The LA Uprising:
Six Days After the Verdict

The Watts uprising of 1965 — triggered by a traffic stop and LAPD's response — killed 34 people and produced the McCone Commission report, which documented LAPD's systematic brutality and recommended reform. The reforms were not implemented. In 1978, Daryl Gates became LAPD chief and intensified a militarized policing approach: Operation HAMMER sweeps arrested thousands of Black youth on minimal pretexts; the LAPD's Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention unit (STEP) designated 47% of all Black men in Los Angeles between 21 and 24 as gang members. By 1991, the Christopher Commission — convened after King's beating — found that LAPD officers routinely used excessive force, that supervisors knew about it, and that a pattern of racism pervaded department culture. Officers' message logs contained entries like: "capture him, beat him, and treat him like dirt." This was the institution whose officers beat Rodney King on camera.

The trial was moved to Simi Valley — a predominantly white suburb with a high concentration of LAPD officers and their families — on a change of venue motion. The jury had no Black members. After deliberating on a videotape seen by the world, they acquitted all four officers. Within hours of the verdict, the intersection of Florence and Normandie became the flashpoint. Over six days, the uprising spread across South Central, Koreatown, and into parts of Hollywood. The National Guard was deployed; the Army and Marines followed. Fifty-one people died in the first 24 hours.

The demographic breakdown of those arrested — more Latino than Black — revealed that the uprising was not a "Black riot" but a multiracial response to economic desperation and police violence. Korean businesses bore a disproportionate share of the damage — a result of community tensions that were themselves products of the economic displacement of Black residents and the absence of investment in South Central by white-owned businesses and government.