![]() In 1989, the release of Spike Lee's film Do the Right Thing highlighted urban tensions between white people, black people, and Koreans over racism and economic inequality. Racial tensions had been simmering for years between these groups. In the year before the riots, 1991, there was growing resentment and violence between the African American and Korean American communities. The commission's report called for the replacement of both Chief Daryl Gates and the civilian Police Commission. The Christopher Commission later concluded that a "significant number" of LAPD officers "repetitively use excessive force against the public and persistently ignore the written guidelines of the department regarding force." The biases related to race, gender, and sexual orientation were found to have regularly contributed to the LAPD's use of excessive force. The perception that police had targeted non-white citizens likely contributed to the anger that erupted in the 1992 riots. Critics have alleged that the operation was racially motivated because it used racial profiling, targeting African American and Mexican American youths. During this period, the LAPD arrested more young black people since the Watts riots of 1965. īy 1990 more than 50,000 people, mostly minority males, had been arrested in such raids. ![]() Citizen complaints against police brutality increased 33 percent in the period 1984-1989. The police more frequently conducted mass arrests of African American youth. After the games were over, the city began to revive the use of earlier anti- syndicalist laws in order to maintain the security policy started for the Olympic games. These were implemented across wide areas of the city but especially in South Central and East Los Angeles, areas of predominately minority residents. ![]() Under Gates's direction, the LAPD expanded gang sweeps for the duration of the Olympics. The origin of Operation Hammer can be traced to the 1984 Olympic Games held in Los Angeles. ![]() marked the LAPD under Gates's tempestuous leadership." Under Gates, the LAPD had begun Operation Hammer in April 1987, which was a large-scale militarized push in Los Angeles. According to one study, "scandalous racist violence. Daryl Gates, Chief of the LAPD from 1978 to 1992, has been attributed with much of the blame for the riots. South Central Los Angeles, where much of the rioting took place Policing in Los Angeles īefore the release of the Rodney King videotape, minority community leaders in Los Angeles had repeatedly complained about harassment and use of excessive force against their residents by Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers. Much of the blame for the extensive nature of the violence was attributed to LAPD Chief of Police Daryl Gates, who had already announced his resignation by the time of the riots, for failure to de-escalate the situation and overall mismanagement. Koreatown, situated just to the north of South Central LA, was disproportionately damaged. When the riots ended, 63 people had been killed, 2,383 had been injured, more than 12,000 had been arrested, and estimates of property damage were over $1 billion. The situation in the Los Angeles area was resolved after the California National Guard, United States military, and several federal law enforcement agencies deployed more than 10,000 of their armed first responders to assist in ending the violence and unrest. Widespread looting, assault, and arson occurred during the riots, which local police forces had difficulty controlling. The rioting took place in several areas in the Los Angeles metropolitan area as thousands of people rioted over six days following the verdict's announcement. The incident had been videotaped by George Holliday, who was a bystander to the incident, and was heavily broadcast in news and media outlets. Unrest began in South Central Los Angeles on April 29, after a jury acquitted four officers of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) charged with using excessive force in the arrest and beating of Rodney King. The 1992 Los Angeles riots, sometimes called the Rodney King riots or the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, were a series of riots and civil disturbances that occurred in Los Angeles County, California, United States, during April and May of 1992. Armed civilians, notably from Korean American communities, defending property from rioters and looters
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