Wednesday, April 18, 2018

The Thin Blue Line

Police Persepctives on the 1992 Race Riots from The Washington Post


This is a newspaper article from a little over a week after the verdict on April 29. The author goes over the events that happened after the verdict like all the looting and violence that are happening on Florence and Normandie Avenues. They also mentioned the statistics of the damage to buildings from all the violent protests and the amount of people arrested or injured. A big portion of the article is about the accounts from officers that were initially in the front lines before they pulled back and what the LAPD did to protect the city during and after the riots. The article also included a part where a church wanted to protest peacefully and was also the only building to be left standing after the destruction.

Most of the accounts from officers were that they weren’t allowed to move in and try to control the area to prevent more damage and violence. The officers also thought that they would bring more forces because they knew that the amount of officers that they have would be able to suppress the riot. It looks like the whole department was in a total mess even though they had barely prepared for what was to happen. There is some disappointment in officers since they couldn’t do anything because of their orders to pull back. This gives a little context on what we said in class about the police only protecting the nicer neighborhoods and left other neighborhoods to be destroyed.


-Keman Guan                       

No comments:

Post a Comment