LOS ANGELES, April 29 (UPI) -- The streets of Los Angeles have settled down to a dull roar in the 10 years since the Rodney King riots, but a recent surge in gang-related crime may be increasing the chances of another explosive clash between police and the inner-city community.
Push could soon come to shove as city leaders watch an alarming upward creep in gang crime statistics that likely will require the Los Angeles Police Department to reassert its control of the streets and put the crime rate back on the decline.
"We have seen a marked increase in gang violence since last July," said Father Greg Boyle, a long-time minister in L.A.'s Boyle Heights area who works with youth in gang neighborhoods. "The LAPD has been in diminished numbers and there hasn't been the kind of vigilance that you would hope for, nor the kind of community policing where people (police) really know the folks here."
Fifty-five people were killed and more than 2,000 were injured with 8,000 arrests in the 1992 riots that tore apart the city physically and emotionally. There was $1 billion in property damage and theft in the devastation that followed the acquittal in a suburban Simi Valley courtroom in April 29, 1992, of four white police officers.
Laurence Powell, Stacey Koon, Theodore Briseno and Timothy Wind were all caught on tape by the video recorder of George Holliday beating the daylights out of Rodney King on March 3, 1991, after he refused to stop for a routine traffic stop. Their acquittal pulled the pin on all the rage that had festered in the African-American communities for decades.
The overwhelming sense of disenfranchisement felt 10 years ago might not be as keen since the rebuilding of the neighborhoods with the "Rebuild Los Angeles" movement created by then-Mayor Tom Bradley and Gov. Pete Wilson. There are many more black-owned businesses and job-training programs, but there is still a dearth of decent jobs in the manufacturing sectors and unemployment rates are as high as 50 percent in some areas.
The police department has been struggling with a manpower shortage many officers blame on the outgoing chief, and a lot of cynics blame on new rules cracking down on the kind of rough stuff that was dished out to the hapless King. But many rioters said they had endured police brutality and beatings for decades, that the King beating was not a temporary aberration on the part of the LAPD.
Whatever the reasons, the LAPD's recruitment has not kept up with replacing retirees and the departure of officers in droves -- many of whom are going to other agencies -- which logic dictates will make it more difficult for commanders to keep enough cops on patrol to keep an eye on the neighborhoods that need them.
At the same time, the LAPD's CRASH anti-gang details were disbanded in the wake of the Rampart scandal just as increasing numbers of hard-core gang members arrested in the 1990s were being paroled back to their old stomping grounds.
"Inmates come out of prison and try to make a difference in their lives, but they are sucked back into the cycle of violence because of a lack of opportunities," Duc Phan, a former gang member turned college student said on a recent KCRW radio panel discussion.
There is no argument job training and other intervention programs are important in bootstrapping youth out of the poverty that leads them into gang life, but Boyle said solving the gang problem also requires enforcement, and that means a strong police presence in the hood.
"Enforcement is the kind of vigilance the police provide that keeps folks safe while (intervention) programs try to manufacture hope," he said.
It appears that city hall is now set to make sure enforcement doesn't slack off any further.
Mayor James Hahn last week unveiled a five-point plan to combat gang crime that included funding to redeploy 100 LAPD officers to street duty in high-crime areas and with specialized units such as narcotics. The announcement went largely unnoticed in the media amid the political dispute between Hahn and the African-American community over the ousting of Police Chief Bernard Parks, who was seen as a reformer of the LAPD.
Police sources told United Press International the department was on a high alert, however, when the announcements not to renew Parks' contract were made public.
"We were all set for riots," the source said. "We just didn't know what was going to happen."
City officials are putting a lot of faith into the idea economic development will gradually gentrify the areas that were in flames 10 years ago, but gang-bangers peddling crack is not the kind of Chamber of Commerce moment that attracts customers.
So, the time is going to come when the LAPD will be ordered to crack down on the gang element. Many African Americans and Latinos will be happy to see the troublemakers off the streets, but others will be irritated at being pulled over or patted down on the street by vigilant cops.
The LAPD has worked hard to build better relations in minority communities and residents only want to be protected without being hassled, snarled at or worse. As more minorities now own their own homes in the area, they demand protection and a police presence. They want the motto "To serve and protect" upheld without being hassled in the process.
The incident that triggers the next riot probably won't be another batting practice session like the one in which Rodney King was guest of honor. There are always enormous risks of an unarmed suspect being shot in a dark alley or during a traffic stop by officers who are by no means trigger-happy or cruel, but aren't prepared to take a bullet themselves.
Although the LAPD has done a lot of soul-searching since the 1992 riots, the best intentions in the world will not guarantee that every arrest, traffic stop or domestic violence call will go according to the book. It will be up to the city and its citizens to decide how to react when the time comes.
But the social milieu that once formed the wasteland ghetto is now remarkably more middle-class with economic recovery evident on every corner. The first Earvin "Magic" Johnson Theater opened at Crenshaw Plaza; there is a new Home Depot, a Food 4 Less grocery store and a McDonald's restaurant on the 23-acre site at Western and Slauson, a
stone's throw from Normandie and Florence, the flashpoint of the 1992 riots. There is even a Starbucks and a Subway Sandwich shop; businesses owned by blacks are ubiquitous.
Said one grocer, "You don't burn what is your own."
