Original subtitles

♪ bluesy guitar music ♪

♪♪

Everyone knew years ago

that the Negro would have to be given equality,

but in the South,

knowing Negroes as we think we do,

we realized it would take time.

It's...it's been compared to--

to straightening teeth.

It takes a slow, steady pressure.

You can't do it with a hammer.

Mr. Hastie, what did you think we were

before you began to think of us as human beings?

Well, in a--in a way,

we thought of you almost as a very superior pet,

something we had to take care of.

♪♪

♪ Jane's Addiction's "Pigs in Zen" playing ♪

♪ rock music ♪

♪ Yeah ♪

White power!

- ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ White power!

Backcountry refugees...

♪ Pig goes in the mud ♪

♪ When he tires ♪

♪ Pigs in zen ♪

♪ Pigs in zen ♪

♪ Pig is nude ♪

"We're here to keep the niggers in place."

♪ Unashamed ♪

♪ Pigs in zen ♪

♪ Pigs in zen ♪

♪ I'm talking about the pig ♪

Seventy-five police killed--

of my followers.

♪ The pig, uh ♪

♪ P-p-p-p-pig ♪

♪ Oh, yeah, a goddamn pig ♪

♪ Let's go ♪

♪ We shall overcome ♪

And if you think I'm going down there

and pleading with a bunch of hoodlums

to obey the law...no.

♪♪

The United States government

out to systematically commit genocide

on the Black Panther Party.

♪ Pig mounts sow ♪

♪ When he's wound ♪

We have got to rebel.

♪ Pigs in zen ♪

♪ Pigs in zen ♪

♪ Pig eats shit ♪

You a gang member.

♪ But only when he hungers ♪

♪ Pig's in zen, I know, the pig's in zen ♪

♪ Too much ♪

♪ I'm talking about the pigs ♪

♪ The pig ♪

The video camera revolution.

♪ The pig, uh ♪

A modern-day lynching.

The best three days of my fuckin' life.

♪ The goddamn pig ♪

♪ Let's go ♪

♪ It gets sucked from my eye ♪

[indistinct police radio chatter]

♪ Like an eagle's claw ♪

♪ The pig ♪

♪ Pig ♪

♪ Pig ♪

♪ P-p-p-p-pig ♪

We gonna burn the goddamn city down.

All right!

Damn, though.

He's still tasing him, babe.

Hell, no!

- Whoa!

Whoa! Oh, my God!

God damn.

- Oh, fuck.

Oh, fuck.

Oh, my God. Fuck.

Oh, shit. Motherfucker.

Oh, my God. - Motherfucker.

Oh, my God.

Motherfucker. Motherfucker.

Motherfucker.

Motherfucker.

They just killed that man.

They just shot that motherfuckin' man like that.

Hey! Hey!

Y'all shot that man.

So do you know much about the history

of the Los Angeles Police Department?

You know, I--Sacha, I do know a little bit about it.

LA, actually all of the West Coast,

is really bad about keeping its history,

so you know, some of it is-- some of it's a little bit lost.

We're an organization with about 145 years of history.

You know, this was a small pueblo, Los Angeles,

built on a river not very far from where we sit right now.

Originally it was a very Western town.

♪ exciting music ♪

It had a very violent beginning.

Homicide rates in early Los Angeles

were much higher than they ever have been since,

and so it was from the start a very violent place.

I'm still terrified by the LAPD.

The institution itself is

a fundamentally evil institution

that is only in this day partially reformed.

It was rebuilt explicitly after the Second World War

to enforce racial restrictions.

♪ upbeat music ♪

When I was 17 years old,

the Los Angeles Police Department changed my life.

This man is the symbol of the finest police officer

in the world.

It was at a Halloween dance,

and a fight broke out.

LAPD came, and I guess

I wasn't moving fast enough or whatever,

but the guy hit me with the billy club.

Remember, as police officers,

we may only use that amount of force necessary

to make an arrest.

I was beat by maybe nine police,

worse than Rodney King.

I must have stayed in the hospital

for maybe a couple of months

before I even went to court.

They didn't want any judge to see the

condition that I was in.

When I got out of juvenile hall,

I was saying "Yes, sir.

No, ma'am. Thank you."

My--my family didn't recognize me, you know?

It changed me.

I was wrong,

so I got what I deserved.

But you think you deserved to get beat

worse than Rodney King for moving a little bit slow?

Well...no, I don't,

but I was resisting.

Let us remember that we are not brutalized

because we're Baptists.

We're not brutalized because we're Methodists.

We're not brutalized because we're Muslims.

We're not brutalized because we're Catholics.

We're brutalized because we are black people in America.

In the spring of 1962,

a gun battle between Negroes and police

outside the Los Angeles Mosque of the Muslims,

a sect built around the belief

that complete separation of the races

is the only hope for America.

In that gunfight, one Negro was killed,

14 wounded.

In the early '60s, friends of Malcolm X

set up a mosque in Los Angeles.

One of the leading members of the mosque worked in a laundry,

so he would bring clothes in the trunk of his car.

He was parked about a block away from the mosque,

and he was getting out,

and somebody came over to help him,

and the LAPD stopped them, harassed them,

and then began to knock them around.

More cops came.

The cops invaded the mosque itself,

and one cop was shot by another cop accidentally.

The cops went mad.

They lined Muslims up,

and they shot them in the genitals,

and people were killed,

including one of the acquaintances of Malcolm X.

Malcolm X wanted to retaliate

and take out cops.

Elijah Muhammad thought

that the nation would lose everything

if it did that.

Seventy-five police came over

to kill all that they could

of my--of my followers

in Mosque Number 27.

Think over that.

Some Los Angeles citizens

believe the Muslim shootings

so crystallized Negro feelings

that from that point, April 1962,

big trouble was inevitable.

Two of the brothers were shot in the back.

Two of them were shot--

excuse the expression--

through the penis.

And I, for one, as a Muslim, believe

that the white man is intelligent enough.

If he were made to realize

how black people really feel and how fed up we are,

without that old compromising sweet talk--

stop sweet-talking him.

Tell him how you feel, and let him know

that if he's not ready to clean his house up...

If he's not ready to clean his house up,

he shouldn't have a house.

It should catch on fire and burn down.

All right, panel, a brilliant beginning.

Now let's see what you can do with our second challenger.

Will you sign in, please, sir?

Bill...

Bill Parker, is that right, sir?

One man who has played an important role

in raising the Los Angeles police officers

to a professional status

is Police Chief William Parker.

He has been able to create divisions within the department

to deter the Los Angeles rising crime rate.

William Parker, who was

the law and order chief of the LAPD,

was probably one of the most racist police chiefs

that the LAPD has ever had.

If you go way back to the beginning of LAPD,

it started out with that Southern, racist mentality.

"We're here to keep the niggers in place."

Parker-- he imposed a military culture.

The Los Angeles Police Department,

through years of self-evaluation

and constant improvement, has raised itself

to a high professional standing in the community.

But in militarizing them,

they didn't get rid of the racism,

and so the racism took on

an occupying force quality.

The white deputy chief who got assigned to Watts--

his unofficial title was "Nigger Inspector."

He recruited officers that were from the South.

He recruited officers that he knew hated black people.

And he didn't care about policing the black community

in a way to make everyone safe.

He just wanted to police the community

to keep them there,

and to keep the whites over here safe.

Los Angeles is the finest place in the world for the Negro,

because he has the greatest opportunity here,

on a broad basis,

than he would anywhere else in the world.

♪♪

Los Angeles had a reputation, at one point,

of being a good city for black culture.

For instance, late 1940s, Central Avenue,

the center of black culture

and a totally integrated scene.

Central Avenue was the drag for us.

I mean, that's where you had all the entertainment.

That's where all the entertainers came

and they lived, 'cause they couldn't live anywhere else.

You're talking about Billie Holiday.

You're talking about Nat King Cole.

You're talking about Sammy Davis Jr.

When Parker became chief of police,

he launched a campaign.

He would arrest white women

going to clubs on Central Avenue

for prostitution.

When I was a young teenager,

the center of the world was a place

called Dolphins of Hollywood,

greatest record store in the world.

Everybody came there.

Parker actually laid siege to it.

He had cops stationed outside

to turn people away if they were white.

♪ upbeat drum rhythm ♪

Compton was all white.

Southgate was all white.

Huntington Park was all white,

and Bell was all white.

Vernon was all white.

That was on the other side of Alameda, the tracks.

On this side of the tracks

is where they allowed black people to live.

From Central to Broadway,

back to Imperial to Alameda.

When the highway system gets built up

during the 1950s and the 1960s,

they're meant to be able to allow people

to get into the downtown and out of the downtown area.

The suburbs are increasingly built up

all along these different arteries.

White flight basically begins during the 1940s,

and what that means is

that who's left in the inner cities

are basically people of color.

♪ upbeat music ♪

♪♪

Watts is a ghetto but not a slum,

as the term is known in older cities.

There are streets of trim, lower-middle-class homes,

and there are squalid areas of condemned houses

with people living in them.

Two thirds of the adults have less than

a high school education.

One in eight is illiterate.

Watts has the lowest average income rate

in Los Angeles County: $4,000 per year

compared with more than $8,000 per year

for the white community.

They crowd together, these backcountry refugees,

a thousand new ones every month

pouring into Los Angeles.

And they find in the land of golden promise

that there still are white lawmen,

white merchants,

white landlords.

Watts in the mid-'60s is fully overcrowded,

and what you see is Los Angeles police

literally trying to figure out ways

to contain black folks and people of color

in their neighborhoods.

There was this ideal

that African Americans can migrate to LA

and escape the racism from the South, but what--

what they didn't realize was that whites were immigrating

to Los Angeles from those same cities,

from those same communities.

They wanted to keep black folks in our place.

We couldn't go off of this boundary and this boundary,

and the police were basically used to keep us under control.

Gangs were formed, in a sense, to protect us, you know,

from those who would come in and prey on the community

like the Spook Hunters, you know,

which was a group of white boys out of Compton.

You know, they used to come down

and prey on folks in the neighborhood.

The Spook Hunters is the one that's the most infamous one,

because they had that leather jacket

with the African-American on the back of the jacket

with a noose around his neck, which seems pretty crazy,

but that's what a lot of the guys from the 1950s tell us.

They would catch us by ourself

and jump out and rat-pack us.

So that was the start of the Slauson,

the Businessman,

Rebel Rousers,

the Gladiators.

It was protection

for our black people.

♪♪

One day, I was driving down the street,

and I saw they had these

six young African-American men,

you know, maybe 16 to 18.

They had 'em just standing on the sidewalk.

"Hands on your head," you know, "Put your hands on your head."

Sometimes they make 'em put their hands on the hot car

or "Lay down," lay down on the ground.

"Lay on your belly," you know, that racist behavior.

So I pulled over, and I get out of my car.

I see this happening,

and the police said to me,

"Who are you? Are you their mother?"

I said, "Yes."

And so the kids looked at me, you know,

and they--they were like, "Why did you get out your car?"

You know, "Are you related to them?"

I said, "I'm the mother of a nation and a universe."

You know, I'm all of their mothers,

and he said, "Shuffle your feet and move on,

or you're going to jail for loitering."

When I was with the Los Angeles Police Department,

I worked in South-Central LA.

I-I knew a lot of the people who lived there,

and they--they depended on the Los Angeles Police Department

to have any kind of decent quality of life.

It was a horrible time.

You didn't see lynchings

of the sort that we were sort of familiar with

and outraged about in the South,

but it was the same thing, as it was a dead black man,

or it was a violated black woman.

You weren't on the plantation,

but you were-- you know, you were in your car.

I mean, I can remember a time when they pulled me and my wife

and my son over, and just treated us awfully.

The question is, how many slaps in the face

can a community take?

The complaint that you hear everywhere

is that the Negro is not getting the same treatment

from the police as the white, and--

Well, I think that--I know,

but I'm getting a little bit weary of that,

and I think perhaps the best thing to do

is just to pull the police out of the area.

I've offered to do that again and again,

but you see how quickly all-- they come back and say,

"We can't afford to have that," because you must remember--

and-and this is the thing you must think of

when you get this vicious canard--

is that the great majority of the victims of Negro crime

are Negroes.

August of 1965.

It was hot.

I'm talking about, it was...whoo!

Law enforcement authorities say that heat,

intense heat, irritates a man,

makes him more violent.

The tension was-- it was mounting up.

♪ percussive music ♪

♪♪

The spark for the unrest

comes one August afternoon.

The Frye brothers, who have been at a party--

they've been drinking a little bit.

They're speeding down the highway,

and they start getting chased by a California highway policeman.

They end up stopping very close to home,

and a confrontation begins

between the police and the brothers.

We seen the police pull Marquette over.

We heard the officers calling him all kind of "niggers"

and all this stuff.

And his mother stayed right around the corner here on Towne,

so she was coming.

She was raving, saying really at Marquette,

"I told you," you know,

"Don't be drinking" and this--

but her whole thing was

for the officer not to impound that 1955 Buick,

and the officer-- he was gonna let Marquette go.

Then these other two racist police pulled up.

And the LAPD does their usual

humiliating, aggressive behavior.

Marquette's mother jumped on the back of the officer.

They got to going at it.

They finally got Marquette,

Ronald, and Rena in the police car

and drove off,

but the highway patrol was still here

waiting on the tow truck

to tow the 1955 Buick.

A sister by the name of Joyce Gaines did hair,

and she had on a smock

that made her look like she was pregnant.

We were exchanging words and telling him,

"Don't impound the car, man."

Officer said, "Man, to hell with you black niggers."

Took her and slammed her against the car.

When they slammed her against the car,

man, all hell broke loose.

♪ intense rock music ♪

♪♪

It began with police and rioters

clashing on a hot Wednesday night.

Some believe it could have been stopped right then

if law officers moved in in force

and sealed off the area.

♪♪

I was a young police officer working the Watts area,

and the riots actually started on my beat.

It was as close to anarchy as I've ever seen

anywhere at any time.

It was the most widespread,

most destructive racial violence in American history.

White people driving through the riot area

were considered fair game,

whether young or old,

men or women.

Their cars were battered,

the drivers stoned, kicked, and beaten,

and the cars were burned.

The mobs might groan and curse in disappointment

when a white got away

and then cheer like a football crowd

when a car went up in flames.

♪♪

White people try to always call it a riot.

It wasn't a riot.

You know, it was a rebellion against oppression.

A riot is when, you know, you see these white folks

after a football game, they're pulling down the--

the goalposts.

This was about people whose--

had reached the boiling point in terms of the oppression

that we were feeling.

There was no way to contain it.

The riot, I think, opened a lot of people's eyes.

You know, I was very young then, and I guess

I always sort of watched The Song of the South

and those kind of things and figured all the people

in South-Central LA were happy.

♪ Zip-a-dee-doo-dah ♪

♪ Zip-a-dee-ay ♪

♪ Wonderful feeling, wonderful day ♪

And it's all of a sudden occurred to me,

it doesn't look like they're that happy.

♪ rock music ♪

And to retaliate, it was a good feeling.

It was a really good feeling.

More than 1,500 people were in the streets.

Fifteen citizens injured, 19 officers hurt,

31 arrested, 12 juveniles.

More than 100 police rushed to the area,

sealing off eight square blocks in an effort at quarantine.

The rioting subsided, then began all over again

shortly before dawn.

♪ mellow music ♪

♪♪

I got up that morning,

and I went to the neighborhood playground.

I could see smoke coming up from across Central Avenue.

When I got home, my grandmother told me

that I could not cross Central Avenue

because of the riots.

And the riots had came down Central Avenue from Watts

all the way onto South-Central Los Angeles,

and we need to stay in the house and be protected.

My uncle, who was a street-type person--

he came into the house, and he had about six hats

that he had gotten off of Central Avenue

when they were looting.

Now in the daylight hours too,

the shattered section of South Los Angeles,

a Negro neighborhood torn by two nights of rioting,

left battered and bloodied--

now the looters, the pillaging.

I saw a lot of people that had, you know,

three and four televisions and other, you know,

things like that that, you know,

really didn't amount to a hill of beans

compared to what we lost.

What had been skirmishing before

between police and hit-run Negro groups

became a wholesale exercise in stealing and burning.

What do you want the policemen to do?

Do you want to mass them in there for what purpose?

Of pinning everybody down, or-- or what?

No, I'm simply asking you to explain what--

what the thinking of the police is--I have no--

Well, the thinking of the police is,

they have a city to protect,

and they can't turn all the men into Watts

and allow all these-- the rest of the 450 square miles

to be open season to every--

every petty criminal and burglar in town.

Do you think someone like Martin Luther King

should be down there?

No, King doesn't-- we've got local residents here.

King doesn't put out all the fires in the United States.

There are some local Negroes here that are--

that are our leaders in these situations.

For us to continue to try and meet violence with violence

is the wrong way, that's all, pure and simple.

See, and I'm gonna tell you something.

Tonight, there's gonna be another one,

whether you like it or not.

- No, no. Wait, wait.

- Listen. Listen. No, no, no.

See, they--we--

we the Negro people down here

have gotten completely fed up,

and you know what they gonna do tonight?

They don't care--they not-- they're not gonna--

they're not gonna fight down here no more.

You know where they going? They're after white people.

♪ Oh, yeah ♪

As word of the shouted threat

to do the white man in spread by word of mouth,

whites began to crowd the gun shops

for weapons to defend themselves.

♪ blues music ♪

♪ Oh, yeah ♪

♪ Muddy Waters' "Mannish Boy" playing ♪

♪♪

♪ Now, when I was a young boy ♪

♪ At the age of five ♪

♪ My mother said I was gonna be ♪

♪ The greatest man alive ♪

♪ But now I'm a man ♪

♪ I'm past 21 ♪

Man, take a picture. Take a picture over there.

Take a picture over there. Get him, get him.

That--that's what they're doing.

Hey, hey!

The sound of the sniper's rifle

is being heard even more frequently.

And time after time, sniping

turned into full-scale combat,

guardsmen and Los Angeles police

responding with pistols and semiautomatic weapons.

By the third or fourth night,

the LAPD had actually evacuated the community.

Once sight I've seen in my life

that I thought was the most amazing

is about 40 black-and-whites leaving South-Central.

Some people who are getting hurt here

are the police and innocent citizens,

and the rioters are prevailing.

And if you think I'm going down there and pleading

with a bunch of hoodlums to obey the law...no.

♪♪

When Watts happened, I was 12 years old,

and we had just moved from one side of town to the other,

and as a matter of fact, if we had stayed

where we lived previously,

we would have been in the middle of it.

My white friends were afraid

their parents' stores were being burnt down,

their furniture stores or other stores that they had.

♪♪

♪♪

If you're, like, the only

African-American in an environment,

people expect for you to explain.

"So please tell us

why you're all doing this."

They burnt businesses,

but most of the people in this building

at that particular time were black,

so I guess they just passed it on by.

It was a really serious, scary time

just to be in the area.

♪ soft instrumental music ♪

♪♪

On the morning of Friday the 13th,

Chief Parker called for the National Guard.

♪♪

National Guard was on the street,

coming right down Central.

I remember personally the tankers going up,

you know, and the police walking down the street

in armored gear, rifles drawn,

and my brother and I were standing at the doorway.

As they walked past, they just kind of looked at us

and pointed the guns toward the door,

for what I don't know.

Maybe to intimidate us, to frighten us,

and they did.

The LAPD came back with the National Guard.

They took their revenge.

Drop that purse and get your hands up.

Get your hands up!

♪♪

We know now that these have been

days and nights as horrible

as any American city has ever lived through.

This evening, Los Angeles remains hot,

quiet, tense, and dangerous.

28 people killed, all but four of them Negroes.

Bill Stout reports that figure if sure to rise

as bodies are found in the rubble.

Seven hundred and sixty-two have been injured,

2,256 arrested.

The damage at a guess close to $200 million.

Governor Brown has extended

last night's eight o'clock curfew

for another 24 hours.

Right now, about 15,000 police and national guardsmen

are on patrol in the 40-square-mile riot area.

I command you to immediately disperse.

Any persons remaining in this immediate area

will be taken into custody.

At first, they turned off the electricity,

and then they threatened to turn off the water,

and my grandmother decided to take us from South-Central,

46th and Central Avenue, to my aunt's house.

When she loaded up the car and drove us to the end,

where the blockade was,

I remember the flashing lights coming down in the car,

and the National Guard's rifles in the car.

When honoring the request of a police officer,

when they tell you to get out of the car,

you'd better get out, friend, or you're liable

not to be able to get out.

I'm sorry. I'm going home.

It was martial law,

and no African-Americans were allowed on the street

after a certain period of time.

You weren't allowed to leave the city.

You weren't allowed to travel around.

I've said all over America,

and I've come out to Watts to tell you today

that no matter how your hair looks,

no matter what your features are,

no matter what color you are,

you are somebody.

So speak out of your hearts, and speak frankly.

You couldn't talk to anybody,

because there was nobody to talk to.

You couldn't talk to the cops,

because they don't want to talk to me.

They wanted to beat my brains out,

just like they've been doing all the time.

And the only way-- the only way of saying

that we can ever get anybody at any time to listen to us

is start a riot.

We got sense enough to know

that this is not the final answer,

but it's a beginning.

It's a beginning.

But who wants to lay down

while somebody kick him to death?

This is what we're talking about!

Nobody wants to lay down and get kicked in the head!

When a guy in the city hall, a police chief,

calls the people of the United States of America

in this area "a bunch of monkeys,"

he's not worth two cents to be a police chief.

Two or three days before this-- all this happened,

these people were just about starving to death,

waiting for the first

till they got their checks-- they needed this.

You mean this was a continuing situation down here?

Right, all the time.

Well, I mean, can't--

don't they get the money from welfare?

I mean, we have the Aid to Needy Children--

They need jobs. They need jobs. That's what they need.

What could make all the rioting stop?

I don't think it'll ever stop, really.

Never?

I mean, it may not be like this, but...

it'll never stop.

What will end it?

Now, that's a question that's-- everyone want to know.

The thing I think that would end it is

a little more harmony on both sides.

Expressed how?

You have me there. That's kind of hard to say.

You wish it would end?

Yeah, it need to end.

All the stores are closed.

I mean, the stores what are left--

none open.

Get food, we--I don't know what's gonna happen.

♪ piano music ♪

♪♪

In the wake of the riots, some believe

that public officials were to blame

for failing to act or acting too slowly.

Still others believe the police are to blame,

and still others say

that Negroes themselves are responsible.

They say that many in this part of town

are from the poorest parts of the Deep South,

are immoral, uneducated,

ill-prepared for life in the big city.

And there are those who believe the riots were the work

of an organized hoodlum gang

whose leaders are willing to back down now

in the face of armed might,

to put away their weapons, bide their time,

and strike again, harder perhaps,

when the guard and the police have moved on to other areas.

It's hard to tell about the enigma of Watts.

A few things, of course, are obvious.

One is this:

the three-fingered sign

that makes a crude W for Watts.

Passing through the Negro sections

at the height of the riots,

you could hear again and again the cry,

"Hey, give me three, man."

And if you didn't hold up the three-fingered W,

you could be in trouble.

But that was Watts during the riots.

Watts today is a sign

posted by a National Guard checkpoint

manned by three armed soldiers,

a sign saying, "Turn here or get shot."

Where were you in LA?

Over on the east side of town, south of Los Angeles.

Well, that's a nice, uh...

- Yeah. ...neighborhood.

- I mean, it's--

Were you there during the riots?

- Most definitely.

Look here, no, no, no, no.

You don't say that with any restraint at all.

No, no, not only was I there,

I was participating.

Yeah, and to what degree, may I ask?

Well, you know, whatever I could pick up fast.

How did you feel the next morning?

Very good, sweetie.

The legacy of 1965

is that it sort of brought to a close

the optimism of the civil rights movement.

It introduced violence as a result

of people's dissatisfaction with the pace

at which things were moving in a major way.

And as 1965, of course, leads to 1967

and the long, hot summers across the country...

pretty much every major city during this period

experienced some type of urban uprising.

We are running around talking about,

"Black folks are looting." I agree.

There should be more shooting and looting.

That's the only thing I agree with.

Black folks trying to loot when they should be shooting.

If you're gonna loot, loot you a gun store.

♪ funky music ♪

♪♪

There was a Kerner Commission report

that came out that talked about two Americas.

This our basic conclusion.

Our nation is moving toward two societies,

one black, one white,

separate and unequal.

And that's when, in Washington,

they pass the anti-poverty program,

so there's a lot of money available,

coming in the community.

So you had all kinds of programs that were started.

You had programs for health.

You had programs for economic development.

You had programs for the arts.

Watts in 1966

is not unlike the Watts of 1965,

but there is one change.

There is communication now,

most of it by blacks,

with blacks, for blacks.

But some of the channels have been opened up

by white men too.

One of those white men in Watts 1966

is Budd Schulberg.

Budd Schulberg, who wrote On the Waterfront,

came down and helped organize the Watts Writers Workshop.

"Because it was never there,

something empty filled the gap,

and since the absence was not seen,

all too soon the people died."

Schulberg had the notion

that if you gave people an opportunity

to express themselves,

to have some kind of artistic outlet,

then you'd have a better neighborhood.

You'd have better circumstances.

And a lot of us took him up on that.

He knew that Watts,

like many so-called "ghettos,"

was bottlenecked energy,

so I went to the Watts Writers Workshop

and asked about, you know, the different classes,

and Anthony Hamilton was the head of a poetry class,

and after that class, he approached me and said,

"You know what, we have a group called the Watts Prophets,

and we've been looking for a female member."

We weren't trying to be

Grammy-winning musicians and poets.

We were trying to make a difference,

make a change, make our people feel better about themselves.

♪ Daybreak will find me ♪

"Daybreak will find me down on my knees,

a slave to my job,

Lord, I've got to get free.

A baby is born,

but what's his destiny

if he's black in a white world?"

♪ A baby is born ♪

They were using their craft,

and they were using their music,

you know, to really explain,

really talk about the condition of black folk

and talk about the inequity that existed among us.

Up until the point that we had a riot,

everybody said, "Those niggers are all right.

- They're doing fine." - Okay, after the riot.

Then when we riot-- then when we had a riot,

then the white man said, "Uh-oh, something's wrong,

'cause you suckers are burning down my store.

Now I got to give these niggers something,

because I thought they was happy."

But what did he give 'em?

With the bands and the floats,

you'd think it was an Armistice Day parade,

this second anniversary of Watts.

Well, in a way, it is.

Celebrating two years of peace

in this South-Central Los Angeles community.

The theme of the festival, black is beautiful,

was designed to remind the young men here

that they should be proud of their color

and of Watts.

One of the interesting things that happens

out of Watts as well

is that there's also a lot of ferment

around cultural organizing

and community organizing.

The US Organization comes out of this particular period.

We have gotten our manhood back

by the act of violence.

When the brother throws a brick

or snipes from a building

then he has just returned to his manhood.

The crisis presented us with an opportunity

that we had never had before.

That is to pull everybody together

and get them into some constructive program.

The Black Panthers come onto the scene

very shortly thereafter.

The racist dog policemen must stop

their wanton murder and brutality of black people

or face the wrath of armed black people in the black community.

The US and the Panthers had different ideologies.

The US Organization were more cultural nationalists.

They wore dashikis, grew their hair out,

and the Panthers were revolutionaries.

They wore leather jackets.

They talked about being armed

and using weapons in self-defense.

But they were all motivated by monitoring the LAPD.

Let's monitor what they do, taking down names of cops,

documenting police abuses.

A lot of the gang members became Panthers.

They were repurposed community activists.

They had something different to do.

They had something that was positive to do.

And it was a really good time, because crime was down.

Gang violence was at its lowest,

and consciousness was at its highest for African-Americans.

It wasn't sanctioned

by the system,

by white folk, by law enforcement,

so it was a constant, you know, ebb and flow, if you will,

on attempt to break it up,

to create havoc so that it wouldn't continue.

When the FBI was under J. Edgar Hoover,

their goal was to create as much conflict

between the Panthers and the US, because they were

the two most prominent political groups in Los Angeles.

A new report from the Senate Intelligence Committee

detailing more FBI abuses.

The staff report tells how the FBI used anonymous notes

to provoke bloody gang wars

between the Black Panthers and rival groups.

One of the main organizers

was a young man named Bunchy Carter,

who was a leader of the Slausons gang,

and he undergoes sort of a political awakening

and signs up and becomes a Black Panther.

In a school building at UCLA,

there's a shootout between the US Organization

and the Black Panther Party,

and Bunchy Carter is one of the folks who is killed.

At approximately 2:45 p.m. this afternoon,

two men were murdered at the UCLA campus.

Their names are John Huggins,

23 years old,

and Alprentice Carter, 26 years old.

It's just one of the tragic moments in LA history,

because Bunchy brought

that leadership to the youth.

Between two and three hundred

Los Angeles Police Department officers

massed near the Black Panther Party headquarters

in Los Angeles.

The United States government

and the state authorities and state agencies

are out to systematically commit genocide

on the Black Panther Party.

There was just an emptiness in Los Angeles in 1969.

Everything just stopped,

and it allowed a new generation of teenagers

to try to do their own thing.

Crip: "continuous revolution in progress."

When Raymond Washington started the Crips,

they wore leather coats.

Leather coats became a big deal,

because that's what the Panthers wore,

so stylistically,

they wanted to be like the Panthers.

Politically, they didn't have the know-how.

Raymond Washington was just a 15-year-old kid.

Never been to jail, doesn't know anything about prison

at that point in time.

He's just a kid that knows how to fight.

What Raymond Washington and the other Crips wanted to do

was go to the neighborhoods and try to, "Hey, join us."

But they said, "Oh, no, no, no. We're--we're fine."

All these gangs that have been victimized by the Crips,

they come together and say, "Hey, these Crips

are just running all over us.

We got to defend ourselves."

That's when an alliance of all these gangs

started to fight against the Crips.

To its members, the gang

or club or clique or neighborhood

is an identity,

a defense against the world.

But while belonging to a gang

is a harmless inclination of many youngsters,

in the ghetto, the gang is far removed from fun.

Police? They can die.

They all can die. I hate 'em.

The gang's feelings toward the police

and toward the world in general

are emphatically expressed

in wall paintings and graffiti.

In many respects, gang graffiti

is the newspaper of the streets.

All right, Daryl, you're here,

and if you'll look handsome...

- ...we will take the vote.

All right, there has been a motion

to appoint Daryl Gates to chief of police

of the city of Los Angeles.

- All those in favor, say "Aye." - all: Aye.

The motion is carried unanimously.

The meeting of the Board of Police Commissioners

is now adjourned.

This is truly a great organization.

I perceive that this organization can do anything,

absolutely anything,

if it has the proper leadership.

Daryl Gates was a protégé of William Parker,

so basically we have William Parker

from 1950 to 1966.

He dies of a heart attack a year after the riots,

and then Daryl Gates becomes the chief in 1976 to 1992,

so basically we have William Parker

as the police chief from 1950 to 1992.

Chief Gates was a driver for Chief Parker,

and that was part of his training

to be chief of police.

The mafia has a similar system

in that there is driver for the don.

Maybe the mafia got that from the police.

Well, maybe they both got it from the military,

because that is common in the military too.

♪ We're from Watts ♪

♪ We're from Watts, mighty, mighty Watts ♪

In the '70s, as I became more active,

the level of repression from the LAPD

was very, very severe,

so activists would get together,

and we would have meetings, and the LAPD

would harass us, would infiltrate our meetings.

Our tires would be slashed. Cars would be vandalized.

Daryl Gates--he had files on members of the city council,

and during those years, the police chief

actually was the most powerful person in the city

Because of the way the city charter was written,

he couldn't be fired.

Gates bristled when one reporter

asked him to comment on the increase

in officer-involved shootings.

Do you know that there is an increase?

That is precisely what I'm talking about.

There is a decrease in officer-involved shootings,

but it's people like you that perpetuate the myth

that there's an increase.

♪ S.W.A.T. theme playing ♪

♪♪

The entire SWAT idea came out of Daryl Gates

and LAPD's work

in trying to contain black activists in the 1960s.

I knew Daryl Gates very well. I worked directly for him.

Some of the things that he was criticized for--

I think he was misunderstood.

♪♪

One time, he said that he was concerned

that blacks didn't respond to the chokehold

as normal people.

He said, quote:

He was immediately made out to be a racist.

It may be that on some,

the arteries do not open up

in--in a normal fashion.

Maybe "a normal fashion" instead of "normal people"

would have been better terminology.

The blacks who died after the application of a control hold,

the vast majority of 'em had

the onset of a sickle cell anemia crisis.

So he was onto something,

but when he said it, it came out wrong.

I'm convinced it was his sense of compassion

that was driving him to try to find out what was going on.

What you talkin' bout, Willis?

When I was, like, between 12, 13,

this police officer, like,

he would try and antagonize me to fight.

This is a grown-ass man with a gun,

and he's groping my ass

and grabbing my nuts,

and, like, trying to get me to do something

with all my homeys right there, you know what I mean?

It was like, "What the fuck?"

Dehumanizing.

You know?

♪ jazz music ♪

Growing up in South-Central,

we didn't really interact with any other races.

We were segregated.

You go too far north of Wilshire or Pico,

cops were pulling you over, so it wasn't too much

of going outside of your neighborhood.

It kind of had you...

boxed in.

In Los Angeles, a court now appears

to have settled the issue

of which students will be educated where.

We went to school in the San Fernando Valley.

We got bussed.

I'm a P-funk fan.

Punk rock started happening on the radio.

It was a lot of shit. It was fertile.

We went to school with white kids that were, like,

actually getting into this stuff, you know?

So there was a little cultural exchange.

I didn't get bussed.

Kids from LA got bussed

out to my high school, Taft.

Ice Cube went to my high school.

A bunch of cats went to the high school,

but music was around that school too.

It was crazy, and I'd wind up down on, like,

Jefferson and La Brea with a bunch of kids, spray-painting.

At the time, I think, you know,

the suburban white kids, they ate it up.

They were getting exposed to all kinds of shit.

For me, it changed my life.

♪♪

Today, in a pool room in the heart of Watts,

the rage is subdued, but it's there:

a new generation of frustrated young men.

Most have little education.

Some have jail records,

and that means no job.

I don't want to rob nobody, don't want to steal,

'cause I don't want to go to jail no more, you know.

So what will you do? - I don't know.

Estimates of the unemployment rate in Watts

run as high as 40 percent,

and there aren't enough jobs to go around.

I had uncles that worked at General Motors.

One worked at Kaiser Steel.

You had Goodyear Rubber.

Industrial America was right here,

up and down Alameda.

Some good, blue-collar, middle-class jobs.

So as kids growing up, we always knew it was a given

that we were probably gonna be in those fuckin' factories too.

Well, guess what? Those jobs got outsourced.

All those factories started closing,

so when I was coming up, there was no jobs, period.

Like, you really didn't know what you were gonna do.

♪ exciting music ♪

One global industry actually rides to the rescue.

Actually expressed an interest

in the declining parts of South-Central LA,

and they came from Latin America.

The Columbians started coming into town,

and they started recruiting

black gang members to sell drugs.

And then there was the way of distributing cocaine

that was different than before,

which was changing from powder to crack,

which led to widespread distribution.

We were all buying up crack as fast as we could,

as fast as we could get our money, you know,

got money in our hand, you know?

Mind already out the door, baby.

The drug so powerful

it will empty the money from your pockets,

make you sell the watch off your wrist,

the clothes off your back.

Or kill your mother.

Yep, that's what we're seeing.

The Watts I grew up in--

it was rough, but we was aware.

Gangbanging and all that, it really wasn't about killing.

Somebody might get stabbed, you know what I'm saying?

Somebody might get rat-packed and stomped out or whatever,

but it wasn't--it wasn't this.

We all just living the life

that's, like, chosen in a way,

but it's, like, forced on us also,

you understand me?

The drugs, the money, and the guns,

all of that got put here by Reagan and Bush.

CIA Director John Deutch

defending America's spy agency

against reports it sold crack-cocaine

in LA's black neighborhoods to fund the contras.

I am a former Los Angeles police narcotics detective,

and I worked South-Central Los Angeles,

and I will tell you, Director Deutch, emphatically

that the agency has dealt drugs throughout this country

for a long time.

Every so often, it'll be a stalled train car.

It just so happened, that train car full of guns.

Well, it's a CIA informant or a snitch or something,

but somebody-- the word would get out,

like, you know, yeah, there's a car over there,

and it's full of weapons, new weapons.

That's how a lot of guns got dispersed through the hood.

That's how--how cold of gangsters they are.

You know what I'm saying? Them is the real gangsters.

Yep.

♪ 'Cause I'm down by Laughton, I Crip my way around ♪

♪ Too much, too many Crips is too much ♪

We, the Los Angeles Police Department, cannot exist

with the gangs.

They cannot exist with us,

and so it's just that clear.

You've got a red knife, homey.

I'm putting you on notice that you a gang member.

You looked up to policemen like superheroes,

because that's how it was painted to us,

but getting done dirty by them...

You know, it was a reality check.

Tired of you people hanging around, playing bones.

You see what I just threw?

Think those dice are loaded?

They ain't loaded; they did it themself.

Let me try this one more time.

He said, "Let me try that"--

Let me try this shit.

They don't want to tell you who you bang with.

"I don't bang with nobody."

"Where you live?" "I live over there on"--

"Well, then, yeah, you were at such-and-such crib."

First it made me question myself,

like, did I do something wrong?

Like, you really, you know,

am I criminal?

Am I what this person said I was?

It was, like, three of us.

We had on baseball uniforms.

I remember we were nine, ten years old.

So we're working through the alley

and these cops pull up on us.

Like, "Who won today?

We were like, "We about to go play.

We haven't played yet."

And they say, "Hold up."

Smacks my partner, right?

Smacks another one, right?

And then he punches me.

And he said, "Gentlemen, that's for the future."

And he got in his car and just left.

Here we are reaching the end of 1985

and about to start 1986.

I thought it was time to talk to you a little bit about

what we've done in 1985

and cover just some of the highlights.

♪ hip-hop music ♪

We put together a motorized battering ram

to get through barred doors,

and it's been magnificent.

I had never seen tanks

roll down the street

to break into a house.

Because there was such a drug epidemic going on,

they had these things called the batter ram,

which was a tank, a military tank.

So this was part of the police procedure.

♪♪

♪♪

LAPD tore down people's doors

with all the wrong addresses.

Didn't matter; they were black.

The K9 unit has been with us for a long time.

I need not tell any of you how valuable they are.

They do such a sensational job.

I haven't heard of any dog brutality yet.

They would release those K9 dogs

to hunt black kids.

They even had a joke on the police radio.

When they were getting ready to sic the dogs

on a captive black teenager,

they'd call it "feeding time."

And they referred to black kids as biscuits?

Yes, biscuits.

Being a police officer is something that I did.

It was a service that I did.

It wasn't who I was.

I could take that uniform off,

but the color of my skin, who I am,

I could not take off.

Staying in the patrol car every day

when you're going out and you're getting these calls--

and believe me, it's dangerous--

patrol officers don't know who's going to hurt them

or what the call is going to be next.

And there's some people out there that were racist

before they came into police work.

I am telling you right now.

You don't have no business touching me.

Hook him up. Hook him up.

And so everything out here

is an aggressive attack mode,

and there's some that they've become cynical

because of the type of work that they have to do.

And they're scared.

But they do know that there's a racist system

that will back them up

and that they have a better chance of being acquitted

when they do overstep their boundaries.

A cop cannot walk up to a man on the street

and feel that he is so powerful

that you would not retaliate,

especially if he's wrong.

No, them. Who the are the police?

They're nobody but public servants.

In 1986, Ice-T is beginning to rap about

running from police on "6 'N The Mornin'."

♪ 6 in the morning, police at my door ♪

♪ Fresh Adidas squeak across the bathroom floor ♪

So the music has this sharp turn,

and it's looking at the ways that police

are trying to contain black bodies

and offering a sense of resistance.

♪♪

We were definitely talking about

the corruption and the brutality.

We never really feared what those songs would bring.

We just thought we had to, you know, take a stance.

It was important to us, because, I mean, you know,

we were the ones getting harassed every other day.

By me having the mic, I get to kind of explain

and really talk about the things that cause problems.

See, I'm more of a complaining type of rapper,

like a nag, you know, because I like to talk about things

that need to be talked about,

things that I want changed

or things that--that people need to take from the back

of their mind and put it to the front of their mind.

♪ Hittin' corners in a six-trey Chevrolet ♪

♪ Rag-top Impala, top dollar ♪

♪ Got my cousin Laid-Back ridin' shotgun ♪

You know, I was doing my thing in the street

with some of my homies from Watts.

You know, we was using our little street money.

What do you mean by street money?

Uh, dope money.

Ronald Reagan money.

So we was using our Ronald Reagan money,

you know what I'm saying,

to make an album,

and we just happened to be at the same studio

that Ice Cube was at.

The artist that he had was Yo Yo.

♪ You can't play with my Yo Yo ♪

♪ The brand-new intelligent black lady ♪

Cube used to come scoop me up,

and I--I love the brother, you know what I'm saying?

We squashed our dif--'cause we had some differences,

but he used to come scoop me up and I'd be like,

"Man, I could kill this dude right now.

I wonder how long it would take before that hit the news,

if I were to hit him right now, why we in the car--

like, people just playing his music all around the country

right now, but I can kill him right now."

How do you get to a place

where you're thinking about killing your own brother?

Four-hundred years of slavery

and teaching us to hate ourselves.

Hate yourself; somebody teach you to hate yourself.

Everything black is wicked and evil and worthless and all that,

and everything close to white is right and good and all that.

So I'm way down in the dirt; I'm in the East Side Bottoms.

I'm, you know, so--life don't mean shit to me.

But that's all we know. That's how we talk.

That's how we trained.

Howdy.

The title of this videotape

is very appropriate.

It's called "The Foothill Incident."

By now, like every man, woman, and child

in probably the United States,

you have witnessed this Foothill Incident,

the videotape, in your own living rooms,

over and over again.

Twenty-five-year-old

Rodney King had been pulled over by Los Angeles

police officers after a high-speed chase.

An apartment dweller across the street

took this home video after seeing no apparent reason

for the police to attack the suspect

with boots and night sticks.

There's not a man or woman

in this department who does not feel as outraged

as the public is.

As a matter of fact, I think we're probably angrier

than the public because it affects us more.

We were like, "Holy shit."

You know, this video camera revolution.

Like, they got it.

"Finally," you know what I mean?

"Finally we got some evidence.

We're going to expose this.

This time we're gonna have justice."

And this is a terrible thing to say,

we all felt bad for his beating,

but we cheered the fact that it was finally documented.

When we see him getting beat down,

everybody's in an uproar,

we're ready to go again,

the Jim Browns and the Jesse Jacksons

and the Arsenio Halls

and all these people really, really said, "Hold on,

young people.

We got 'em this time.

Don't do anything.

This time their ass is in trouble."

The four Los Angeles policemen charged

in the videotaped beating of a black motorist

will not be tried in Los Angeles County.

They moved the trial from LA up to Simi Valley,

and Simi Valley is where all cops retire.

And I knew that once she moved the trial up there,

the empathy was not going to be with Rodney King;

it was going to be with the officers,

because that's the way it works.

Powell also revealed anger and bitterness

but no remorse.

He showed off one of the dozens

of cards he says he's received from well-wishers.

I just want to get acquitted

and get this over with and behind me.

As a white person, you were taught as a child

in all your life a cop deserves the benefit of doubt.

So somewhere in the back of my mind,

even though I'm looking at that on TV

and I'm seeing it, and I'm going, "That fuck--

they're beating that--fucking that dude to death."

There's still this fucking thing that you've been told

your entire life back there that's, like,

part of your base program.

"There's got to be a reason.

There's got to be. He must have done something.

He must be doing something to make 'em keep doing that."

It's on television, all over the world.

You could see he tried to beat the man to death,

so how can you say what we saw, what we watching,

is not true?

And then something else happened,

which enflamed a different set of grievances.

Fifteen-year-old Latasha Harlins

was shot and killed by store owner Soon Ja Du.

Du claimed Harlins was stealing a bottle of orange juice

when she confronted the teenager.

Latasha was a beautiful person.

She was more like a mother figure.

She was their protector.

She was always around,

making sure nobody messed with her family.

She was good at school,

and she wanted to be an attorney.

She wanted to be an attorney.

I remember that day like yesterday

because we were supposed to hang out, go to the movies,

and...

my grandmother told me to go to the store

to get some orange juice,

and it's the same store,

the same time.

And I said, "No, I don't feel like it."

You know, me and my sarcastic mouth.

"I don't feel like going."

And she said--and she said, "Okay.

Don't worry about it. I'll wait till Tasha get home."

I said, "Okay."

And she just never made it home.

I was so devastated because I could have been there.

I probably--it probably would have been me, I don't know,

but I could've-- I should have been there.

When my grandmother told me to go get the juice, go,

I should have just went and got the juice.

Soon Ja Du starts yelling at her, like,

"Why are you stealing this, bitch?"

Like, "Quit stealing this."

So she's like, "I'm just trying to get this, you know,

to pay for it." Right?

And Latasha Harlins is turning to walk out and leave,

and she fires the gun.

It's fucking bullshit.

You know?

You had a group of individuals

that work so hard to build this dream of theirs

and have so much pride in what they're doing,

opening a shop that they put their whole life into.

In their mind they're kind of in a protection mode,

psychologically, right, protecting their store.

But not realizing that they're in a neighborhood

that's not theirs.

There was no, like, you know,

they didn't greet them, you know, at the airport.

"Hey, you better read up a little bit on civil rights

history so you can maybe, you know,

when you open up that store in the hood,

maybe you might avoid 1992 that's gonna happen to you

in a couple of years."

It was the wedge that split apart

in a very open and visceral way,

the Korean immigrant community

and the African-American community.

Why don't you open up a market

that we can use for our families?

Go back to Korea!

We're the one making you-- why don't you hire blacks?

Why don't you hire blacks?

Ice Cube put a record called "Death Certificate"

and had a song called like "Black Korea."

This is what everyone was listening to,

my age, my color.

That came out before the riots as well, I believe.

And it was extremely prophetic.

♪♪

The fact that Ice Cube made that song,

you know, he was only reflecting the reality

that we were living with.

"Black Korea" was like the one track, I think,

that probably impacted me the most

in my entire life.

If you don't have these things like truth speakers

through, you know, music or art,

then all you have is the media, you know what I mean?

All you have is the news.

And that's your main source of what truth is.

That was like the other side for me

to kind of listen to these other stories and voices.

And a lot of my friends were like,

"We're boycotting Ice Cube.

Fuck that dude."

You know?

But what gave Soon Ja Du the right

to take Latasha Harlins' life?

And who are we actually defending here?

Now, in that case,

justice was actually partially served

because Soon Ja Du was found guilty.

She was found guilty of manslaughter.

If you or I were found guilty of manslaughter

in the state of California,

we're probably going to be sentenced to 15 years in prison.

That's a typical sentence for that offense.

So the jury did their job in Soon Ja Du.

It was the judge, Judge Karlin,

she gave Soon Ja Du five years probation

for shooting a girl in the back of the head.

That's unheard of!

To suggest that any sentence that this court might give

results in the conclusion

that black children don't receive full protection

of the law, that is dangerous rhetoric.

And I can tell you, people were mad.

♪ jazzy music ♪

She got away with murder.

Stop chilling our children!

We want justice!

One judge, one judge,

had the power to overturn that decision.

One white judge.

One white judge.

Karlin must go!

Karlin must go!

Always wanted just one thing,

and that was justice for Latasha,

and to be shown that we mattered in this community,

we mattered in this city.

Latasha Harlins was that explosive moment

that really sort of got everybody focused

on what was going on in our community

and how badly our community was being treated

and how not much had really changed.

How long can you suppress and oppress people

before you expect a reaction?

We the jury in the above entitled action

find the defendant Lawrence M. Powell

not guilty of the crime of assault by force

likely to produce great violent injury by a deadly weapon.

This 29th day of April, 1992, signed by the foreman.

I remember April 29, 1992.

We were in the studio,

and the news broke

that the cops were, you know, let go.

It sends a bad message.

It says it's okay to go ahead and beat somebody

when they're down and kick the crap out of 'em,

and it's okay because if it's not videotaped,

don't worry about it, another brother officer

won't turn you in,

and your brother officer does turn you in,

don't worry, we'll get white jurors or whoever who takes

and you'll walk.

I was over on Florence and Normandie,

that little chili dog stand.

I'm there getting a chili dog,

I love the chili dogs,

and then this sister, she said,

"They let them white motherfuckers go."

Everybody like, "Oh, fuck this. Not again."

There was so much negative energy in the city.

Rodney King had his trial right here on the street

where he got beat.

Those four policemen were not judge and jury,

and I don't care what he did, if he did anything.

That did not give them the right to beat him out here.

They need to come out here and take a beating like that

'cause that was not right.

Several of the officers had obviously

done things that I thought were ineffective,

overly brutal, and probably criminal.

So you're saying, Chief Beck is saying

that the verdict was wrong?

No, I didn't say that.

Well, so what are you saying?

I'm saying--I'm saying what they did was wrong.

Right?

So you think the verdict was fair in--

Oh, no. Excuse me.

I--you know what, let's...

Let me back this up.

Chief Beck is saying the prosecution

was correct, and you're right;

the verdict was wrong.

We knew that them officers

was going to go to jail.

You done beat that man down,

they done caught you on television,

they done got you on everything,

and when they let--when they let 'em go,

I mean, it was like...

"Nigga, you gets no justice."

The four officers left the courthouse

to face an angry court of public opinion outside.

There are quite a few police officers

gathered here outside the courthouse now

to maintain order, as each of the four LA cops leaves.

I do not seek to explain the jury's decision,

because frankly, no explanation makes sense.

What were the rules, let's say,

like, rules of engagement for the police officers?

Could they do this? Or could they do that?

And the testimony that we heard is, yeah, they could do it.

If the guy was resisting arrest,

they could swing their batons until he stopped.

But I do know this:

The jury's verdict will never outlive the images

of this savage beating,

seared forever into our minds and our souls.

This was a modern-day lynching.

Cops can make mistakes,

and we sure make mistakes,

but we pay for our mistakes, you know?

We pay for our bad decisions.

We go to jail for our bad decisions

or we die for our bad decisions.

There's some type of consequence,

but for them, it just seems over and over and over,

they just have to--they just have to, you know,

a right to kill or beat the shit out of you.

And I could just see on the monitor,

just all around the city,

stuff just started happening.

I was gathering--"Did you hear about what happened?"

I'm just in my neighborhood, which is Bloods,

and then other Bloods start coming to our neighborhood,

and we're trying to figure out what we're going to do,

and this was going on all over the city.

Officer down.

, here he comes.

Officer down.

There was an incident between the Eight Tray Gangster Crips

and the LAPD.

And they threw blows; they had fist fights.

You know what I mean? It got bad.

Video camera! Video camera!

I applaud them and salute them

because they stood up to the cops

right there at that time and period.

And the LAPD retreated.

They went in,

they raised the emotional temperature

above the boiling point,

and then they left.

The voices are starting to rise,

rise, rise, rise.

We were sick and tired of being sick and tired

of being sick and tired.

And we weren't taking it no more.

♪ rock music ♪

Everybody here expected some turmoil

following yesterday's surprise courtroom verdicts,

but no one imagined the kind of violent orgy

that took place in the streets here.

I was actually on the corner

of Florence and Normandie

when the riots started.

Community leaders had said the day of the verdicts,

everyone should go to First AME Church.

So I got in my car along with one of my coworkers

and I saw all of this congestion.

So as I pulled up on the corner,

I realized that there was a whole group of people

that were standing there, throwing bricks and rocks

into cars.

When I saw that, I sped up real quickly.

I missed the brick, but my coworker got the brick.

♪♪

All along the way and on that corner

there were no police, period.

The police were completely invisible.

Y'all better turn the fuck around.

from Battalion 13.

Uh, we've just been taken out.

We got bottles through the window.

Fuck the motherfuckin' police!

The war zone

was a five-square-mile section of the city,

known for its high crime and poverty,

but there was some trouble everywhere.

Across town at the city's police headquarters,

a crowd of several hundred tried to rush the building.

They taunted patrolmen who stood shoulder to shoulder

in riot gear.

Hold the line! Hold the line!

Hold the line!

Why are they sending the brothers out?

So , I don't want to see my brothers and my sisters

.

I'm looking at all this.

Eating a chili dog.

I'm eating a chili--but I'm looking at this, 'cause--

it was amazing.

It was like...

'65 all over again.

There's a movement going on.

Hey, man. Fuck the white man!

Fuck y'all. We killin'.

I got home and both my daughters were home

watching television.

And I pulled in the driveway,

and they came out and they said, "Dad, Dad,

you won't believe what's going on.

There's a riot."

And I said, "What do you mean?"

And I go inside and I look at the television

and I see what's going on at Florence and Normandie.

I ran out to the police car,

I got on the radio, I said that "There is

a homicide in progress.

Respond all units, code three."

About a minute and a half, two minutes later,

I didn't see any units.

So I get on the radio again,

and then she says, "Commander 12 rescinded your order."

And I thought to myself, "What is happening?

What's going on here? This is crazy.

There's no police there."

The police were marshalled

within four blocks of where it started.

If they had just gone there and stopped it,

there would never have been a riot.

Of course we learned later

that our illustrious chief of police

was on the other side of town at a fundraiser

to fight the ballot measure

that we were organizing around

to bring him under control.

What he did was, he basically said, "Okay, you guys

don't like police?

Fine. None will be around."

There's no way to explain no police officers,

because you're talking about an area that was always

heavily policed.

About eight o'clock or so, Chief Gates showed up.

What have you been able to do so far tonight, Chief Gates?

Well, we're, I think, slowly getting in control.

As you see, we're out in force

and officers are beginning to make arrests more and more,

and I think we will begin to impress upon the people

in this area that we mean business.

The city, it's just aglow with fire.

Total chaos. Total chaos.

♪ jazzy music ♪

I remember driving from my house.

I lived in Carson, who bordered Compton.

I get on the 110 freeway.

Firetrucks, emergency vehicles,

police officers, just flying up and down the freeway,

smoke, fires.

Me and B-Real,

we were fucking smoking crazy ass weed

and shrooming our brains out.

And as we're coming over the last hill

before you see the greater part of LA,

it looks to me like LA is on fire.

And I say to B, I was like, "Yo,

it looks like everything is on fire, dude."

He was like, "Dude, it does."

We were fucked up.

All you could see is black smoke

all through the city coming into Los Angeles.

We were fucking like, "Whoa, what the fuck?

Is this the apocalypse?"

The anger kept pouring out.

Crowds soon began throwing rocks and bottles

and setting fires.

Still, the police held back.

The greedy began looting,

and it continued for hours unchecked.

Dozens of buildings have been torched

and firetrucks couldn't get anywhere near

for fear of being attacked.

I was at fire station 17,

which is on the east side of Los Angeles

in the industrial area.

We were at the furniture building,

and we needed some fuel for the chainsaw,

so I ran back to get the fuel,

and this lady came running at me with this ax,

and since I was in the compartment with the chainsaw,

I just grabbed it.

So I started it up and I told her, I said, "Don't miss."

And she looked at me, smiled, dropped the ax.

And then she left.

And I was--I was like, "I really didn't want to have to go there,

but I would have went there."

I got some video you would love!

I swear to God! People's reactions and stuff!

And they'll talk to me 'cause I'm black!

♪ hip-hop music ♪

♪♪

♪ Let's make noise ♪

♪ Let's make noise, come on ♪

♪ The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire ♪

♪ We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn ♪

♪ Burn, motherfucker, burn ♪

You a fuckin' redneck.

♪♪

Everybody get to the corner of the crosswalk

'cause you're going to jail.

You're gonna go real quick, young man.

We tried to get through the city as safely as possible,

'cause out there was a little treacherous

depending on where you were going to.

But, you know, we always were strapped.

We were rolling crazy back then,

so we didn't really fear for our lives in that sense.

I mean, you know, because were part of the ones

talking about this shit.

♪ Here is something you can't understand ♪

♪ How I could just kill a man ♪

♪ Here is something you can't understand ♪

♪ How I could just kill a man ♪

And the agony continued

long after the sun came up.

Fire is fire.

You can control that. Can't control people.

A full 24 hours

after the stunning verdicts,

Los Angeles is still on edge.

1930 hours, day two.

War zone's getting thicker.

Geez, looks like Beirut or something.

Get your anger, your frustration,

your hard feelings,

not out on the streets, not breaking windows,

not looting, not rioting.

This is what bothers me.

It's like, people done watching television

and they're listening to the radio, obviously.

They hear or they see that nothing is being done,

so they're like, "Well, I'm gonna go out

and get something."

Hey, why hide, man?

Okay?

Hey, what did you get?

- Shoes.

- Yeah.

- Right here.

I don't know, because it's free.

- Yeah.

- Nah.

Look at me. What are you doing?

- I don't know.

Nothing!

Don't you know this is illegal?

I've been taking pictures of the police.

They ain't been doing nothing.

I got it all on camera here.

Man, it's amazing. Let me get this shot here.

I'm one who respects our police.

They keep the peace, they face danger every day,

they help kids,

they don't make a lot of money,

but they care about their communities

and their country.

Thousands of police officers and firefighters

are risking their lives right now on the streets of LA

and they deserve our support.

How are those Rice Krispies?

Hey. Right in the box.

Since the start of it, the very start.

Do you feel any fatigue at this time?

Yeah.

I'm tired, I'm wearing down,

nobody can make a decision.

You got all these damn brass that, uh,

try and make a decision, and it ends up

that the troops out there in the field

are getting left out.

You have the incompetents who are now leading us,

and they can't even lead the troops as it is.

So I don't even know what the hell we're doing out here.

The police were more interested in containment,

not stopping it whatsoever.

They were not allowing people to come up and here

and then loot and tear up Beverly Hills,

but you can stay over there on this side of Wilshire.

That was shocking to me, too,

like, you know, 'cause you're looking around.

You're saying, "Well, where are the police

when this is happening?"

You watch the news

and the news only talked about black people.

It really wound up being citywide.

I called it the Rainbow Revolt,

because white folks were participating in the looting.

I had just bought a home in Venice

that needed furniture,

and the whole place was furnished with stolen furniture.

That riot was the fuel for us to kind of misbehave

and get a lot of shit out of our system

that we had pent up,

and we really--really felt good.

Let's go back to the phones.

Hey, what is your name, and where are you calling from?

My name is Joyce calling from Long Beach.

Yes, Joyce. We're angry because

it's showing that we as blacks together are nothing.

That's what they're saying to us.

We mean nothing.

I came home from work tonight,

and I'm looking at women cheering these people on,

they're smashing windows,

they're burning our supermarkets.

Where the hell else can we go to get food

and get treated with some amount of decency?

Yes, I'm hurt that the verdict was what it was,

but I'm hurt for my people.

This certainly isn't what you call a damn revolution.

Out of there with the food.

I--I got to do some shopping.

I don't have any food in the house.

Yeah!

♪ eerie music ♪

Some looters spared black-owned businesses

but ransacked the Asian stores next-door.

We're gonna take back our community.

If we allowed you to come in before,

maybe we made a mistake, but now we're telling you

you must go.

Don't break anything, okay?

I'm not.

Are all the chips gone?

♪ A riot baby, the fire raised me in '92 ♪

♪ All the homies told me fuck the police ♪

♪ We should go and loot ♪

♪ But my father tell me if they get too close to you ♪

♪ You should shoot ♪

♪ I was conflicted ♪

♪ What's a little soldier supposed to do? ♪

I think my dad, you know,

was, like a lot of our family members too,

the older folks, they participated

in, like, I guess, helping out some of the businesses

and protecting 'em and stuff.

People who are African-American

are coming through this neighborhood.

The roadblocks have basically been taken--not taken down;

they've moved.

Does that make you nervous,

when you see people driving by

who are of another color?

- Yeah. - Right now, yeah.

There are a lot of-- if you look out there,

there are a lot of Hispanic and Black people out there

and they're just roaming around,

packed in their cars, running out,

trying to loot something or pillage something.

The young kids, the 20-year-olds, 18-year-olds,

19-year-olds, we kind of were tasked with, like,

patrolling the streets.

And so it took a couple days,

but basically we started to kind of protect the borders.

I don't understand this.

I mean, just unbelievable, inhumane things happen.

They are good people.

They have been good to my mother and my father.

They... it's just ridiculous.

This is just ridiculous. Just forget it.

So many whites

have barricaded their neighborhoods,

and the days of fear and rage know no color.

We, the white people, would not have gone out to burn

the black neighborhoods.

National Guard troops have moved into

riot-torn sections of Los Angeles.

The troops have been deployed to route looters

and seize control of neighborhoods.

Curfew has been imposed

going from dusk to dawn.

It is--encompasses Crenshaw to Alameda,

Century to Vernon.

And there's a curfew on,

and if you're in that area,

you are subjected to being arrested.

Any of you got IDs?

Turn around!

♪ hip-hop music ♪

I was a little nervous

because they were shooting people

that were out in the curfew.

Who was shooting?

Law enforcement.

They were shooting people.

If you were in groups, you got shot.

There were at least ten or eleven

officer-involved shootings during those three days.

Who me?

♪♪

Just looking at the community,

a community that was already suffering,

to me it was just like, "Wow," you know?

Ten steps back

instead of pushing ten steps forward.

So I understood...

...but I was still sad about the whole situation.

The civil unrest in Los Angeles is now the deadliest

in the city's history.

Worse than Watts in 1965.

In three days of violence this week,

at least 37 people have been killed,

more than 1,300 injured,

there have been more than 3,000 arrests,

property damage, over $200 million.

It, like, breaks your heart

to know so many people's lives were affected

because of our verdict.

I don't know, you know?

It's just something you have to live with.

I mean, we were all stuck here for a while.

Let's--you know, let's...

let's try to work it out.

You got to be, you know...

try and work it out.

The 1992 riots kind of ended abruptly.

It's like, as soon as those tanks hit the street,

it was over,

just instantaneously.

The one way to stop this riot,

it wasn't with a new model cities program

announced from Washington.

It was with superior force,

dealing with hooligans, criminals, and thugs.

It was early evening in Watts,

scores of police, nervous about any unusual activity,

swarmed in to deal with what they believed

may be a gang incident.

And what they stumbled on turned out to be

600 gang members--

Bloods, Crips, a half a dozen others--

agreeing to make peace.

These are cold killers,

crying and shit, hugging and shit,

and apologizing, and all of this because we saw

a bigger cause; we saw a bigger enemy

that was--that was more vicious and more serious

about getting rid of us than we was

about getting rid of each other.

We started celebrating outside.

We had a big party that night,

folks came from all across the city,

and we always have these renegade cops

in the neighborhood, and back then it was this cat

named Sunshine.

And Sunshine told us one day,

like, after we organized the peace treaty,

we was like, "Sunshine, man, the peace treaty,

yo, what's up? You down with it?"

And he was like, "It would be a cold day in hell

before I ever support the peace treaty."

He said, "I make $57,000 a year at the base salary."

He said, "I make another 60 in overtime."

He said, "I'm putting my daughter through Princeton

on your ignorance,"

and this is what he told us, literally.

Thank you very much for the overtime.

We do appreciate it.

They don't necessarily want

peace between the Bloods and the Crips.

How are they going to fill up the jails

if everybody's behaving themself?

Those three days were the best three days

in my fucking life, till this day.

I've done a lot of shit, you know what I mean?

But those there days, I'll never forget 'em,

and I'll cherish those days, because at this time,

we were so brutalized and we were so uncounted.

I used to really wonder, like, "Do they even know

what's going on down here?"

We finally had this spotlight and their attention on us,

my little Mayberry, my little South Central;

now the whole world is checking this out,

like, "What's going on there?"

Is there anything you'd like to say to my family

who lost a business during the riots?

Uh, I would say to anyone

who lost anything during the riots

that I'm deeply, uh, deeply grieved by that

and grieve that the Los Angeles Police Department

was not able to--to protect everyone.

We just do not have enough people.

I hope the people in your community and every community

will realize that, you know, some misinformation

about my not sending out the National Guard.

I sent it out just as quickly as we had the National Guard.

Well, there were accusations that you delayed

in bringing the police department into the riots

because you, um, wanted to show what would happen

without the police department.

How do you feel about those accusations?

If nothing else, I'm a--

I'm a consummate professional.

We'd never do a thing like that,

and besides, the Rambo in me wouldn't allow that to happen.

Critics have urged police chief Daryl Gates

to step down early because of the department's performance

during the riots.

I am concerned about the department,

and I think the department is at a point

where it's taken a lot of hits

because a lot of anger has been directed at me.

It's until the 1992 riots that we have a new chief,

and they decide we have to go out of the city to get a chief.

They can't even hire a chief within the department

because they didn't want to another William Parker protégé,

and that's when they got Willie Williams

from Philadelphia.

That just goes to show you how effed up the LAPD was

internally;

they couldn't even find a chief from within

to take over the reins

during this much tumultuous time.

♪ pensive music ♪

The legacy of the riots.

When you look at what's happening now

with the shootings,

what's going on with police brutality,

it seems like nothing's changed.

We're catching it and we're still not getting the justice.

It's still not that feeling of, "Oh, we got it on camera now;

we're gonna win this time."

It's still like, "We have to fight even harder."

I think you should be proud as a black man,

because you stood your ground and said this is unjust,

and if you're going to keep up with the shenanigans,

well, you're gonna feel it.

I took it upon myself to say

we got to develop a relationship with these police,

'cause they ain't going nowhere.

They're in our neighborhood,

and we got to stop them from beating us down.

Six motherfucking police out here.

In an officer involved shooting,

the LA Police Commission has just ruled

that the shooting death of a homeless on skid row

was justified.

The system ain't not a goddamn bit different.

Thank you, Black Lives Matter,

for making people stand up on a regular basis,

'cause that's actually a path

to a solution, is you got to stand up

and you got to keep standing up.

How many more black people have to die

till LAPD listens to us?

In the last four years,

we have had some of the most officer involved shootings

that result to death in Los Angeles.

Carnell Snell,

Ezell Ford,

Renell Jones,

Wakiesha Wilson...

- Say her name! Wakiesha Wilson!

- Say her name! Wakiesha Wilson!

The way that we are identifying our dignity

is showing up in the streets

for the people that they keep killing.

Fire Charlie Beck! Fire Charlie Beck!

Y'all just didn't take his life;

y'all took me and family life.

So from today, fuck this protesting shit.

I'ma start taking y'all lives.

Chief Beck later said, "To target someone

because of their profession is no better

than targeting someone because of their race."

There's the LAPD before 1992

and there's LAPD after 1992.

The before was a brutal, racist institution

that kept poor people and people of color in their place.

Post-1992, it's still serving some of that function,

but it's an institution that has more checks and balances.

The community is now much more organized

and pushes back a lot harder.

We never had communication with police,

and we're trying to start a whole new beginning

by getting that dialogue and that communication.

Like the chief said, we were talking to him

and hearing and listening and trying to find a better way

to bridge the gap between us and them.

Chief Charlie Beck says transparency and trust

are key.

What law enforcement does in Los Angeles

is use certain words to try to calm--

calm the community, calm the city,

and they know which words work.

One of the words that works is saying,

"We're going to be transparent."

And you start to see other chiefs in other cities

try to say the right thing,

and the reason why they're talking this way

in these press conferences

and trying to say the right thing

and claiming transparency

is because they don't want to see a riot in their city.

If you were me

and you were in my body,

would you be afraid of the police?

Based on what's going on in the world,

in America, would you be afraid?

Would you be nervous to drive in a car with your son?

Would you be afraid if you had any interaction with the police?

So I'll tell you a story.

So for about...

four or five years of my career,

I worked surveillance, and I had very long hair

in a time when very long hair was not popular,

and, you know, my job was to,

um, work criminals

in tough neighborhoods.

And I have, literally, because of the way I looked

and the car I drove and the way I drove,

I've been stopped hundreds of times, hundreds,

and there is--

there is always tension.

Always.

The solution to that

is empathy on both sides of the glass.

You know what, think about--

think about what the police officer is going through

as he approaches a car, maybe at night,

maybe it's dark, maybe he has information

you don't know about,

think about what he's going through and try to empathize

with their situation.

And what I tell my cops is,

that--the driver.

Empathize with his situation. You know?

Maybe he's never been pulled over before.

Maybe he just got pulled over yesterday

by some--by an officer that didn't treat him very well.

You know? Have some empathy.

And if there's empathy on both sides

of that transaction, you know,

then everybody's going to be fine.

So you believe if I carry empathy in my heart

that I'm less susceptible--

Well, if you display it, display empathy--

in other words, if you understand what the actions

of the police officer and therefore

you know, recognize that they are--

they may be on edge as they approach,

that, you know, the initial encounter

is the most dangerous part of a traffic stop.

I think that you have to remember those things, you know,

and if you do those things, then, certainly in Los Angeles,

you know, we don't see issues that come out of that.

All right.

Well, I guess if the empathy is mutual, because...

- Well, not-- - People allege that they do

all the right things and police officers

are still sort of on edge.

So I guess you just gotta hope that humankind can prevail

over scared police officers and scared people in cars.

Well, and I agree with that.

And that's why I think this is, you know, from my point of view,

this is one of the most, you know, everybody talks about

the conversation, you know? And--

As in the conversation.

As in "the" conversation.

Which is what?

Which is the conversation between parents

and particularly their teenage and adult sons

about how to act when you get stopped by the police.

When you're driving down the street and you see those lights

in your rearview mirror,

about the last thing you're thinking about

is whether or not the police officer that's getting ready

to stop you is having a bad day.

Or if you do think about that,

you say, "Oh, my God.

I hope he's not having a bad day.

Otherwise I might get shot."

It really is sad, you know?

I was always happy I didn't have a son

for the gang aspect of living

and just from, you know, what it takes

to become a young black man in this world.

I was just happy that I didn't have to deal with those issues.

You know?

We've had leaders within the community

who are gang leaders who have tried to make positive change.

But it takes all of us.

We can't continue to let this devil manipulate us

to kill each other.

It's crazy.

I still have problems

losing my children to gangs.

I still went through that.

You, yourself? - Yes.

My grandson was just murdered last year.

It's--

Mm.

You know, it happens in our communities,

and it's heartbreaking.

And I'm one of the aware ones

that raised my children

to understand and to read

and get an education.

And I still...

I still lost my grandson.

I was--I was angry. I was angry.

I used to tell my mom,

you know, if I make it to 18,

I'm gonna suicide bomb a police station.

I hated, hated, hated the police.

He was pretty radical.

- Yeah. - It was very--

it was scary for me to listen to him talk.

And I have to say this,

I'm happy that we can have this conversation all here together,

our entire family, because he used to tell me,

"I'll be lucky if I see 21."

Let me tell you something about my son real quick.

Nicholas!

Come here real quick.

Come here. Hurry up. Hurry up.

Come right here.

This is--this is something that us as people of color

should never have to go through.

Take this hat off. Take the hat off.

Sit down.

Tell this gentleman

what I taught you about when we get pulled over

by the police.

What should you do?

Um, put your hands up on the dashboard

so the police don't think you have any weapons

or to show your hands.

- 12.

I got to tell a 12-year-old

how to conduct himself

when he interface with law enforcement

because I'm scared

that if he acts silly and does something with his hands,

they will kill him.

They've already killed Tamir Rice,

who was 12 years old.

So I got to teach him how to conduct himself,

where to put his hands, how to behave,

where to position them,

so that we can make it where?

After the end of the day, where we going?

- Home.

Thank you.

♪ blues rock music ♪

♪♪

♪ Well, Martin's dream ♪

♪ Has become blind ♪

♪ And worse, a nightmare ♪

♪ Can't walk the streets ♪

♪ To them we are fair game ♪

♪ Our lives don't mean a thing ♪

♪ Like a king, like a king, like a king ♪

♪ Rodney King, Rodney King, Rodney King ♪

♪ Like a king, like a king, like a king ♪

♪ How I wish you could help us, Dr. King ♪

♪ Make sure it's filmed ♪

♪ Shown on national TV ♪

♪ They'll have no mercy ♪

♪ A legal lynch mob ♪

♪ Like they strung up from the trees ♪

♪ The LAPD ♪

♪ Like a king, like a king, like a king ♪

♪ Rodney King, Rodney King, Rodney King ♪

♪ Never thought that I would make it this far ♪

♪ Yeah, I'm still in school ♪

♪ While I'm driving foreign cars ♪

♪ Yeah, I'm young and reckless ♪

♪ All these diamonds on my necklace ♪

♪ You can call me MC Hammer ♪

♪ You can't touch this ♪

♪ I never fell in love ♪

♪ I'm a heartbreak kid ♪

♪ I get it how I live ♪

♪ And never forget ♪

♪ LA my city ♪

♪ I run this trick ♪

♪ I might ball like Kobe ♪

♪ And get a cup of milk, hey ♪

♪ Gotta love LA ♪

♪ Hey ♪

♪ Gotta love LA ♪

♪ Gotta love LA ♪

- ♪ This is my city ♪ - ♪ What ♪

- ♪ This is my city ♪ - ♪ What ♪

- ♪ This is my city ♪ - ♪ What ♪

- ♪ This is my city ♪