erupted shortly after the verdict was announced.
Twenty years ago, at the intersection of Florence and Normandie in south Los Angeles, a mostly black mob, enraged at the acquittal of four Los Angeles policemen in the beating of black motorist Rodney King, dragged white truck driver Reginald Denny from his cab and beat him unconscious while news helicopters hovered overhead. Six days of bloody riots engulfed the city after the verdict. The riots also ushered in years of self-examination and reform efforts in a city whose poorer neighborhoods have long been plagued by gang violence, unemployment and despair.
Firefighters spray water on a burning mini-mall in south Los Angeles early April 30, 1992, hours after the riots broke out. Related story: Remembering the LA riots: A teachable moment
Looters leave a liquor store with cases of beer, May 1, 1992, in Los Angeles. Related story: How the LA riots hurt Mayor Tom Bradley's reputation
A combination photograph shows Cornelius Pettus, owner of Payless Market, throwing a bucket of water on the flames at neighboring business ACE Glass on the first night of the Los Angeles riots, April 29, 1992 (left), and Pettus narrating the events of that night while visiting his former business in south-central Los Angeles, April 25, 2012. Pettus successfully kept the fire from spreading to his building. He saved his store from looters by staying in it for a week following the first night of the riots while his wife brought meals.
A combination photo shows businesses continue to burn out of control on the third day of the 1992 Los Angeles riots in Koreatown, May 1, 1992 (left), and South Vermont Avenue at San Marino Street intersection showing Korean American businesses in Koreatown, April 25, 2012.
A visit to the intersection of Florence and Normandie (seen here on April 5, 2012) today suggests that while some things have changed, a lot more has remained the same. Unemployment is still rampant. It sits at around 20 percent for nearby southcentral Los Angeles neighborhoods and may be even higher around Florence and Normandie, epicenter of the violence that began on April 29, 1992.
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"There has been enough improvement in the police mentality, enough positive rays of sunshine coming through to give me hope," says Rev. Cecil Murray, a University of Southern California professor and retired pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal Church. "But the negatives still outweigh the positives."
Gerardo DeSantos III, left, and his father Gerardo DeSantos Jr. speak with a reporter from their front yard in Los Angeles on April 4, 2012. The elder DeSantos, 35, an electrician and father of six, has been out of work for two months. Like every other house on 71st Street, DeSantos and his wife have bars on the doors and windows. The couple also have two German shepherds and a makeshift video surveillance system. His family lives about a block from the infamous intersection of Florence and Normandie.