1. Lake View Terrace: Rodney King beating
On March 3, 1991, police arrested Rodney King at the intersection of Foothill Boulevard and Osborne Street in Lake View Terrace after a high-speed chase. Video of the arrest, filmed by a local resident with a video camera, shows several white officers beating King, who was black, using their batons and kicking him as he lay on the ground. It was viewed by millions of people around the world.:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/62561433/R_King_beating.0.0.png)
2. Empire Liquor Market: Death of Latasha Harlins
On March 16, 1991—just 13 days after the brutal beating of King—15-year-old Latasha Harlins was fatally shot in the back of the head inside Empire Liquor Market. The shooter was the liquor store’s owner, Soon Ja Du, who accused the girl of trying to steal a $1.79 bottle of orange juice.
Du, who claimed self defense, was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter—but received no jail time. Instead, she was ordered to serve five years probation, preform 400 hours of community service, and pay a $500 fine.
The shooting and the verdict strained relationships between black and Korean communities, but unlike the brutal beating of King, the teenager’s death “garnered little lasting attention.”
3. Ventura County Superior Court: Rodney King acquittal
On April 29, 1992, a predominately white jury in Ventura County acquitted four police officers of using excessive force in the beating of King. The not-guilty verdict stunned, angered, and enraged many residents, including Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who declared: “Today the system failed us.” Within an hour, more than 300 protesters had gathered outside the courthouse.
4. Parker Center
The then-police headquarters (now slated for demolition) was one of the places where people amassed to protest the King verdict. That night, as protestors chanted, “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” one of the center’s parking huts was set aflame; it was “one of the first structures claimed by the ensuing riots,” according to Los Angeles Magazine.
5. Hansen Dam Recreation & Sports Complex
On the day of the King verdict, an estimated 200 to 300 protestors gathered at the recreation center, close to where the Rodney King beating took place. The demonstrators marched from the recreation area to the LAPD’s Foothill Division headquarters.
6. Normandie and Florence
This intersection was the epicenter of the uprising. The first reports of violence—cans being thrown at passing cars—came through here, according to the Los Angeles Times. The first 911 call was made about two hours after the 3:15 p.m. King verdict.
Dozens of LAPD officers were on scene at first, but they were outnumbered and were ordered to withdraw.”
With no police in sight, by about 7 p.m., the situation had escalated dangerously. A truck driver named Reginald Denny was pulled from the cab of his big rig and beaten, “with a tire iron, a fire extinguisher and a brick.” He was eventually pulled to safety by strangers.
But the beating had been broadcast live by news stations, emboldening others who noticed the lack of police presence.
7. Tom Liquor
At the corner of Florence and Normandie, Tom’s was “ground zero” for the revolt. The LA Times says that booze looted from Tom’s “fueled outrage” at the intersection. More than 200 liquor stores were ultimately destroyed in the uprising, according to congresswoman Karen Bass, but Tom’s is still standing today.
8. Brentwood: LAPD Chief Gates abandons his post
As violence unfolded, police chief Daryl Gates left LAPD headquarters to attend an event in Brentwood, where his supporters were raising money to fight police reform efforts. The New York Times reported that at the event, and amid the violence, Gate told guests, “There are going to be situations where people are going to go without assistance.”
9. LAPD command post
Set up in what had previously been an RTD bus depot on 54th and Arlington, this command post served as a temporary base for police. Hundreds of officers were dispatched to the post not long after the violence erupted, but they were not quickly sent into the fray, according to the Washington Post.
Later, the Webster Commission, established in the wake of the uprisings by the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, determined that “police and city officials lacked strong leadership, an appropriate emergency plan and adequate communications systems to react quickly and efficiently” to the unrest.
10. First African Methodist Episcopal Church
11. KJLH
Stevie Wonder’s radio station in Compton quickly switched from its all music format to report on the unrest and to take calls from distressed listeners. At the time, the station was located on Crenshaw Boulevard in Compton. “I’m just, excuse me, I’m just caught up in the emotion. There’s so much going on outside the window,” DJ Eric “Rico” Reed initially said over the airwaves.
The all-talk format continued for three days.
The station was later awarded a Peabody for its “timely, exhaustive and important coverage of the Los Angeles riots.”
12. Los Angeles City Hall
The Lost Tapes documentary shows news coverage of fed-up residents speaking in City Council chambers after the King beating, with one woman telling elected officials, “as a person of color, it is discomforting for me to be a target. I consider myself on an endangered species list.” After the King verdict, protestors turned up at City Hall (an LA Times photo shows a man kicking in the windshield of a Jaguar across the street from the civic building) while a command center was set up in the basement.
City Hall was also the symbol of mismanagement. City leaders were notoriously slow to react to the arson, violence, and looting, in part, because the police chief and mayor didn’t get along. Bradley told the New York Times that “until the disturbances began [the night of April 29] he had not spoken to Mr. Gates in 13 months, since about a month after the King beating.”
13. Central Avenue: The first death
Arturo C. Miranda, 23, was riding home from a park with a nephew and friend in the Green Meadows neighborhood when a car pulled up alongside theirs and opened fire. A single bullet struck Miranda, who died after being rushed to a hospital. According to the LA Times: “Miranda had arrived in Los Angeles from Mexico less than a year before and had worked for a textile company. His co-workers raised enough money so his body could be returned to his hometown of Guerrero, Mexico.” Dozens more people would later die.
14. J.J. Newberry
The discount store, like many other groceries and markets, was ravaged by looters and set ablaze. Four months later, clean-up crews discovered the charred remains of a 20-year-old named Nissar Mustafa. LAPD Det. Olivia Spindola told ABC7 that investigators believe Mustafa entered the store before the fire started; it’s possible he might have been one of the looters, she said. (The map point is approximate.)
15. 31st and Western
At 31st and Western, a firefighter was shot. In other locations, bullets were sprayed at fire trucks. On the first night of unrest, the Los Angeles Fire Department received more than 1,000 calls for help, according to the Smithsonian documentary, The Lost Tapes. Blazes broke out across the city, but, in some cases, firefighters weren’t able to help without police escorts.
According to the NY Daily News, “Fire Chief Donald Manning said his firefighters had been attacked with axes and guns, charging rioters ‘tried to kill them in a number of ways.’”
16. 110 Freeway, Century Boulevard
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17. 한남체인 Hannam Chain Supermarket
Looters and arsonists heavily targeted businesses in Koreatown, compelling some shopkeepers and volunteers to arm themselves with rifles, shotguns, and handguns in order to defend their businesses.
Kee Whan Ha, who owns Hannam Chain Supermarket, told NPR in 2012 that on the morning of April 30, 1992, he organized members of his community to protect their properties. The merchants mostly fired shots in the air, but in one gun battle with looters, a Hannam security guard was shot and killed. He had been hit by friendly fire.
“I was standing a few feet away, so I see that his body has fallen down on the ground, but I was so scared. I, we, tried to call the fire department. Please help us. But nobody listen,” Ha recalled in the interview with NPR.
18. Western Avenue at 18th Street: The Army National Guard deploys
To help restore order, California’s governor requested help from the California Army National Guard, which sent 2,000 troops to armories across Southern California the morning of April 30. They were not, however, deployed until that afternoon. Not only did the soldiers need to be trained on civil disturbance, they had to wait for clear orders and ammunition from Camp Roberts to arrive.
The first to roll out were military police; they were dispatched to the area where a Winchell’s Donut House was burning at Western Avenue and 18th Street.
By May 3, CNN says more than 1,100 Marines (from Camp Pendleton), 600 Army soldiers, and 6,500 National Guard troops patrolled the streets of LA.
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19. Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
Flights were rerouted, delayed, or cancelled as “the smoke from 1,000 fires grew so dense that air-traffic controllers could keep open only one runway at Los Angeles International Airport,” Newsweek reported
20. Bullocks Wilshire
A number of historic buildings were damaged or totally reduced to rubble. The “Bullocks Wilshire, one of the city's most important architectural monuments, sustained smashed windows and other damage from first-floor looting,” the LA Times reported.
The beaux-arts Young Market Building, “once filled with marble and antique mosaics was looted and burned,” while the Palace Theatre, built in 1911, fared better with peripheral smoke damage.
21. “Can we all get along?”
On May 1, Rodney King stood outside his lawyer’s office in Beverly Hills, where he made an emotional and nervous public plea asking for the violence to stop: “I just wanna say, you know, can we, can we all get along? ... Can we stop making it horrible for the old people and the kids? ... It’s just not right. It’s not right, and it’s not going to change anything.”
22. Pico Boulevard at Vermont Avenue: The last death
National Guardsman killed Victor R. Rivas on May 3, 1992. Authorities said Rivas was driving fast and swerving his car near guardsmen, who were enforcing curfew, eventually hitting one of the soldiers. The guardsmen opened fire, shooting 14 times. Rivas was hit five times.
The uprising ultimately claimed 63 lives, in killings that occurred across the region, from Long Beach to Pacoima. The death toll includes 10 people who were shot dead by police. Detectives from the LAPD’s Rampart division cleared the soldiers in Rivas’ death of homicide charges.
23. Sen. Diane Watson’s office: Cleaning up
When the violence abated, residents from across LA headed to what was then called South-Central to help clean up the rubble. One of the volunteer locations was California Sen. Diane E. Watson’s office on Crenshaw Boulevard. The senator’s spokesperson told the New York Times: “The ones who were doing the burning the looting are not here today. These are the ones who want to reclaim the community. We are all equals today. Hopefully, this will be a trend.”
