The fire this time

National Review, May 25, 1992 by Harold Johnson

ON THE sidewalk in front of a burned-out swap meet on Hollywood Boulevard, forty or so Korean immigrants--children, parents, grandparents--huddle together chanting, "We want peace!" The women are weeping. These families had run shops in the swap meet before arsonists destroyed their livelihoods. "Their homes have been torched, too," the swap-meet manager tells me. "They've lost everything."

The sun beats warm this May morning in the aftermath of the terror sparked by the Rodney King verdict. The fires are out. The smoke that looked like nuclear winter has lifted. But the scars of two days of urban war stretch for miles throughout Los Angeles, from the epicenter south of Wilshire Boulevard, north through Koreatown to Hollywood, and out to the Fairfax area that nestles not far from the upscale Westside.

Thomas Hobbes would recognize the scene, the misery of the swap-meet people and hundreds like them, Asian, Hispanic, black, white. It is the epilogue to an orgy of brutishness. In one of the great melting-pot cities, the crust of civilization crumbled along racial lines. At ground zero--black and Hispanic South Central Los Angeles, where murderous gangs did their worst--the blocks of gutted buildings call to mind Beirut or the Blitz. Across the city, more than forty people have been killed, hundreds injured, scores of homes and apartments burned down, thousands of jobs gone up in smoke.

"We want peace!" I hear the plea again while driving through Mid-Wilshire, where traffic is halted by a mile-long procession of Koreans protesting the rampage. Everywhere there are armed troops in camouflage fatigues. That wasn't the case when the firestorm was hottest--a fact that has many residents angry. The LAPD stood back as rioting spread, and the National Guard didn't motor in until the mayhem, and party-like looting, had been under way 18 hours.

Why the snail's-paced show of force? Blue-ribbon panels will chin-rub about that question, but the message came through immediately to average residents: You can't depend on the authorities; only you can protect yourself. (One lesson apparently has been taken away from the crisis: some now say an earthquake kit isn't complete without a gun.) As looting surged, many merchants armed themselves--if they could. Frightened people who wanted to buy guns for protection ran up against restrictions, notably the state's 15-day waiting period, that highlighted the bankruptcy of liberal solutions.

The first battalions on the scene were not the military, but the apologists. Of course rioting is wrong and self-defeating, went their ritual disclaimer, but nevertheless ... The standard rationales came tumbling forth from the anointed cadre who can't bring themselves to hold thugs accountable when they happen to be members of politically approved minority groups. We were witnessing another "Boston Tea Party," said actor Edward James Olmos, who saw in the anarchy poor people rebelling against oppression (misguided tactics, to be sure). In many cases, he said, they were stealing necessities (no mention i of the plundering of lingerie from i Frederick's of Hollywood, or the looters who were spotted piling out of BMWs). Looters came in all colors, but we were told attention must be paid to black frustrations and the sins of a racist society. Jesse Jackson, Representative Maxine Waters, and the usual choristers sang the song. The Rodney King verdict, ran the refrain, was a racist outrage that poured gasoline on a pre-existing reservoir of anger.

The irony, of course, is that the bitterness nursed by many blacks is largely the bequest of people like Reverend Jackson and Representative Waters, who have a stake in fomenting divisive race-consciousness.

What to say about the verdict? Even if you consider it wrong--I do; the four cops kept whaling away even when the videotape shows they could have handcuffed King--there are plausible explanations other than bigotry. "The prosecution blew it," says former L.A. County District Attorney Robert Philibosian. Not calling Rodney King to testify about his pummeling helped reinforce the portrayal of him as a dangerous criminal, potentially out of control.

Also, filing felony charges, rather than misdemeanor counts, might have skewed the verdict, because a felony conviction would have sent the defendants up for a long spell--maybe too long for some jurors who might have favored conviction with a milder sentence. Right or wrong, there is nothing unusual in juries showing deference to police, white or black--and not only juries in white bedroom suburbs like Simi Valley. Lawyers for cops have often found potency in the argument about the thin blue line dividing order from anarchy. If that's what clinched it for jurors this time, as several interviews suggest, L.A.'s ensuing descent into chaos is unlikely to have given them second thoughts.

The verdict also underscores the procedural roadblocks to convicting any accused criminal today, thanks to yeoman work by groups like the Amer- ican Civil Liberties Union--which, it's worth noting, has wreaked no small damage on inner-city L.A. by contributing to the soaring crime rate. Yet there was Ramona Ripston, head of the local ACLU, in the unfamiliar role of hyperventilating about an acquittal. (George Bush was obliging, all but promising that a federal trial will follow. I know we're not supposed to call this double jeopardy, but I do have a question: Should we gear up for more riots if another jury says "not guilty"?) By the way, Miss Ripston's selectivity in identifying outrages is interesting. She sounded no alarms about the thuggish way L.A. police treated Operation Rescue protestors a couple of years back. And I haven't heard her beeting about the fact that Rodney King served well under a year for armed robbery.