Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing (53 page)

“jam your toe”
: “ ‘I Was Just Trying to Stay Alive,’ King Tells Federal Jury,”
LAT
, March 10, 1993; “Rodney King Testifies on Beating: ‘I Was Just Trying to Stay Alive,’ ”
NYT
, March 10, 1993.

Simi Valley . . . with a black population of 2 percent
: U.S. Bureau of the Census, census of 1990; “King Case Shifts to Courtroom in Simi Valley,”
LAT
, February 4, 1992. “Poverty Rate Fell in 1980s, Figures Show,”
LAT
, May 12, 1992, lists the 1990 ethnic breakdown of Los Angeles County, quoting the census, as 66 percent white, 26 percent Latino, 5 percent Asian, and 2 percent black.

Simi Valley . . . 4,000 active police officers
: “NAACP to Monitor Trial of 4 Officers,”
LAT
, January 9, 1992; “Days of Rage,”
U.S. News and World Report
, May 11, 1992.

LAPD’s 7,900-member force
:
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 74; “Where Were L.A. Police When the Rioting Began?” Times News Services, May 1, 1992.

Judge Stanley Weisberg moves Rodney King trial to Simi Valley
: Hazen, ed.,
Inside the L.A. Riots
, 46; “King Case to Be Tried in Ventura County.”
LAT
, November 27, 1991.

Verdict-day TV helicopter shots of the still unrescued Reginald Denny
: Alfred Lomas interview.

chunks of concrete
:
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 49 and 50.

“Rodney King! Rodney King!”
: “Bad Cops.”

“Fuck y’all, we killin’ . . . Cops gonna die tonight . . . it’s Uzi-time”
: “Uprising: Hip Hop & the LA Riots,” VH1, first aired on May 1, 2012; photographer Bart Bartholomew’s observations;
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 52.

looting and burning of Tom’s Liquor and Deli
:
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 52.

Lomas, a Chicano U.S. Marine Corps veteran
: Alfred Lomas interview.

enforcer
: Ibid.

smashing a concrete block
: “Bad Cops.”

dancing around
: Ibid.

stealing his wallet
: Hazen, ed.,
Inside the L.A. Riots
, 43; “After the Riots: Four Held in Attack at Riots’ Outset,”
NYT
, May 13, 1992.

could
relate
: Alfred Lomas interview.

semi-illiterate high school dropout
: “Rodney King Unsure on Beating Details,”
NYT
, March 11, 1993; “Rodney King Seen as Catalyst for Policing Change,” AP, June 18, 2012.

worked at Dodger Stadium
: “Profile: Rodney G. King,”
LAT
, April 19, 1993;
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 33.

Baby Huey image on the street
: “The Man Swept Up in the Furor: Friends, Family Say King Was Sometimes Lost but Never Violent”;
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 34.

$200 robbery of a 99 Market
:
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 34; “The Man Swept Up in the Furor”; “Tape Forever Ties Victim to Beating.”

on parole
: “Tape Forever Ties Victim to Beating.”

Forty-ounce Olde English 800 malt liquor
: “All you could hear was . . . bones being broken,”
New York Times News Service
, May 21, 1991; “Friend Relives Night of Police Beating.”

speeding down the freeway
: “No Charges Filed Against Suspect Beaten by Police,”
LAT
, March 7, 1991.

Scared of being sent back to prison
: “Excerpts of Testimony on Chase and Beating,”
AP
, March 10, 1993.

white economy-sized Hyundai
: “The Man Swept Up in the Furor”; “The Rodney King Affair,” March 24, 1991;
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 33.

twice zapped with 50,000-volt Taser darts
: “The Man Swept Up in the Furor”; “Rodney King Testifies About Night of Beating,”
NYT
, January 22, 1993; Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department,
Report of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department
, 6.

hog-tied
: “King Suffered Only Cuts, Paramedic Tells Court,”
LAT
, March 19, 1992; “Videotaped Beating by Officers Puts Full Glare on Brutality Issue,”
NYT
, March 18, 1991.

Twenty-seven other responding cops
: Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department,
Report of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department
, 11; Domanick,
To Protect and To Serve
, 375;
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 33.

George Holliday, wielding a handheld video camera
: “Videotaped Beating by Officers Puts Full Glare on Brutality Issue”; “Cameraman’s Test Puts Him in the Spotlight,”
LAT
, March 7, 1991;
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots,
33.

The crack-house crew, in short, understood
: Alfred Lomas interview.

“basically consisted of three or four cops”
: Ibid.

“supposed to work”
: “Their Lives Consumed, Officers Await 2d Trial,”
NYT
, February 2, 1993.

“Wow! The cops are beating his ass”
: Alfred Lomas interview.

“a lot more than just whack Rodney”
: David Dotson interview.

“And once their report was handed in”
: Ibid.

Reginald Denny’s battered body
: “Days of Rage”;
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 49; “Fit Punishment for the L.A. Mayhem”; author’s observations.

report to a police command center thirty blocks away
:
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 50.

LAPD leaves Florence and Normandie
: Hazen, ed.,
Inside the L.A. Riots
, 51; “Where Were L.A. Police When the Rioting Began?”;
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 50, 52, and 61; Marika Gerrard, Los Angeles News Service, Bart Bartholomew’s observations; “Uprising: Hip Hop & the LA Riots”;
ABC 7 Live
aerial shot, April 29, 1992.

“Where the fuck are the cops?”
: Alfred Lomas interview.

Tom Bradley, Wednesday, April 29, 1992, First African Methodist Episcopal Church; Bill Parker, Present in the Ether

two thousand people . . . First African Methodist Episcopal Church
:
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 52.

“Come Help Us Stop the Madness”
: Hazen, ed.,
Inside the L.A. Riots
, 31.

First AME Church in Los Angeles/response to Rodney King verdict
: Hazen, ed.,
Inside the L.A. Riots
, 31, 35, 44, and 108–9;
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the
Riots, 52 and 59;
“
Uprising: Hip Hop & the LA Riots”; author’s observations.

Tom Bradley at First AME Church
: Author’s observations; Domanick,
To Protect and To Serve
, 3–4.

Tom Bradley was seventy-four years old on April 29, 1992
: Bradley’s date of birth: December 29, 1917.

Passion of the Christ stained-glass windows
: Hazen, ed.,
Inside the L.A. Riots
, 31; author’s observations.

born the son of a humble, churchgoing housemaid
: Galm,
The Impossible Dream
, 15–17, 47, and 50.

integrated Los Angeles public schools
: Ibid., 25.

track star
: Ibid., 23.

UCLA/joins LAPD/law school/lieutenant
: Ibid., 24, 39, 62, and 69–70.

Bradley elected Los Angeles city councilman in 1963
:
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 21; Galm,
The Impossible Dream
, 119. Bradley was one of three African-American men elected in 1963, but he was not the first. Gilbert Lindsay was the first. Tom Bradley was elected three months later, in April 1963. Billy Mills was the third.

Bradley-Parker confrontation
: “Riot Hearings Boil, Parker, Bradley in Row over ‘Mystery Man,’ ”
LAHE
, September 14, 1965; “Bradley Struggles to Overcome His Anti-LAPD Image,”
LAT
, October 14, 1986; “Gates on Gates,”
LAT
, October 24, 1992;
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 13.

Badlands of South Dakota
: Webb,
The Badge
, 245;
L.A. Police Beat
, September 1966; “Shadow Caster,”
Los Angeles Magazine
, April 2010.

alcohol
: Gates,
Chief
, 32.

Parker basis for Spock
: “Daryl Gates’ Real Legacy,”
LA Observed
, April 16, 2010; “Shadow Caster.”

bad heart
: “L.A. Chief Overlooked a Bad Heart to Serve,”
Washington Post
, July 18, 1966; “Last Man Out of Parker Center Turns Off the Lights,”
LA Observed
, January 15, 2013.

465 square miles
: City of Los Angeles Department of Public Works.

top-down paramilitary organization
: “Leave Chief Parker Behind,”
LAT
, April 11, 2009; NPR, January 12, 2012.

170,000 by 1950
:
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 11.

“45 percent of Los Angeles will be Negro”
: “Gates’s Hell,”
Vanity Fair
, August 1991; Dunne,
Another City, Not My Own
, 62; Hazen, ed.,
Inside the L.A. Riots
, 23; “Chief Parker Molded LAPD Image—Then Came the ’60s,”
LAT
, May 25, 1992.