Twenty-five years ago, on April 29, 1992, the people of Los Angeles, California, could no longer hold back their rage.
When three white officers and one Hispanic officer from the Los Angeles Police Department were filmed brutally beating Black motorist Rodney King with batons and tasers following a high-speed chase on March 31, 1991, the scourge of police terror in L.A. was exposed for all to see.
However, the acquittal of the four cops in a trial held in neighboring Ventura County's Simi Valley – a conservative stronghold and suburban home to retired and serving LAPD officers – struck a nerve in working-class communities of color, setting in motion the largest urban rebellion the U.S. saw in the 20th century.
Responding to the disregard "law and order" had for their communities, Angelenos showed their own indifference to law and order in what The New York Times called a "carnival of looting." Men, women and children of all ethnicities sacked grocery stores, electronics boutiques and strip-malls, carrying off weapons, food, mattresses and auto parts. Intercommunal and gang violence, muggings and home robberies nearly ground to a halt as tension between neighborhoods gave way to a gang truce.
While the uprising is still slandered by mass media outlets as nothing more than a "race riot" or meaningless orgy of violence, the Los Angeles uprising was, in fact, an organic explosion of resistance to the harsh conditions of the LA metropolis.
In 1988, LAPD anti-gang operations in South Central led to the arrests of 1,453 people in a single weekend. The city suffered greatly in the wake of Reaganomics and the early '90s recession. Shopkeepers, depicted by media as entirely helpless victims of senseless Black rage, had a reputation for price-gouging and hostility toward local residents. Absentee slumlords reigned over a blighted urban landscape populated by unemployed families. For the city's working poor and youth, the city resembled a pressure-cooker, and the acquittal of the brutal "pigs" removed the lid.
The repression against the uprising was swift: 5,000 LAPD cops, a thousand L.A. County Sheriff's Deputies, 2,300 California Highway Patrol officers, and 950 L.A. County Marshalls were joined by 9,975 California National Guard soldiers, 3,500 U.S. Army troops and U.S. Marines in armored personnel carriers. FBI agents and U.S. Border Patrol tactical units were deployed to Los Angeles to guard the shopping malls, boutiques and supermarkets. 55 people were killed – mostly by state security forces – and 11,000 people were arrested in the largest mass arrest in U.S. history.
Unlike L.A.'s Watts Rebellion in 1965, little attempt was made by federal or state authorities to grapple with the underlying causes of the uprising. Since the Los Angeles rebellion, the world has witnessed dozens of similar outbreaks of unrest across urban centers in the U.S. in reaction to police terror – a phenomenon that's sure to accelerate under the "law-and-order" presidency of Donald Trump.
In fact, in a recent poll by Loyola Marymount University, nearly 6 out of 10 Los Angelenos feel that more riots are likely in the near future due to the dire economic prospects and lack of opportunities faced by residents and the continuation of police terror across the country and in L.A., specifically.
teleSUR takes a look at the striking photos captured during the Los Angeles Uprising of 1992.