Thanks VOA for that plug for BOND. If there is no riot it's because of people like Jesse and Patrick who will not let things slide.
Posted on 07/12/2004 4:20:16 PM PDT by abigail2
L.A. Lays the Groundwork for Another Riot
by Patrick Rooney
12 July 2004
The car chase and subsequent arrest of Stanley Miller is drawing comparisons to the Rodney King incident, and Al Sharpton is on the scene.
Thirteen years ago, convicted criminal Rodney King led law enforcement on a chase at speeds estimated at up to 110 to 115 mph. When finally stopped, the hulking King looked to be high as a kite, refused requests to get into the prone position and appeared to lunge at one of the officers. After repeated Taser blasts had no serious affect, he was beaten and arrested, and soon the media was showing a homemade and incomplete videotape of the beating seemingly on a continuous loop, creating a frenzy.
When jurors subsequently acquitted the four officers involved, all hell broke loose in Los Angeles -- six days of rioting, 54 dead, nearly 2,400 injured, 13,000 arrested, 11,000 fires. All in all not a bad outcome for many angry black racists in the City of the Angels.
This June, convicted criminal Stanley Miller led LAPD officers on a chase in a reported stolen car. LAPD sources have said that in radio transmissions during pursuit, officers indicated they saw Miller making “furtive movements and believed he might be arming himself.” Police Chief William Bratton said that wire cutters were found at the scene. After catching Miller, an officer hit him eleven times with a flashlight, causing an immediate uproar among many blacks, who didn’t display similar outrage at the alleged car thief.
In 1992, infamous Congresswoman Maxine Waters excused the King-inspired riot, calling it a “rebellion.” She said it was "a spontaneous reaction to a lot of injustice and a lot of alienation and frustration." Regarding the looting, Maxine said, "One lady said her children didn't have any shoes. She just saw those shoes there, a chance for all of her children to have new shoes. Goddamn it! It was such a tearjerker. I might have gone in and taken them for her myself." Believe it or not, Waters is a respected leader in the black community!
Then-mayor Tom Bradley poured fuel on the fire with this inappropriate outburst just after the officer’s “not guilty” verdicts were read: "We will not tolerate the savage beating of our citizens by a few renegade cops.” Sure enough, the riots soon followed.
White no-nonsense Police Chief Darryl Gates was made the primary scapegoat for the beating and general black anger. After the riots, he was forced out and replaced with a black chief, the weak and ineffective Willie Williams, who was later replaced with a marginally more effective black chief, Bernard Parks.
This is where the Rodney King past and the Stanley Miller present start to intersect.
Police Chief Parks’ expired term was not renewed by current mayor James Hahn, a move that was considered a slap in the face by many in the black community. Parks decided to run for city council, winning a seat, and recently announced he is running for mayor against rival Hahn!
Hahn is a white liberal who relied on black support to win his recent mayoral election against radical Hispanic city councilman Antonio Villaraigosa. After the Stanley Miller incident, Mayor Hahn, in an obvious ploy to save his hide with the black community, said at a community meeting, “No one is above the law in Los Angeles…[the incident] upset me, it made me angry." Hahn said that if officers involved in the arrest "are found to have violated the law, those officers ought to be terminated. They ought to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
Hahn’s desperate pandering won’t be enough to save his standing with the black community. Because he is white, he’ll be tossed overboard in a Los Angeles minute by the black community, who will likely install former police chief Parks in his place.
The mayor has named a “citizen’s committee,” which includes the usual cast of unsavory characters, including the likes of Rev. Cecil "Chip" Murray of First African Methodist Episcopal Church, who is known for giving out condoms in his church; and Ronald Antwine, said to be a founding member of the Bounty Hunters street gang.
One of the committee members, Project Islamic Hope’s Najee Ali, who made something of a name for himself leading protests during the recent Jeremy Morse-Donovan Jackson racially-charged police brutality case, was quoted as saying, “It’s Rodney King all over again.” Police chief Bratton called Ali “one of the biggest nitwits in Los Angeles” on CNN, just before Ali was named to the citizen’s committee.
After it was publicized that Ali has a trial pending for allegedly leaving the scene of an accident and identity theft, Ali hastily quit the citizen’s committee. Ali is reportedly a former member of the notorious Crips gang who was convicted of armed robbery in 1988 and who spent two years at the California Correctional Institute in Tehachapi.
But even more interesting, the Christian Science Monitor interviewed Ali two years ago, and he revealed that he was an active participant in the ’92 L.A. riots! His name was reportedly Todd Eskew (before later changing it to a Muslim name in prison):
Ali can't recall how many windows he broke, or how many fires he and his friends started. They'd light anything in a store that would burn and spread flames quickly -- and then run. Their rage was born of poverty and humiliation, and years of perceived abuse by police and neighborhood Korean stores. ‘I was so angry I wanted to continue. But I stopped after two days out of sheer, physical exhaustion,’ says Mr. Eskew, who goes by the name of Najee Ali today…
Amazingly, regarding the soiled histories of some on the committee, Mayor Hahn said, "We weren't putting together a blue ribbon commission here. We were putting together a commission of people who represented all aspects of life in the community." I’ll say!
But “all aspects” does not stretch to include law-abiding black conservatives such as Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson of BOND, who has been working tirelessly in the community for years. What a shame, and a sham -- the so-called “citizen’s committee” -- that is.
Of course this fiasco wouldn’t be complete without the arrival of a fake out-of-area civil rights fighter, and on cue, the “Riot King,” Al Sharpton rode into town, meeting with Chief Bratton and Ali. Bratton, apparently sensing, as a new white police chief in a sea of angry blacks, that he was short of friends, backpedaled in a pathetic fashion from his earlier comments aimed at “nitwit” Ali, saying the comments were “intemperate and unfortunate.”
Worse, woefully underdressed in his shirt sleeves at a press conference, and flanked by Sharpton and Ali in suits and power ties, Chief Bratton told listeners he didn’t mean to offend anyone when he declared a war on gangs, calling them “terrorists” and “tribal thugs.” This is the same guy who, along with Mayor Rudy Guiliani, supposedly cleaned up big, bad New York? One of the problems here is that L.A. Mayor Hahn is no Rudy Guiliani. In other words, Bratton knows Hahn won’t provide needed backup if he were to speak openly about the real problem -- black misbehavior fueled by rabble-rousers like Sharpton and Ali.
One bright light is L.A. Councilman Dennis Zine, who said the citizen’s committee is unnecessary because the incident is already being looked at by numerous organizations, including the Police Department inspector general, the FBI and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
But as in ’92, there simply are not enough voices with the courage to tell the truth in Los Angeles. Because of that, the inmates are running the asylum, and the city is heading toward dangerous ground -- a possible replay of Rodney King.
The city’s black media in particular is savoring the comparisons. For instance, the Wave, a major newspaper in the black community, is currently running a grainy, strangely familiar aerial photo of a group of cops apparently on top of Stanley Miller, with officer John Hatfield raising his right arm, a ready-to-strike flashlight clearly visible. Superimposed over the photo, in red and white letters, is a garish headline: “THE STANLEY MILLER BEATING.”
Announcement of roundtable discussions and other meetings to discuss this and other recent “rough arrests” are sprouting up in the community.
While a reasonable person would shudder at the possibility of another riot, the angry and irrational continue to beat the “No Justice, No Peace!” drum. As usual, if anything destructive -- God forbid -- comes to pass, the real losers will be the black community themselves, just as in ’92. Because today’s L.A. black community -- twelve years after the riots and all the “rebuilding” money, is in some ways worse off now than it was then.
The “rebuild L.A.” money came, but where did it go? Some “community leaders” apparently have done well, but what about the community itself? L.A.’s black community continues to suffer from, first and foremost, moral poverty, which gives rise to grievous, self and outer-directed wounds.
My hope and prayer for the City of the Angels is that it will head off this potential train wreck before it occurs. That people of common sense will make their voices heard, and tell the truth that black problems are internal, not external. I also hope and pray that the people will tell all the self-appointed leaders it’s time for them to take a good, long vacation. Unfortunately the average black Los Angeles resident appears to be a stubborn, willing passenger on this runaway train.
If this course is not changed, it could be another “long hot summer” in L.A. And that is a price we cannot afford to pay again.
Patrick Rooney is Director of Special Projects for the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny.
Contact Patrick at patrick@bondinfo.org
You must not live here!
Any excuse to try and get something for nothing.
Am I still the only one who saw Miller, while going to the ground, reach with his right hand toward his right ankle/pants cuff after the officer holstered his own weapon?
Probably not. But hey, what's the life of a cop, compared to that of a thug?
Well, you probably could afford to buy a house if you wanted to get one there. I just checked South Central zip code 90001 on realtor.com and the cheapest thing that I could identify as a two bedroom single-family listing is around $150k.
I don't know if you'd really want it, but it is there.
D
Yes, getting a little itchy for the old gang...
Maybe. Maybe not. If the drumbeat goes on day after day and if LAPD is underfunded and demoralized, we'll see.
LOL! I didn't mean in South Central. Back around 1991-92, with the Northridge earthquake and the riots, property values plunged all around the L.A. area. These days, in any area even remotely worth living in, property values are ridiculously high.
The state had been in decline for some time before these incidents, but from that point forward there was no way to pretend southern California was anything other than the fouled-up, dysfunctional sh!t-hole that leaped out at us from our television screens.
The irony of the whole thing is that I now sense an utter lack of concern about this kind of incident. In fact, most people (including many blacks) are probably rooting for the cops whenever they hear that a "convicted felon" has been treated like a King on the streets of Los Angeles these days.
Thanks VOA for that plug for BOND. If there is no riot it's because of people like Jesse and Patrick who will not let things slide.
In all the hype about this poor Black repeat felon who got whacked with a flashlight, you never hear about the undoubtedly equally Black citizen whose car he stole for his joyride. Since judges and juries are happy to keep kicking these guys loose over and over again, the only justice the victims will ever see is street justice, when the cops work the perp over on the spot. Now, thanks to ubiquitous busybodies with cheap video cameras and the unholy alliance of rabble-rousing media and the grievance industry, they won't even get that anymore.
The suspect may not have resisted arrested before the police got him on the ground, but he may have resisted arrest after they got him on the ground. Just because a suspect is laying on the ground doesn't mean that he's cooperating fully with the police by allowing them to handcuff him. If a suspect doesn't cooperate by either struggling with the police or by having one or both of his hands under his body, the police can use whatever force is necessary to get the suspect to comply and to get him handcuffed. One method that police are allowed to use is to hit a suspect on his shoulder or arm with their flashlight or baton until the suspect complies with the police's instructions.
Californians doing what they do best. Entertaining the rest of the country.
Yes, he could do alot of good if he would come and talk to the kids!
My family just spent a few vacation days in LA. At the conclusion, my wife ask if it would be possible next time to take a vacation in the U.S.? From the beach to the restaurants, there was very little time the American English language could be heard.
The hordes, the traffic, were definite low points. The highlight was the visit to the Reagan Library and seeing the continued placement of memorial items honoring the man.
The day was spectacular, the inspiration of the man buoyed my spirits, and my wife swooned over what she said was probably the marriage love-story of the 20th century (the Reagans--not ours). Tip: Husbands--recite aloud the letters authored by the man to your dearest loved one or wife--then claim them as your own.
"I love LA!"
Good article! James Hahn is clueless about anything in the black community. He's too busy pandering to the Mexican activists. He's a pantload...
Hi, TheSpottedOwl! I remember it too. Things are different now, but who knows, it certainly looks like everything is being set up!
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