Lessons of Los Angeles

By WALTER SHAPIRO

Sufficient manpower is a prerequisite for controlling potentially dangerous crowds; the speed with which it arrives may well determine whether the situation can be controlled. -- Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968

FOUR HOURS -- 240 UGLY, frightening Hobbesian minutes -- was all it took for South Central Los Angeles to lapse into a violent state of anarchy. Four hours -- half a normal patrol shift -- was all the time needed for the Los Angeles Police Department to cede temporary control of the streets to looters and arsonists. Even as the faint traces of smoke still linger in the air, the L.A. riots have begun their transformation from grisly reality to political cliches. Beginning with White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater, Republicans blamed the rioting on everything from Lyndon Johnson's Great Society to liberal permissiveness. The Democratic response, from putative presidential nominee Bill Clinton on down, was equally predictable: this time the villains were a decade of Republican neglect of urban problems and the laissez-faire moral climate of the Reagan years.

But each of these characterizations misses the point. Despite their rage at the acquittal of the four policemen charged with beating Rodney King, the vast majority of the people in South Central L.A. did not degenerate into a mob putting the torch to their own neighborhood -- or turn themselves into a revolutionary army. Rather, they watched helplessly as their troubled inner- city area, whose law-abiding residents had been pleading for better police protection for years, was pillaged and set aflame by hordes of looters. By all indications, the rioting could have been contained with proper planning, commitment of resources, leadership and an early and prudent show of force by the Los Angeles police. All these ingredients were tragically lacking in Los Angeles. The performance of the L.A.P.D. during the crucial early moments of the uprising is an object lesson in how not to deal with civil disorders. Key mistakes:

DERELICTION AT THE TOP: In many other cities, police chief Daryl Gates would have been removed from office after the Rodney King beating. Instead, the city's civil service laws give Mayor Tom Bradley no authority over the city's top cop, who can be fired only for corruption or criminal behavior. During his 14 years as chief, the controversial Gates had set the tenor of a macho, take- no-nonsense police force. Despite cries for his resignation, Gates clung to his job -- and only reluctantly agreed to retire at the end of June. It was too late. On April 29, 3 1/2 hours after the verdict in the King case was announced, Gates left his office at about 6:30 p.m. to drive 11 miles to attend a small political fund raiser in affluent Brentwood. The cause was dear to his heart: opposition to a Los Angeles ballot measure that would, at last, make the police chief more accountable to elected officials. Even though Gates claimed he was at the fund raiser for just five minutes (it was closer to 20) and was in communication with commanders via radio and cellular phone, he was at the fund raiser or on the road for roughly 90 minutes when the police were losing control of the situation in South Central L.A.

AN INVISIBLE PLAN: Assistant police chief David Dotson recounts that Gates rebuffed pleas from at least one high-ranking officer to clarify issues such as the chain of command in anticipation of the King verdict. The day before the rioting, Gates had confidently assured city officials that the police were prepared for anything. Even now he insists he had reviewed detailed plans for dealing with civil unrest with his commanding officers. But none of these purported preparations were visible once the rioting started. In fact, it seemed as if there was no plan at all. As law-enforcement expert Charles Beene, a retired San Francisco police captain, explains, "You must have plans in place: upwardly escalating in response quicker than the looters can. When the bad guys see no response, they instantly up their tactics: burning, looting, assaults."

The comparatively small size of the Los Angeles police force made matters worse. "Let's forget Chief Gates. You should talk about the number of < police," argues Rex Applegate, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and a leading riot-control specialist. "L.A. has about 8,000. New York City can field 30,000 officers and can flood a riot with blue uniforms." This manpower shortage was compounded when police commanders failed to declare a tactical alert soon enough, which would have deployed additional officers to the initial trouble spots.

A FATAL RETREAT: It was shortly after 5:30 on the fateful afternoon of April 29 when a still containable riot turned into a rout. Roughly 25 police officers were trying to restrain an angry crowd at an intersection in South Central L.A.; an attempt to make arrests prompted shouts, rock throwing and pushing and shoving between the police and the mob. An amateur videotape taken at the scene recorded a voice shouting over the police loudspeaker, "I want everybody out of here. Florence and Normandie. Everybody. Get out. Now." As the outnumbered police drove off, the rioting roared out of control. Hapless motorists caught in the intersection were dragged from their cars and beaten. Looting and arson broke out a block away. Lieut. Mike Moulin, the field commander who ordered the retreat, later defended his decision: "I didn't want ((the officers)) killed. It's really that simple."

THE FAILURE TO REGROUP: What remains mystifying is why more than 100 officers, seething with frustration, remained for about the next two hours at their fallback position 1 1/2 miles away, waiting for orders to move back in. The orders were finally issued. For much of this period, Gates was either at the fund raiser or in transit. "The command structure was not in place. They didn't keep in touch," said deputy fire chief Donald Anthony, who had 20 fire engines in place waiting for police escorts. To law-enforcement strategists like Beene, the long delay was fatal. "You think one hour isn't very long? One hour in a crowd situation is like weeks or months," he said. Says L.A. County sheriff Sherman Block: "It's my belief that a show of force at ((the intersection where the riot started)) might not have stopped everything but certainly would have had a significant impact."

FIDDLING AS A CITY BURNS: Even when the l.a.p.d. slowly returned to the streets on the second day of rioting, it often behaved as if afflicted by a kind of paralysis. In a typical incident in the mid-Wilshire district, a phalanx of 50 police officers guarded a Vons supermarket in the face of taunts from looters. Frustrated, the crowd moved on to an unprotected Thrifty drugstore a block away, which they proceeded to strip. The police waited patiently at Vons until the looters began leaving Thrifty and then -- and only then -- did they move in with sirens blaring to "secure" the area. Meanwhile, in this languid, but lethal, game of cat and mouse, the mob moved three blocks down the street to attack a Find It All electronics store. The police waited from the safety of Thrifty before finally moving to try to capture the last few stragglers at the Find It All store. The police grabbed several looters and clubbed one man repeatedly. Then, as the rioters shouted their defiance, the police freed everyone they were holding.

Inexplicable scenes like this make it impossible to view the L.A. riots solely as an outburst of self-destructive black rage. By one preliminary estimate, more than half the people arrested in the riot were Hispanic and 10% were white. Memories of how long it took inner-city areas to recover from the destruction of the Watts riots are still fresh in the minds of many Los Angeles blacks, who despaired at a repetition of the violence.

Some people speculate that Gates wanted a civic Gotterdammerung -- a traumatic breakdown that would somehow justify his crude law-and-order faith. The Rev. Cecil Murray, an influential black pastor, calls Gates "a proud man, almost a vain man." Murray theorizes, "What better vindication upon those who find him anathema than to let them write for him ((Gates)) a blank check to destroy?" There is, however, no evidence to support any conspiracy theory, and Gates instead blames critics of the L.A.P.D.'S tough tactics for the chaotic police response in the early phases of the rioting. "Police officers on the street are scared to death to use any kind of force," he argues, "because they think they're going to be second-guessed."

The police commission will soon begin an investigation that may eventually provide an explanation of the L.A.P.D.'S breakdown. Meanwhile, it is heartrending to wonder how much destruction, how much lawlessness, how much human tragedy could have been prevented if only the Los Angeles Police Department had been prepared, had been resolute, and -- most important of all -- had been well led.

With reporting by Tom Curry/New York and Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles