1,800 File Claims Against City Over Riot Injuries, Losses

Civil rights lawyers Monday made good on their promise to file claims against the city on behalf of nearly 1,800 people who say they were injured or had property damaged in the April-May rioting.

The claims--which are expected to be rejected by the city attorney’s office--ensure that the claimants will be able to file lawsuits in state courts if they choose to. But they also are meant to preserve records that could be used to show that officials allocated riot-control resources in a racially discriminatory way, the lawyers said.

“It is hard to believe that the LAPD response would not have been more decisive or effective had the violence broken out in Brentwood or other wealthy, predominantly white neighborhoods instead of low-income, minority-populated South Los Angeles,” said Robin Toma of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, one of several organizations and law firms that aided the claimants.

Thursday is the deadline to file claims on damage or injuries that occurred on April 29, the first day of riots. The claims each ask for a minimum of $10,000 compensation for injuries and losses.

Claims are a required precursor to a lawsuit in the state courts. No such action is required in federal courts and a federal class-action lawsuit is possible, said Toma.

The city’s lawyers contend that the city and its officials are immune from any liability resulting from the riots. They base that conclusion on a 1969 court ruling that barred claims from the Watts riots that had occurred four years earlier.

But Toma said that the 1969 ruling does not apply to claims arising from racial discrimination.

Most of those filing claims Monday are Korean-Americans, but some are of Chinese, Vietnamese and Latino descent, he said. They include residents and business owners from South-Central Los Angeles and the Pico-Union area, and others who were passing through those areas and were swept up in the violence.

In addition to the city of Los Angeles, similar claims also have been filed against the County of Los Angeles and the suburbs of Compton and Inglewood, Toma said.

In Los Angeles, Thomas Hokinson, chief assistant city attorney, said that several hundred claims filed last week were in the process of being rejected and that he expected to reject all of those filed Monday.

“I don’t think there is any evidence of discrimination at all,” Hokinson said, referring to Toma’s suggestion that certain neighborhoods had been deliberately left to their own devices when the violence began.

To back up his contention, Toma held a news conference on the City Hall steps, featuring several riot victims who have filed claims seeking compensation.

Some said police told them they would not come into their neighborhoods when they called for help. Others said officers stood by and did nothing as violence occurred or failed to warn motorists of trouble.

Fidel Lopez, 46, who was dragged from his car near the intersection of Florence and Normandie and beaten, said he had passed a police officer only moments before.

“I was feeling good,” he said. “I thought police would protect the area.”

Jin H. Lee, administrator of a group called the Assn. of Korean-American Victims of the L.A. Riot, said his store in Compton burned to the ground and no officer or firefighter came to his aid.

“I do not hate the people who burned my store,” Lee said. “I do hate the government that did not do its job because we are a minority.”