Police cruisers poured into the neighborhood. Instead of sealing off the area and ascertaining just what had happened, officers charged the building, swinging nightsticks wildly. Two Muslims who fought with the police were shot. So were two who sought to flee or surrender. One died; another was permanently disabled. Four more men were badly injured. Other Muslims fought back, ineffectually. Inside the men"s room, police beat a dozen of the men who"d been involved in the melee. The battle was over.
The following day, Chief Parker went to visit Officer Kensic at Central Receiving Hospital. Afterward, Parker called the Friday-night incident "the most brutal conflict I"ve seen" in his thirty-five years on the force and described Kensic"s injuries as the result of a vicious attack by a "hate organization which is dedicated to the destruction of the Caucasian race."
The Nation of Islam sent in one of its most prominent leaders too-its "national minister," Malcolm X. At a press conference at the Statler Hilton Hotel (which Malcolm X began with the sobering words "Seven innocent, unarmed black men were shot in cold blood"), the controversial Black Muslim leader denounced Chief Parker as a man "intoxicated with power and his own ego."
But Malcolm X wasn"t there for funeral publicity. He was determined to bring the LAPD to justice. Suspecting that police would seek to prosecute the men it had arrested in order to justify the seven shootings, he set to work lining up the services of one of the city"s most respected African American attorneys, Earl Broady. A former policeman and now a proud resident of Beverly Hills, Broady initially rejected these overtures. He thought of Black Muslims as riffraff and saw Parker as a reformer, albeit an autocratic one. However, Malcolm X"s persistence and his lucid explanations of what was at stake-plus the largest retainer fee Broady had ever been offered-eventually prevailed.*
Malcolm X"s efforts put the NAACP in an awkward situation. Although he was loath to a.s.sociate his organization with the Nation of Islam, executive director Roy Wilkins suspected there was considerable truth to Malcolm X"s version of what had happened. Eventually, the NAACP decided to join the civil suit. Meanwhile, the LAPD counterattacked. Parker arranged for a group of Negro leaders, many of them ministers hostile to the Black Muslims, to endorse a campaign to eradicate the Nation of Islam. But when the group convened before the county board of supervisors on May 8, protesters shouted them down. Both the ministers and the supervisors were shaken. Not since the days of the Zoot Suit Riots, said one supervisor, had he felt such tension. The ministers decided to amend their request. Now, they proposed to work with the police to eradicate the Nation of Islam and and police brutality. Three days later a group of twenty-five ministers met with Chief Parker. But when one of the partic.i.p.ants, Rev. H. H. Brookins, broached a recent order to require two officers per car in Negro areas, Chief Parker declared, "I didn"t come here to be lectured," and stalked out. Horrified, the head of the Police Commission persuaded Parker to return. But at the end of the meeting Parker complained that "the Negro people" seemed unable to conduct a civil exchange with him. police brutality. Three days later a group of twenty-five ministers met with Chief Parker. But when one of the partic.i.p.ants, Rev. H. H. Brookins, broached a recent order to require two officers per car in Negro areas, Chief Parker declared, "I didn"t come here to be lectured," and stalked out. Horrified, the head of the Police Commission persuaded Parker to return. But at the end of the meeting Parker complained that "the Negro people" seemed unable to conduct a civil exchange with him.
This was too much. Rev. J. Raymond Henderson decided to hold a protest at his Second Baptist Church, one of the largest congregations in the west. On the evening of Sunday, May 13, nearly three thousand people packed the church, among them the exotic Muslim leader from New York, Malcolm X. As a non-Christian, he was not allowed to step into the worship area. But when he rose from his front-row seat and asked to address the audience, Reverand Henderson allowed him to proceed. Malcolm X"s speech was so mesmerizing, an undercover LAPD officer reported, that when Reverend Henderson tried to interrupt his diatribe about police brutality, the reverend"s own congregation booed their minister into silence.
The LAPD was losing the black community.
In early June, a group called the United Clergymen for Central Los Angeles denounced Parker as "anti-Negro" and asked Mayor Yorty to personally investigate complaints of verbal and physical brutality. Parker responded that this was nothing more than an attempt by Communist sympathizers to use the technique of the "Big Lie" against the department. Mayor Yorty rushed to his police chief"s defense.
"I doubt if there is any city in the United States with more Negroes in government than Los Angeles," Yorty told the press, noting that he himself was a member of the NAACP and that both his civil service and police commissions were dominated by minorities. This was technically true. The Police Commission"s five members did include a black attorney, a Latino doctor, and a Jewish lawyer. But these men hardly served as Parker"s boss. On the contrary, Parker himself had chosen at least one of the minority members, African American attorney Elbert Hudson. As for the constant drumbeat of allegations about police brutality, Yorty dismissed them as "wild and exaggerated" and echoed Parker"s suggestion that they were Communist inspired. That summer Parker flew to Washington, D.C., to brief Attorney General Robert Kennedy on the Black Muslim menace.
Chief Parker ignored-or mocked-those who sought to draw attention to African American grievances. When in early 1963, the Episcopal bishop of California drew attention to "the bad psychological pattern" between police and minority groups, Parker hit back, dismissing the prelate as an uninformed San Franciscan.
"The Negro community here has praised us long and loud," Parker insisted. "We have the best relationship with Negroes of any big city in America today."
Chief Parker and Mayor Yorty"s brush-off inspired black Angelenos to take action. The following year, in 1963, three African Americans were elected or appointed to the city council, Billy Mills, Gilbert Lindsay, and Tom Bradley. All had made police accountability a major part of their campaign platforms. All soon discovered that they could make no headway against Chief Parker.
That August, America watched while civil rights demonstrators converged in Washington, D.C., for a march to demand jobs and freedom for all Americans. To many Americans, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King"s "I Have a Dream" speech was a thrilling paean to the promises of freedom. To Chief Parker, it was an invitation to revolt. Immediately after the March on Washington, law enforcement and National Guard officials met to draft a plan to respond to civil disorder. An emergency plan was developed, numbering nearly a hundred pages in length. Later that fall, LAPD officials wrote a memo on police-guard coordination that included a provision that would permit the use of hand grenades against protesters.
The emergence of a civil rights movement founded on the concept of civil disobedience likewise disturbed Parker greatly-more greatly than the conditions that prompted its emergence. Parker seemed to believe that Los Angeles already was as integrated as it could be, short of embracing "reverse discrimination" (i.e., forcing white people to work with and live next to black people when they would rather not). When asked how he would have responded to civil rights demonstrations had he been the chief of police in Birmingham, Parker ducked the question. "Los Angeles is not Birmingham," he replied. To Parker, the willingness of Los Angeles-area civil rights organizations to criticize the LAPD-a department that Chief Parker firmly believed had done "a magnificent job" with race relations-afforded the final proof that the civil rights movement was essentially pro-Communist and antipolice.
In Chief Parker"s world, race relations had a "through the looking gla.s.s" quality. The LAPD arrested a higher percentage of minorities than other big-city police departments because it enforced the law more equally than other departments. Race relations in Los Angeles seemed bad because race relations were so good that the city had become a target for agitators. Unnamed forces, Parker insisted, had chosen Los Angeles as "a proving ground" for their strategy of damaging the police precisely because it took racial complaints so seriously. Fortunately, the chief a.s.serted, it wasn"t working. "Negroes," he confidently a.s.serted in the summer of 1963, "aren"t ready to make big demonstrations." Nor would he permit the threat of disorder to intimidate the department into unilaterally disarming.
"This city can"t be sandbagged by some threat of disorder into destroying itself," he told Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times columnist Paul Coates in the summer of 1963. "We have the most advanced department in the nation in human relations." columnist Paul Coates in the summer of 1963. "We have the most advanced department in the nation in human relations."
The country"s greatest police department would not allow its youngest great city to go up in flames.
* On May 14, an all-white coroner"s jury acquitted the officer involved in the point-blank shooting of one of the men at the mosque, Ronald X Stokes. Stokes had been shot with his hands raised because the officer who killed him felt endangered. The jury"s deliberations took less than thirty minutes. The Black Muslims were not treated so leniently. Despite Broady"s efforts, on July 14, 1963, eleven members of the Nation of Islam were convicted on a variety of charges and given prison sentences ranging from one to ten years. ("Sentences Reimposed on 11 Black Muslims," On May 14, an all-white coroner"s jury acquitted the officer involved in the point-blank shooting of one of the men at the mosque, Ronald X Stokes. Stokes had been shot with his hands raised because the officer who killed him felt endangered. The jury"s deliberations took less than thirty minutes. The Black Muslims were not treated so leniently. Despite Broady"s efforts, on July 14, 1963, eleven members of the Nation of Islam were convicted on a variety of charges and given prison sentences ranging from one to ten years. ("Sentences Reimposed on 11 Black Muslims," Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1965.)
26.
The Gas Chamber.
"Don"t worry about me."-Mickey Cohen.
IN JANUARY 1962, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld Cohen"s tax conviction. Mickey returned to Alcatraz. But two weeks later, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Douglas stepped in again, allowing Mickey to leave on bail once more while the U.S. Supreme Court considered his final appeal. Soon thereafter, a reporter for the Valley News Valley News found him living quietly in a rented house in Van Nuys. He complained about the lack of closet s.p.a.ce and the small hot water heater. He explained that he and Hagen were engaged and hoped to be married as soon as he won his income tax appeal. He was even working on a new version of his life story, tentatively t.i.tled found him living quietly in a rented house in Van Nuys. He complained about the lack of closet s.p.a.ce and the small hot water heater. He explained that he and Hagen were engaged and hoped to be married as soon as he won his income tax appeal. He was even working on a new version of his life story, tentatively t.i.tled The Poison Has Left Me The Poison Has Left Me. Meanwhile, on March 5, 1962, Mickey Cohen"s trial for the murder of Jack Whalen got under way. If convicted, Cohen faced the possibility of the gas chamber.
Cohen"s indictment arose from statements LoCigno had made in prison. Mickey"s junior henchman had confessed to a priest that he had not, in fact, shot Whalen but had agreed to be the fall guy after Mickey Cohen promised him a large cash payoff and a short prison term. He"d gotten neither. The priest in turn tipped off prosecutors in L.A. to the fact that LoCigno might be willing to talk. An agent then came up to pay LoCigno a visit. "I didn"t do the shooting," he told the agent in their first meeting. "I can"t tell you who did but I can get someone to lead you to the gun." A friend of LoCigno"s took investigators to a popular make-out spot on Mulholland Drive. There police found a rusty revolver that matched the type of gun fired in the Whalen killing. They quickly traced the gun"s ownership to another member of Mickey"s party, Roger Leonard.
Although he was willing to talk with authorities, LoCigno wasn"t willing to finger Leonard or anyone else as the actual gunman. Instead, at the second trial, LoCigno largely repeated the account he had given the jury in his first trial. The prosecution tried to offset this problem with a new witness-a USC student/model who had been dating Candy Barr"s manager at the time. The fearless coed testified that Barr"s manager had warned her that "there"s going to be trouble at Rondelli"s" and later said, "it was stupid to put all the guns in the trashcan." However, she didn"t identify Mickey as the gunman either, and much of her testimony came perilously close to hearsay. The gun police had recovered following LoCigno"s suggestions was too rusty to be positively identified as the murder weapon. In short, prosecutors had very little in the way of new evidence that could tie Mickey to the shooting.
Cohen"s attorneys did not hesitate to make this point. "If you convict Mickey Cohen in this case," declared his attorney during his closing statement on April 4, "you"ll be convicting him only because he"s Mickey Cohen, not because he"s guilty." The following day, after a four-hour closing argument accusing Cohen and his attorneys of weaving "a web of deceit" around what prosecutors claimed was a premeditated conspiracy to kill Jack Whalen, the prosecution rested its case. On Thursday, the jury-eleven women and one man-retired to deliberate. By the end of the day Friday, they still had not reached a verdict. The presiding judge ordered them sequestered over the weekend.
On day four of the jury"s deliberations, newspaper columnist Paul Coates tracked down Cohen and found him "half-dozing in a Beverly Hills barber"s chair." A manicurist was buffing his nails. A shoeshine boy was hard at work polishing his brand-new Florsheims. As Coates pondered the question of how a man who at any moment could be condemned to death could be so relaxed, the radio crackled to life.
"Here"s another bulletin," the newscaster announced excitedly. "The Mickey Cohen murder trial jury, failing for the fourth day to reach a verdict, has been locked up again for the night."
"Mickey"s barber gasped," wrote Coates.
"The pressure-the suspense. It must be terrible," the barber suggested. Mickey just grunted.
"This is a crazy town," he finally answered. "They accuse me of b.u.mping a guy off. So what do they do? They turn me loose and lock up my jury!"
The next day, the jury in Cohen"s case informed the judge that it was hopelessly deadlocked. Nine members of the jury were ready to acquit. Three insisted on holding out for a conviction. Reluctantly, Judge Lewis Drucker declared a mistrial.
"Although much testimony of the defendants was discredited and there was some admitted perjury, I consider the totality of the evidence against them shows no conspiracy exists," declared the judge. With that, the murder charges were dismissed. Mickey Cohen had once again beaten the rap.
Cohen had dodged the gas chamber. But he couldn"t avoid a return trip to Alcatraz. Later that spring, the Supreme Court rejected his appeals request in his tax-evasion case. In early May, he bid Sandy Hagen and an estimated two hundred fans and autograph seekers farewell as he surrendered to authorities at the federal building in downtown Los Angeles. His mandatory release date was early 1972. Kissing Hagen good-bye, Mickey declared to the a.s.sembled crowd, "I followed the concept of life man should-except for that gambling operation."
THE FOLLOWING FEBRUARY, Mickey Cohen was moved from Alcatraz to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. There he took over Vito Genovese"s old job in the electric shop, along with Genovese"s hot plate and shower. Mickey typically got off work a bit early, so he could make it to the showers first, for an extra-long rinse. But that particular day, when Cohen headed to the showers, wrapped in a towel, he found himself face to face with an unexpected visitor, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
Kennedy had come to offer the hoodlum one last opportunity to turn state"s witness for the government. "How the h.e.l.l are you going to live fifteen years in this G.o.dd.a.m.n chicken coop?" he asked Cohen.
"Don"t worry about me," Cohen replied. Then he proceeded to the shower.
Compared to Alcatraz, Atlanta was "paradise." Cohen could listen to the radio and read the newspaper-even watch television from time to time. He slowly adjusted to prison hours-waking up at five thirty or six, going to sleep early, when lights went out. To stay in shape, "I did a lot of shadow boxing and knee bends." He thought about appeals strategies and wrote letters to his attorneys. He engaged in "shop talk" with "certain guys from Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York." He also made nice with other inmates.
"[Y]ou say h.e.l.lo to everybody, particularly if you"re somebody with a name. See, if you don"t, they"ll say, "Who the h.e.l.l does that son of a b.i.t.c.h think he is? He thinks he"s a big shot?"" From such small slights, shocking violence could sometimes erupt.
Cohen was playing it smart. But sometimes, even the smartest card player gets dealt a bad hand. That"s what happened to Mickey on August 14, 1963, when a deranged inmate, Estes McDonald, escaped from medical supervision. After scaling a chain-link fence and crossing the prison yard, he found Mickey Cohen inside watching TV-and viciously brained him with a three-foot-long lead pipe. By the time prison authorities restrained McDonald, Cohen was a b.l.o.o.d.y heap, his skull visibly indented. It took him six hours to regain consciousness. It was another two days before prison doctors were confident that Cohen would survive. Prison authorities tried to put a happy face on the situation for Sandy Hagen and Cohen family members, but the damage done was severe. Mickey"s legs were partially paralyzed. His arms were essentially useless. His voice was slurred. Cohen had to beg the prison bull for a special allotment of six rolls of toilet paper a day, simply to dry the tears that now rolled down his cheeks spontaneously, uncontrollably.
In October, Cohen was transferred to a special medical facility in Springfield, Missouri, for brain surgery. It was only partially successful. Cohen was still unable to walk following the operation and could use only one arm. Cohen was sent to Los Angeles for therapy-under armed guard. As a result of intensive physical therapy there, considerable progress was made. By the end of his time in Los Angeles, Cohen was able to move with the a.s.sistance of a walker. Progress was rewarded with a transfer back to Springfield. There, for most of the next eleven months, he was kept in solitary confinement, ostensibly for his protection. Cohen responded by filing a $10 million lawsuit against the government for negligence in allowing the convict who had attacked him to escape.
In March 1964, Cohen"s old friend Ben Hecht wrote the gangster a sympathetic letter. "Dear Mickey," it began.
You are not in the only jail there is. There is another jail called "old age" in which I am beginning to serve time. Like you, I am not allowed to complain or protest-Rose won"t stand for it.I hope they let you look at television so that you can keep up on the shenanigans that the "holier than thous" continue to commit and perform. I was going to write a letter to Attorney General Kennedy about you-I inquired of a friend of his how he might react to such a letter. I was told he would react loudly and angrily rant against itIf there is such a thing as "Good luck" in the place where you are, I hope you find it.Sincerely, Ben Hecht Hecht died one month later. Cohen seemed trapped in a living death. Disconsolate, he wrote the faithful Sandy Hagen, telling her that she should wait for him no more.
"I may never come out of here alive, and the best I"m going to come out is terribly crippled," he wrote. "I won"t be in no position to be any good to you or anyone else."
Ever obedient, Hagen complied with Mickey"s instructions. She married and disappeared from the newspapers, never to be found again. Cohen was now truly alone.
BILL PARKER was also struggling against a failing body. In May 1964, Parker left Los Angeles for the Mayo Clinic. The papers reported he would be gone for a week of "skin and arthritic treatment." In fact, it appears that he was undergoing serious gastrointestinal surgery. a.s.sociates were shocked at his appearance upon his return. Parker was gaunt and appeared to have aged several years. However, surgery didn"t seem to have diminished his zest for rhetorical combat. When later that summer rioting broke out in four eastern cities after clashes between police officers and African Americans, Parker was adamant that Los Angeles would see no similar large-scale disturbances. At appearances throughout the city, the chief returned to his theory of outside agitators, noting that most of the protesters who turned out for civil rights demonstrations in Los Angeles weren"t even black.
Yet signs of racial strife were everywhere. That April, black youths had clashed with police on multiple occasions, first at a track meet at Jefferson High School, then, two weeks later, at the scene of a traffic accident. (Parker blamed "social unrest and resentment against all forms of governmental authority" for the disturbances.) In May, California a.s.sistant attorney general Howard Jewell warned, in a report to the state AG, that the bitter conflict between Parker and civil rights leaders risked sparking rioting unless the tensions were addressed. Judge Loren Miller, a member of the Jewell Commission, was even more pessimistic.
"Violence in Los Angeles is inevitable," wrote Miller. "Nothing can or will be done about it until after the fact. Then there will be the appointment of a commission which will d.a.m.n the civil rights leaders and the Chief alike."
Parker vehemently disagreed.
"I doubt that Los Angeles will become part of the battleground of the racial conflict that is raging in the United States today," Parker told the Sigma Delta Chi journalism fraternity that fall. "This city is ten years ahead of other major metropolitan areas in a.s.similating the Negro minority." Real unrest would only become a danger, Parker told the Sherman Oaks Rotary Club in the spring of 1964, if "the current soft att.i.tude on the part of the republic to crime and Civil Rights demonstrations" continued.
Even with three African Americans on the city council, no one could check Chief Parker"s course. Councilman Bradley became so frustrated with the situation that in the spring of 1965, he even introduced legislation that would have made the chief of police more more powerful. Bradley"s rationale was that it was time to end the charade that the Police Commission directed the department and hold accountable the man who really did. But like most of Bradley"s other attempts to restrain Parker, it failed. Bill Parker would chart his own destiny. powerful. Bradley"s rationale was that it was time to end the charade that the Police Commission directed the department and hold accountable the man who really did. But like most of Bradley"s other attempts to restrain Parker, it failed. Bill Parker would chart his own destiny.
27.
Watts.
"This community has done a magnificent job [with race relations]. We"re afraid to tell the truth, because it would prove this is the Garden of Eden."-Chief William Parker, June 25, 1963 ON WEDNESDAY EVENING, August 11, 1965, a California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer, Lee Minikus, was waved down by a pa.s.sing African American motorist. The motorist told Minikus that he"d just seen a white Buick headed up Avalon Boulevard, driving recklessly-"like he might be drunk or something." Minikus, who was white, set off in pursuit and soon caught up with the speeding car. He pulled it over at 116th and Avalon. Its driver was twenty-one-year-old Marquette Frye. His stepbrother Ronald, twenty-two, was also in the car. Office Minikus asked Marquette for his license. He didn"t have one. Smelling alcohol, Officer Minikus asked Marquette to get out of the car to perform the standard field sobriety test. Frye failed the test. Minikus went back to his motorcycle and radioed for his partner, who was patrolling the nearby Harbor Freeway. He also called for a patrol car to take Marquette in to be booked and a tow truck for the car. It was a minute or two after seven o"clock in the evening.
Minikus told Marquette that he was under arrest. Still good-natured, Marquette asked Minikus if his brother or some other family member could take the car home. They were only a block away. Officer Minikus said that he could not. Department procedure called for towing away and impounding the car. At that very moment, an ex-girlfriend of Marquette"s walked by. Seeing that Marquette was about to be arrested, she hurried over to the apartment where he lived to fetch Marquette and Ronald"s mother. When she arrived at the scene to find a second motorcycle patrolman (Minikus"s partner), a transportation car, and the tow truck, Mrs. Frye got upset-at Marquette. She started to scold him for drinking. Up until this point in the arrest, Marquette had been subdued but cooperative. Now, his mood changed. He pushed away his mother and allegedly started shouting, "You motherf.u.c.king white cops, you"re not taking me anywhere!" yelling that they would have to kill him before he would go to jail.
It was a sweltering day. Since Monday, temperatures had been in the mid-nineties-fifteen degrees hotter than it had been all summer. A yellow-gray blanket of smog lay heavy across the city. In 1965, air conditioners were still a rarity in this part of Watts, a working-cla.s.s neighborhood of newly built two-story apartment buildings and bungalows. As a result, residents tried to spend as much time outside as they could. The neighborhood was full of people that evening-people who were naturally curious to know what all the ruckus was about. By the time Marquette got angry, a crowd of roughly a hundred bystanders had gathered. Some of them started to murmur, angrily. Minikus"s partner slipped off and radioed a code 1199-officer needs help. He returned with a baton used for riot control. The officer in the patrol car grabbed his shotgun.
The crowd, now numbering perhaps 150 people, was starting to turn hostile. "Hit those blue-eyed b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" a voice yelled. While one highway patrol officer waved his shotgun at the crowd, the two motorcycle patrol officers attempted to grab Marquette. A scuffle broke out as California Highway Patrol reinforcements arrived at the scene. Marquette was struck by a baton and collapsed on the ground. Mrs. Frye jumped onto the back of one of the arresting officers, screaming, "You white Southern b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Little brother Ronald got into the mix too. By 7:23 p.m., all the Fryes were under arrest. The crowd was now screaming.
"Leave the old lady alone!" someone cried.
"Those white motherf.u.c.kers got no cause to do that," yelled someone else.
"We"ve got no rights at all-it"s just like Selma," shouted someone else.
The number of onlookers swelled to between 250 and 300 persons. The crowd was getting more and more agitated. Who didn"t know about the shootout three years earlier with the Nation of Islam? Who didn"t know that just one year earlier white Californians had voted to maintain housing segregation, to keep black Angelenos confined to the ghetto? Picking up on the mood, one of the highway patrol officers slipped off to radio for more backup. Soon three more highway patrol officers appeared. Minikus and his partner were now struggling with Marquette and his stepbrother-and with Mrs. Frye. Another officer swung his nightstick at Marquette, hitting him on the forehead and opening a nasty cut. As this was going on, the first LAPD units arrived at the scene.
The arresting officers caught the crowd"s mood. They knew things could get violent. The patrol cars and the tow truck pulled away fast. But as the motorcycle patrolmen revved their engines, one of the officers felt a wad of spit hit the back of his neck. He and his partner stopped and plunged back into the crowd, grabbing the woman they thought was responsible, who started screaming that she hadn"t done anything. The patrol cars returned to the scene, where the crowd, enraged by police mistreatment of a pregnant black woman (as the rumor now had it) was screaming for blood.
"Motherf.u.c.kers! Blue-eyed devils! Motherf.u.c.kers!"
Another man started urging the crowd to respond; the highway patrol arrested him as well. Then they left to take the Fryes to be booked at a local sheriff"s substation. By 7:40 p.m., the police were again pulling away. A youth hurled a bottle at one of the retreating patrol cars, hitting its rear fender with a crash. This time the police did not return, but instead of dispersing, the a.s.sembled crowd headed out into the neighborhood, intent on venting their anger. White motorists pa.s.sing through the area soon found themselves pelted with stones and, in some cases, beaten. One of the people driving through the area was Chief Parker"s protege, Daryl Gates.
Gates had enjoyed a rapid ascent in Parker"s police department. In 1963, Parker confidant James Hamilton, the longtime head of the Los Angeles Police Department"s intelligence division, had left the department to go to the National Football League. (The NFL was having problems with gambling and organized crime, and Robert Kennedy had recommended his old friend as the perfect person to clean it up.) No position in the department was more sensitive; Parker tapped Gates to fill it. After two years of exemplary service in that position and another outstanding performance on the civil service exam, in June 1965 Gates became (at the age of thirty-eight) one of the youngest inspectors in the history of the LAPD. A Herald-Examiner Herald-Examiner story on the appointment noted that Gates was "rumored to be Parker"s choice as a successor." He was a.s.signed to command Patrol Area 3-Highland Park, Hollywood, Hollenbeck, and Central Division. But in early August, the inspector who was normally in charge of Patrol Area 2-South-Central and southwest L.A.-went on vacation. As a result, those areas were added to Gates"s command. story on the appointment noted that Gates was "rumored to be Parker"s choice as a successor." He was a.s.signed to command Patrol Area 3-Highland Park, Hollywood, Hollenbeck, and Central Division. But in early August, the inspector who was normally in charge of Patrol Area 2-South-Central and southwest L.A.-went on vacation. As a result, those areas were added to Gates"s command.
On the evening of August 11, Gates was heading over to check on security at the Harvey Aluminum Company plant at 190th and Normandie, where workers were out on strike. Over the radio he heard a dispatcher alerting all units to "a major 415"-a large-scale civil disturbance. Gates was about a mile from the intersection of Avalon and 116th Street. He decided to drive over and see what was going on.
What he saw was mayhem. "A kind of crazed carnival atmosphere had broken out," Gates recalled later in his memoirs. "Laughing, shouting, hurling anything they could find, people were running helter-skelter through the streets. Cars-ours and those of unsuspecting motorists-were pelted with rocks and bottles." But, as Gates noted, "no single mob had formed." Moreover, most of the violence was confined to an eight-block area that centered on the scene of the Frye arrest. There was still a chance to control the chaos.
The police had regrouped at a gas station just off the Imperial Highway, where an ad hoc command post had been set up. As the ranking officer, Gates took charge of the field office. Using the roughly twenty patrol cars on hand, Gates attempted to cordon off the area. It was seventy police officers against a mob of five hundred, eight hundred, a thousand-no one really knew for sure. That wasn"t counting reporters, whose presence seemed to spur the youths to additional acts of violence. Nonetheless, by the early hours of the morning it appeared that the police had managed to contain the violence. By 3 or 4 a.m. in the morning, the rock-throwing had died down and the streets had largely cleared. Deputy Chief Murdock, with whom Gates had been in communication all evening, gave the order for the exhausted police officers to retire.
LOS ANGELES was not having a race riot.
If officers on the street were attuned to the possibility of spontaneous racial violence, Chief Parker was not. Even as the violence spread, Parker told a Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times reporter that the city was not experiencing a race riot-where blacks attacked whites-"since all the rioters were Negroes." Rather, what Los Angeles was witnessing was an outburst of childish emotionalism-"people who gave vent to their emotions on a hot night when the temperature didn"t get below 72 degrees." reporter that the city was not experiencing a race riot-where blacks attacked whites-"since all the rioters were Negroes." Rather, what Los Angeles was witnessing was an outburst of childish emotionalism-"people who gave vent to their emotions on a hot night when the temperature didn"t get below 72 degrees."
In fact, Parker"s police department had been caught off guard-despite ample warnings. Earlier that summer, for instance, Chief Parker received a letter from B. J. Smith, director of the Research a.n.a.lysis Corporation in McLean, Virginia. Smith noted that Rochester, Philadelphia, New York, and Newark had all experienced race riots during the summer of 1964. How was the country"s greatest police department preparing for the possibility of urban violence? Smith"s questions were timely: "What are the signs or indications of impending civil disturbance? What measures can be taken to avert this trouble? What techniques are most effective for controlling and discrediting demonstrations and riots?"
Chief Parker"s response, in a letter written on May 12, was telling. "The Los Angeles Police Department has never experienced an insurgency situation," he replied. Moreover, it never expected to. "There have been no occurrences of civil disturbances nor serious conditions which might initiate such a situation in this city." He concluded the letter by referring Smith to cities that had.
It was a curious response. Parker"s apocalyptic imagination was well developed. Just a few weeks after receiving Smith"s letter, for instance, Parker sat down for a radio interview with ultra-right-wing radio host Dean Man-ion. The tone of their conversation was dark. Parker told his listeners that America was in the midst of a slow-motion socialist revolution: "The difficulty encountered in this socialistic trend is that it is a revolution and it is not entirely a bloodless one, I a.s.sure you." Yet somehow the prophet of social anarchy seemed unwilling to accept the possibility that anarchy might erupt in his own city, even after it already had.
THURSDAY MORNING dawned uneasy. The violence had stopped, but no one knew what would happen that night. Eager to defuse the tensions, the Los Angeles County Human Relations Committee scheduled a 2 p.m. community meeting at Athens Park, eleven blocks from the scene of the rioting. Community leaders from across Watts and, indeed, the city appeared-before a huge throng of print, television, and radio reporters-to urge the residents of Watts not to resort to violence. The meeting started well. Even the combative Mrs. Frye urged residents "to help me and the others calm this situation down so that we will not have a riot tonight." But as the event continued, a different mood swept through the crowd. Appeals to calm gave way to expressions of grievance. In a moment of confusion, an African American high school student dashed up to the microphones and informed the crowd that black youths would attack the white areas adjacent to Watts that evening. His remarks were widely carried by the media.
Chief Parker did not attend the meeting. Nor would he agree to meet with those whom he dismissively called the "so-called" Negro leaders, who he believed were attempting to "relieve the Negro people of any responsibility in this situation." Instead, the chief spoke to the press. His comments were not helpful. When asked about the causes of the unrest, Parker replied that the trouble started "when one person threw a rock, and like monkeys in a zoo, others started throwing rocks." Calls by a.s.semblyman Mervyn Dymally to announce the immediate establishment of a civilian police review board were dismissed as "a vicious canard." Parker believed it was now time to meet force with force. After being briefed on what had transpired at the Athens Park meeting, Parker called the adjutant general of the California National Guard to inform him that Los Angeles might well need the Guard. But calling out the Guard was something that only the governor could do and Governor Brown was in Greece on a trip. As a result, the authority to call out the Guard rested with Lt. Gov. Glenn Anderson, who was in Santa Barbara. That evening, Parker called Anderson to brief him on the situation. The lieutenant governor decided to drive back to his house in Los Angeles that evening so he could a.s.sess the situation for himself.
At roughly the same time, a delegation of African American activists was meeting with deputy chief Roger Murdock. The activists wanted no visible police presence in Watts that evening. They believed the sight of police would only spur further violence. Instead, they asked the department to deploy only black officers-in civilian clothes and unmarked cars.
Deputy Chief Murdock rejected this proposal out of hand. All day long, he, Daryl Gates, and Inspectors John Powers and Pete Hagan had been working to craft a plan to control South-Central Los Angeles. Their strategy was to deploy units from across the city-as well as roughly 150 deputy sheriffs from the 77th Street station. The hope was that the heavy presence of officers on the street would deter the rioters. Gates would deploy with a contingent of officers to the north of the Imperial Freeway; Inspector John Powers would come in from the south.
THE EVENING began uneventfully-so much so that Gates and the other inspectors decided to treat themselves to a celebratory dinner. But when Gates arrived at the center of field operations, it was clear that things were going badly, even worse than the night before.
The LAPD"s training in riot control had taught officers how to handle large groups of people-a ma.s.s protest heading down the street. The police ma.s.s in formation, split the rioters into two, and disperse them down two different streets. That, at least, was what the training manuals said. But this was different. There was no ma.s.s of marchers or rioters to confront. Instead, it was guerrilla warfare. Shots were being fired, Molotov c.o.c.ktails thrown. a.s.sailants disappeared down alleys and over fences seconds after they appeared. All around, windows and storefronts were being smashed and stores looted. Buildings were starting to go up in flames. Gates realized with horror that the LAPD"s field deployment was "a complete abject failure." Confronted with tactics they had never imagined, much less trained against, the LAPD was adrift.
Orders from headquarters that came over the squawking radios only added to the problem. While the burden of directing the department"s overall response had fallen primarily on Deputy Chief Murdock, Chief Parker was also taking a role in directing the department"s response. Unfortunately, it was not a particularly helpful one. On the first night of the riots, Gates recalls Chief Parker "barking out orders on the radio."
"Get everyone out of their cars! Everybody out of their cars."
Eventually, Gates turned the radio off.
Around midnight, the comedian and civil rights activist d.i.c.k Gregory suddenly appeared at Gates"s command post. He wanted to address the rioters. Initially Gates refused to provide a bullhorn or an accompaniment of officers, but he was overruled. So Gregory went out-and was promptly shot in the leg. His quick-witted reply: "All right, G.o.dd.a.m.n it. You shot me. Now go home."
They didn"t. By 4 a.m., some one hundred people had been injured and stores up and down Avalon had been looted and burned. Yet once again, the police were optimistic. Gates "sensed that the worst was over" and reported that the situation was "under control." Other senior officers echoed this sentiment. When a member of Lieutenant Governor Anderson"s staff called the department"s emergency control center early Friday morning to get an update, the sergeant on duty told him that "the situation was well in hand." Rea.s.sured, Anderson left Los Angeles at 7:25 a.m. Friday morning for Berkeley, where he was scheduled to attend a meeting as a member of the finance committee of the university"s board of regents.
Half an hour later, the looting resumed. Rioters no longer felt they had to wait for the cover of night to act. By 9 a.m. looters were emptying the commercial sections of Watts along 103rd Street and north on Central Avenue. Chief Parker spoke with Mayor Yorty soon thereafter. Both men agreed that it was time to call in the Guard. Yet oddly, Mayor Yorty then left Los Angeles for a previously scheduled speaking arrangement in San Francisco.
At 9:45 a.m., Parker convened an emergency staff meeting to discuss the situation. A liaison for the National Guard was present. In the course of the meeting, Chief Parker indicated that he expected the department would need one thousand Guardsmen to restore order. Yet not until 10:50 a.m. did Parker call Governor Brown"s executive secretary to formally request the Guard. But Governor Brown was still in Greece. The person who did have the authority to call out the Guard was Lieutenant Governor Anderson, and Anderson was unreachable, in transit to Berkeley.
Speed was of the essence. By midmorning, police estimates put the size of the mob rampaging through the commercial section of Watts at three thousand. Ambulance drivers and firefighters were refusing to enter the area without armed escorts, escorts the undermanned LAPD could not provide. At that very moment, the 850-man strong Third Brigade of the National Guard was marshaling twelve miles away in Long Beach, in preparation for a weekend of training exercises at Camp Roberts near Santa Barbara. The brigade was fully armed and could have deployed to Watts in an hour"s time. If the Third Brigade proceeded on to Santa Barbara instead, they would be two and a half hours away from the city.
At 11 a.m., Governor Brown"s executive secretary finally reached Lieutenant Governor Anderson in Berkeley and relayed Chief Parker"s request for the Guard. Still Anderson hesitated. He did not trust Bill Parker. Instead of acting on the chief"s request or contacting National Guard officers in Los Angeles for an independent a.s.sessment of the situation, Anderson decided that he would return to Los Angeles to see the situation for himself. A National Guard plane was dispatched to Oakland to pick him up. From there he flew to Sacramento for a further round of consultations with state Guard officials. At 1:35 p.m., he left for Los Angeles. By the time he arrived at 3:30, rioters were turning their attention to burning the buildings they had emptied out. Sniper fire kept away the fire trucks. By now, the police had ceded the neighborhood to the mob. Photographs show officers watching while looters stroll out of stores carrying new appliances.
But Parker"s police weren"t worried about public relations. The looting had drifted north, to Broadway. By late afternoon, it was clear that the rioting threatened the downtown area if not the city as a whole.
That"s when Chief Parker left for the weekend.
The LAPD had a policy. Every weekend on a rotating basis, one of the deputy chiefs took over as the duty chief, with primary responsibility for running the department. That weekend, duty chief responsibility fell to deputy chief Harold Sullivan, who commanded the traffic division. With uncontained rioting threatening the central city, this might have seemed like a bad weekend to shift responsibility for running the department to one of the deputy chiefs. But Bill Parker was by then a sick man. The job had aged him-ravaged him really. And on the afternoon of Friday, August 13, as a large swath of his city was going up in flames, Chief Parker felt bad. When Sullivan went to Parker and asked the chief what he wanted to do about the weekend, he replied, "You take care of things." Then Bill Parker went home.
The LAPD was now Harold Sullivan"s to command.
Sullivan was a traffic guy. He thought in terms of freeways, and he understood how they bifurcated the city in terms of race and cla.s.s. Two were particularly important. The first was the Harbor Freeway. Built during the 1950s to connect downtown Los Angeles to the port at San Pedro, the Harbor Freeway sliced through the westernmost edge of the African American neighborhoods of Watts. To the west of the Harbor Freeway was the more affluent (and whiter) neighborhood of Crenshaw, as well as (farther north) the cynosure of Los Angeles"s gilded youth, the exclusive University of Southern California. To the east was the ghetto. As a result, living west of the 110 soon became a highly desirable goal-and a sign of success-for African American Angelenos.
The other important freeway was the Santa Monica Freeway (then an unnamed spur of interstate 110), which ran west from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica. As a socioeconomic barrrier, "the 10" was even more significant. To the north lay Los Angeles"s most affluent neighborhoods and munic.i.p.alities-Hanc.o.c.k Park, Beverly Hills, Brentwood. These were the homes of the white elite. South of the 10 was the city of the working cla.s.s. Sullivan recognized that the freeway was not just a cla.s.s or racial barrier. It was also a ma.s.sive concrete wall. The Harbor Freeway was indefensible, punctuated as it was by dozens of over-and underpa.s.ses. The Santa Monica Freeway was different. Sullivan quickly calculated that between downtown and Beverly Hills, only a small number of underpa.s.ses connected south Los Angeles to the affluent neighborhoods to the north. He dispatched a contingent of reserve traffic officers to those critical underpa.s.ses, with firm instructions to seal them off and let no one through. California Highway Patrol officers soon arrived, to reinforce the blockades. The rich northern part of the city was now safe. As for Watts and Central Avenue, until the National Guard arrived, there was nothing authorities felt they could do. They were left to burn.
Soon after arriving in Los Angeles, Lieutenant Governor Anderson spoke to Hale Champion, the state finance director back in Sacramento. Champion was aghast at what was unfolding. Moreover, he had gotten through to Governor Brown in Athens. Brown felt the Guard should be called out at once and that the possibility of a citywide curfew should be seriously considered. He also told Champion that he was flying back to California immediately. Spurred by this piece of news, Anderson finally decided to call out the Guard. At four o"clock, he announced the decision to the press. An hour later, he finally signed the proclamation. By six, 1,300 guardsmen had a.s.sembled in the local armories. By seven, they were en route to two local staging areas. Yet not until 10 p.m. would the first Guardsmen actually be deployed.