Posted on 08/16/2014 5:49:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Could Ferguson happen here? Some would say it already did — nearly five decades ago.
Days of sometimes violent demonstrations in Ferguson, Mo., erupted after Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen, was shot dead by a police officer Aug. 9, allegedly in self-defense. At the height of the civil rights movement, the Watts riots were triggered after a young black motorist was pulled over and arrested by a white California Highway Patrolman on Aug. 11, 1965, on suspicion of drunk driving.
The struggle to arrest him sparked six days of rioting that claimed the lives of 34 people, injured more than 1,000, resulted in more than 4,000 arrests and caused an estimated $40 million in property damage.
“Those same class issues, that same sense of racial inequality, social inequality, economic inequality, those same frustrations and resentments that roiled 49 years ago and exploded in the Watts riots are still in effect in 2014,” said USC law professor Jody Armour, an expert in crime and race issues. “We see them bursting out in Ferguson, Missouri, rather than in L.A.”
Why Los Angeles ‘could be the next Ferguson’
Since those same conditions still exist in areas like South Los Angeles, Watts, Inglewood and Compton, Armour said, “we could be the next Ferguson.”
Meanwhile, an incident Monday in South L.A. in which two Los Angeles Police Department officers shot and killed 25-year-old Ezell Ford, a black man described by family as mentally challenged, has also evoked strong concerns from community members. Police, in a preliminary account, said Ford was shot after he attempted to grab a gun from an officer’s holster during a struggle on the ground with that officer. Veteran gang enforcement officers had stopped Ford, who was walking on 65th Street near Broadway about 8:10 p.m., during an “investigative stop” for unknown reasons. Both officers, who police have not identified, have been assigned home duty while a probe by the department’s Force Investigation Division continues, an LAPD spokesman said.
Hundreds are expected to gather at 3 p.m. today in front of LAPD headquarters to protest the shooting.
A common thread links the Ezell Ford case in South L.A. to the Michael Brown case in Ferguson and even to the case of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teen who was shot in February 2012 by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, said Councilman Bernard Parks, a former LAPD chief. All involve young, unarmed black men who are viewed by community members as victims of the police or a vigilante and who appear to have died needlessly.
Parks warned that such events must be viewed with sensitivity in every community as tensions in one part of the country can easily inflame those in another.
“You can’t view something that happened in Florida as something that doesn’t affect Los Angeles,” Parks said. “With the Trayvon Martin issue, they had demonstrations all over the nation, and some of them turned into acts of public destruction. You can no longer, because of social media and 24-hour news, view any of these cases in isolation.”
What complicates matters in Ferguson and in South L.A. is that there are conflicting accounts of what actually happened from police and others. Because some people have already assigned blame, even the most objective investigation may not satisfy them if its conclusion doesn’t match their own, Parks said.
“There’s a need for law enforcement to understand that (racially charged) incidents will occur,” Parks said. “There has to be on a daily basis — well before these incidents occur — an accumulation of goodwill, a professional relationship, communication with the public so that if something should happen badly, that the first reaction is not to go out and get involved in a riot.”
South Los Angeles activist Lita Herron said she lived through the Watts race riots of 1965 and the “nightmare” era of 1992 — the year of the Rodney King riots — when police tried to “arrest their way out of” the community’s problems of drugs, addiction and gangs. Incidents like the death of Ford, she said, make her feel that the progress she’s seen in her neighborhood in recent years may be slipping away.
“I’m a survivor of 1992, of the (Los Angeles Police) department — who it was and always had been in our history,” said Herron, who is president of the Youth Advocacy Coalition, which offers alternatives to a gang lifestyle. “There’s always been that line between me (and them), and it’s a fragile line, and these things like Ezell Ford fractures or kills any progress. It kills trust, demolishes it. It makes what they say just talk.”
Differences noted
But Connie Rice, a local civil rights activist, sees differences between Ferguson and Los Angeles. Unlike L.A., Ferguson is a predominantly black community with no African-Americans on its City Council and very few on its police force. Two decades ago, LAPD was in a similar situation, much like the Ferguson Police Department is now — in “a state of war” with a distrustful black community.
But with the help of federal oversight, community-minded reforms and guidance from civilian police commissions, the department has largely transformed from a militarized, hostile force that few trusted to one that is building relationships with the community and earning greater trust, she said.
“I think L.A. is at the top (among large cities) if we keep up this campaign of change,” Rice said. “We have about 15 years of more work to do, but we have come a mighty long way.”
Bias, whether conscious or not, also plays a role. Armour, the USC professor, said that to many officers and citizens, the sight of a large black man seems to trigger the use of lethal force.
“If it’s a police officer who shoots a black citizen, he or she will say either I was justified because they actually did pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to me or if I wasn’t actually justified, at least I should be excused...for expressing ordinary human frailty under circumstances of extreme pressure and stress,” said Armour, author of “Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America.”
Juries have repeatedly been shown to be sympathetic to such arguments involving police officers as well as citizens, as demonstrated in the case of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, he said.
And studies show, Armour said, that people indeed consider race in assessing the dangerousness of an ambiguous person. A 2005 Florida State University Study, for example, found that officers in a computer simulation were more likely to mistakenly shoot unarmed black suspects than white ones until they underwent additional training.
While African-Americans are disproportionately represented in committing street crimes and in the criminal justice system, they are also disproportionately poor and disadvantaged, Armour said. He contends these issues can only be addressed by redistributing some of the nation’s wealth and power, thereby curbing frustration and resentments.
“In Ferguson, they’re looking at a lack of jobs, grinding poverty and have a general sense of hopelessness that arises out of that, and these police incidents are often just sparks,” he said. “They are flash points for a lot of grievances that have to do with class as well as with enforcement, that have to do with equal opportunities, economic inequalities as much as particular encounters with particular police officers.”
BINGO!
As long as they don’t make it down to Anaheim. I’m rather fond of Disneyland.
CC
I met RFK and his son there a few days before he was assassinated. We used to live in Chino.
Yep...the high school that I went to (Manual Arts) was mostly black when I went there. Now it’s over 80% Hispanic.
This is why blacks are the big losers in supporting illegal aliens.
That’s certainly something to remember. The only celebrity I ever recall seeing at Disneyland was president Lincoln... Never mind that was an animatronic figure. I thought he looked good for his age. JK
CC
I’ve worked with them as the gringo solo for more than one jefe. Whether from Mexico or other southern countries, they work about like any other crew I’ve worked with, telling me at times to slow down and hiding when a job was coming to an end. Employers like the part about not talking, being subservient, generally afraid, etc., and that’s about it.
There was a 60-year-old Jamaican that could really swing a pick all day. Truth is, though, that bosses were probably afraid of him and maybe a little jealous only because of his height and build—like mine.
At my job positions that were staffed by blacks a dozen years ago are mostly staffed by Hispanics now. I’ve seen crappy workers in both of those groups, as well as whites and Filipinos, so you really have to take it on a case by case basis. The company is too small to carry dead wood, so affirmative action doesn’t cut it.
I see the same trend in Newark NJ, but I believe birthrate and immigration are playing roles in it (nobody is “priced out” of Newark).
I work with more than a few blacks with just one child; as that child grew up, they were forced into the workforce because the “golden ticket welfare bastard” no longer qualified them for so many freebies.
M4R
I don’t see the blacks in LA doing another 1992 Rodney King riot. The problem for blacks is the huge influx of Hispanics and Latinos. These legal and illegal migrants hate the blacks as lazy, shiftless, welfare bums. If the blacks started rioting, the blacks would be isolated and contained to vent their destruction on where they live. For blacks trying to loot in other ethnic neighborhoods, good luck with that.
The 1992 LA riots taught many people that: 1) the sale of guns and ammo will be curtailed (so you’d best have it before the riot starts); 2) the police will be withdrawn and the citizens in the riot areas are on their own; 3) neighborhoods need to police their own turf against gangs of feral looters and robbers; and 4) when (and if) the CA Army National Guard gets deployed will be long after it can be effective.
So, will the blacks in LA go on a rampage? It’s unlikely, but one should always consider stupidity.
And the Hispanics will not put up with as much crap as the whites.
Locked and loaded in LA. Bring it on!
Well, they didn’t take the last train to Clarksville. They were too late for that.
Get real..
LA ‘92 made Ferguson look like a church social.
No joke.
Indeed. My point.
And watts riot to boot
And zoot suit riots
Agree....The blacks burned out the Jew store owners in ‘65, then the blacks attempted to burn out the Asian and Korean camps in ‘92 after torching their own former camps in S. Central...That’s where it ended....
In the decade that followed, most blacks left to points east...The became way outnumbered...
Most remember all too well no one is coming to protect ya, so they armed up. Sh*t on that scale won’t fly today.
Compared to ‘92, Watts was a block party...
“with no african americans on it’s City Council”
brenda gazzar is a liar. There is at least one, Dwayne James.
That is very encouraging. Even in liberal New Jersey, idle hands are being forced into the workforce, which will reduce the time available for criminal activity, except against their employers.
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