UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS--SIX MONTHS LATER : Touched by Fire / A Legacy of Pain and Hope : THE LOOTERS : ‘Next Time...I’ll Stay in the House’

For many Californians, the riots were more than a momentary blip on the screen--they were a flash point for lasting and fundamental changes in their lives. The devastation left a legacy of broken dreams for many, awakened a sense of social justice in some, unleashed anger and hatred in others, and rekindled a spirit of hope among others. Six months after the riots, Times reporters visited some of the people and places touched by the extraordinary events of last spring and on these pages we tell their stories.

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Frederick Swayzer says he took to the streets with friends soon after the start of the riots to witness history, view the devastation and soak up the energy--sightseeing, it might be called in normal times. On the second night, however, at 9:45 p.m. he became one of the thousands of people arrested on suspicion of looting when he was spotted by undercover Long Beach police officers inside a ransacked Payless shoe store.

“When they confronted defendant,” court records state, “he fled out the window and after a brief pursuit was apprehended . . . (though) apparently he just touched the items in the store. He did not seem to be heavily involved.”

“I was caught up in the midst,” the 24-year-old Swayzer says six months later, still grappling to understand the carnage he witnessed and the 36 days he spent in county jails before he was brought to court to plead no contest to commercial burglary. Because he had no criminal record, he was released with “time served,” but he remains on three years’ probation and must pay $100 restitution and perform 120 hours of community service.

A native of Louisiana whose family moved to California when he was 6, Swayzer’s biggest regret is that his jail time took him away from his son, born just a week before the riots. Now back in his North Long Beach home, the young black man works nights for an uncle’s janitorial firm and wonders how he will someday describe the events of 1992 to tiny Joshua. Although he does not view the riots as a political act, Swayzer thinks that politics may hold the key to heading off a repeat performance. This month, for the first time ever, he voted.

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“Even today, every time I drive through the communities, I see the vacant lots and I can just picture it all again like in a video--the smoke, the fires, the people running in and out of stores, the burning cars, police standing around. My friends and I were in L.A., Watts, Compton. It was crazy. It was an experience. I wanted to see it. I wasn’t sad, though, because the riot was kind of exciting to me. I don’t think it was right, but it was exciting to me, to tell you the truth. I’m glad I did it. Yeah, I knew there was a riot going on. True enough.

“I was by a store that was already looted and the police was in there. I still think my case was kind of false. True enough, I was outside. But when I was in the police station, I was telling them I didn’t have nothing. But the police said I was thinking of looting.

“I was prayin’ in jail thinking, ‘Why am I in here?’ I’d say, God knows I didn’t steal anything out of that store. I’d get these flashbacks in my mind, maybe I should have did something, burn down something. Sometimes, you sit there, you feel crazy. Then I decided sometimes you just have to go through these things.

“What most of the people was talking about was what they took and what they had in their house. I was just listening to them. The riot was not about Rodney King. It was because people was greedy. People was saying, ‘(expletive) Rodney King. He wasn’t nobody until the police beat his butt.’

“When I was at (the county’s Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho) they separated out all white people. They left the Mexicans and blacks together. Then two weeks before I got out, they let the white people come back. The way they had them all walk in together, it seemed like they wanted tensions to flare. But some black guys with me said, ‘They want us to do something to make us look mad.’ So nothing happened. We had fun together, playing cards, looking at the (NBA championship) basketball game, sitting around reading the newspaper. . . . Thirty five days I spent before I got out.

“Now I got three years’ probation. I do anything, I go back to jail. It’s like I belong to the state, but they let me go back to the street. I got that, along with the community service and restitution. I don’t think that was fair. You could steal a car and get off more easy. I haven’t started community service yet. I have a family. I don’t have time when I have to eat. I live day-to-day, by paycheck.

“My uncle has a maintenance company. We do custodian work and construction cleanup. He said I knew what was going on and I should have just stayed in the house.

“I registered to vote when I first turned 18. But this is the first time I voted, mailed it off absentee. I voted believing that if we get a good President it could make a difference. I felt that if there were jobs out there--if aerospace wasn’t layin’ off and General Motors and shipyards layin’ off--things might be different.

“If these people had jobs, maybe the ‘not-guilty’ verdict would have been handled. People would say, ‘Ah, that was wrong,’ but that would have been all.

“But next time, if there ever is another riot, I’ll do what my uncle said. I’ll stay in the house.”