From the Archives: Mayor Bradley lifts curfew tonight

Warren Christopher hands a copy of the Christopher Commission report to Police Chief Daryl F. Gates in Gates' office at Parker Center. The report examined the operation of the LAPD, especially its recruitment, hiring and training practices, internal disciplinary system and citizen complaint system in the wake of the King beating.

By Dean E. Murphy and Jim Newton

May 4, 1992 12 AM PT

Raising the curtain on post-riot Los Angeles, Mayor Tom Bradley on Sunday announced that he is lifting the dusk-to-dawn curfew as of tonight and declared optimistically that the looting, arson and violence of last week now “appears to be under control.”

Under control, perhaps, but life was far from normal: National Guard members Sunday night shot and killed a motorist they said drove toward them after running a barricade at the corner of Pico Boulevard and Vermont Avenue. The unidentified man was the first person struck by Guard gunfire since the force arrived Thursday.

By Sunday evening, nearly 8,500 members of the Marines, Army and National Guard were stationed inside the riot areas, maintaining the fragile calm that was established Saturday. Sources close to the mayor said the troops will remain at least through Wednesday afternoon.

Bradley, however, would not speculate on when the city’s occupation by rifle-toting soldiers might end, and said their presence is the only reason he is abandoning the four-day old curfew.

For residents, the presence of the troops was an unsettling reminder that the chaos remained unconquered. But officials worried that if the soldiers left, the rioting might resume.

“If they are needed for weeks,” the mayor said, “they are committed to be here for weeks.”

In other developments Sunday:

* With the workweek looming, the city moved toward stability. Grocery stores slowly reopened, trash collection and mail delivery are to resume today. Schools in Los Angeles will be in session and people can go back to the beach. Electricity is expected to be fully restored in the inner city today.

* Transportation systems were intact again. Harbor Freeway off-ramps, which had been blocked through riot-torn South Los Angeles, were opened. Bus service got back on schedule. And at Los Angeles International Airport, normal operations resumed as incoming passenger planes were permitted to fly over Inglewood for the first time since the rioting began Wednesday night.

* The death toll rose to 51 killed in riot-related violence--including an 89-year-old woman who died Sunday after suffering a heart attack during disturbances Thursday. The arrest tally hit 10,164 with the population of Los Angeles County jails swelling to a record of more than 25,000 on Sunday. But in what Bradley and others called a very encouraging sign, there were no major reports of riot-related fires or looting. The mayor said: “The true face of Los Angeles is being seen on the streets and in the neighborhoods.”

* Archbishop Roger M. Mahony urged looters to return stolen merchandise by bringing it to churches--no questions asked. And police in Hollywood reported that, acting on tips from residents, they recovered four truckloads of looted merchandise. “As they entered residences to look for stolen property,” said LAPD Capt. Francisco Pegueros, “they would come back and find people had abandoned property in hallways or elevators, obviously in an attempt to give the property back but not get arrested.”

* Federal authorities said the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office were investigating the torching of Korean-owned businesses and the attack on a white truck driver at the South Los Angeles intersection where the unrest began. Sheriff Sherman Block, urging federal prosecutions, said the acts “clearly constitute attacks on people and property simply because of their race.”

* The South Korean Foreign Ministry announced that its government will send a delegation to Los Angeles this week to seek reparation for hundreds of Korean-American store owners who suffered damage in the rioting. “Damage was more than physical, but the collapse of the American Dream,” said Parliament Speaker Park Jyun-Kyu.

* The federal Centers for Disease Control disclosed that four investigators will be sent to Los Angeles today to help local health officials chart the epidemiology of the riots, including the causes of death, the types of weapons used to inflict injury and the sociological explanation for the violence.

* On the national political scene, the riots emerged as a presidential campaign issue. Democratic candidate Bill Clinton arrived in Los Angeles to meet with community leaders and inspect the aftermath of the rioting. Ross Perot, a likely independent candidate, criticized President Bush for failing to make such a trip. The President, meanwhile, prayed Sunday for an end to the violence during a morning chapel service at his Camp David, Md., retreat. He is scheduled to come to Los Angeles Thursday on a previously planned trip and expects to survey the riot damage then.

* City officials declared that volunteer efforts to tidy up the city had been extraordinarily effective. More than 30 tons of debris were dumped at one of two landfills that the city made special arrangements to open. But a larger and far more expensive task remains: clearing the rubble from thousands of burned-out buildings.

Mood of the City

With the weekend drawing to a close and the workweek about to begin, city leaders and residents seemed eager for life to return to familiar patterns. But many were not yet able to put last week’s devastation--touched off Wednesday by not guilty verdicts in the trial of police officers who beat Rodney G. King--behind them.

In Pico-Fairfax, Brenda Cansler, a black 39-year-old mother of two, said she wished the curfew would be extended an extra week and the National Guard kept around indefinitely. She worried about sending her 12-year-old son back to his ethnically mixed school. Racial tensions, she said, may explode there next.

“Any little thing could cause a riot,” she said.

Yet in South Los Angeles--the area of the city that was hardest hit by violence--Debra Williams, a black 31-year-old mother of two, expressed the opposite view.

“I know it’s over,” she declared, saying she has no problem letting her 11-year-old go back to school. “You don’t hear as many sirens. Curfew is being lifted. They’re not arresting people and they’re back to the regular shows on TV. I feel real good about that.”

The city landscape was dotted with post-riot oddities:

Scores of looky-loos, perhaps tired of being cooped up at home, ventured into pillaged neighborhoods for a Sunday drive. At the corner of Western Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard, caravans of cars cruised slowly past the boarded-up storefronts and charred debris. Camcorders and Instamatics were aimed out windows. Drivers honked at military men and women, who waved back and hollered hello. Many of the spectators jumped out of their cars to get their pictures taken with the troops.

“This is history,” said Sandy Forman, 38, of Hollywood, as he posed his girlfriend next to a soldier in front of some smoldering ruins.

Across the street from a burned-down shopping mall on West Adams Boulevard, dozens of families held picnics in a park. Children played on swings, young boys shot hoops, and mothers pushed babies in strollers. A block away, surrounded by members of the National Guard dressed in camouflage gear, fruit vendors calmly sold their wares.

In South Los Angeles, taxicab drivers were offering $1 fares for stranded residents who needed to go shopping for food but whose neighborhood grocery stores were burned down. The service was sorely needed; there were long lines at most gas stations, and a few pump owners were rationing fuel to two or three gallons per customer.

At Vernon and Central avenues, in the parking lot of what had been the corner Jack-In-The-Box, three men from Orange County stood flipping pancakes on a gas grill and offering them, free, with plenty of butter and syrup, to passersby. It was just one of a myriad of volunteer efforts to bring food to the neighborhoods hardest hit by the violence.

In the Fairfax district, barely a third of the merchants showed up at the Farmer’s Market and customers were sparse on what is usually one of the market’s busiest days. Nearby, one man tried with difficulty to hawk cotton candy on a street with almost no traffic. Said one merchant: “Everything just seems really still.”

Visions of last week’s flames and fury remained seared in the public consciousness.

Sophia Gillette of South Los Angeles went shopping at one of just a handful of grocery stores open for miles around--the Boys Market on Crenshaw Boulevard. She said she will always bear the scars of the destruction of her neighborhood.

“People will never be able to forget about it,” she said, loading bags of groceries into her car. “All they’ll have to do is look across the street at the burned-up grocery store, or the liquor store that used to be there, and they’ll be reminded of what happened.”

And in Koreatown, Yong and Jeoung Lee had few expressions of hope Sunday as they mourned the death of their 18-year-old son, who was shot Thursday night while helping friends protect their businesses. “Others in Koreatown, they can rebuild,” Jeoung Lee said. “But where can I go to rebuild my son?”

The Cleanup

Some found catharsis in cleaning. Sunday’s volunteer cleanup was so exhaustive that crews even swept streets in areas of the city unaffected by the rioting.

“It is totally cool. It is so exciting,” said Felicia Marcus, president of the city Board of Public Works, going so far as to claim: “L.A. is probably cleaner than it has ever been.”

As damage estimates hit $717 million, city officials raided department supplies, coming up with thousands of plastic bags, which were distributed to volunteer groups. At one staging area, Marcus said, they had 80,000 trash bags to distribute.

Thousands of people brought their own brooms and set to work, leaving neatly closed trash bags on streets where glass shards and paper had been. Their efforts were so ardent that “the citizens spontaneously have completed virtually all of the volunteer cleanup,” said Bill Russell, who is heading the city’s volunteer coordination.

Waste haulers donated 35 dumpsters through Operation Clean Sweep, an anti-litter and graffiti program, and the city arranged to have two landfills--Lopez Canyon and Puente Hills--opened during the weekend for riot detritus.

The 10 phones at the city cleanup hot line rang incessantly Sunday, with more than 1,000 names and phone numbers collected for future efforts. Russell said advance scout cars found little need for the volunteers today, but he hopes to organize shuttles in coming days to deliver food, help with child care and transport residents who need to get to doctors, dentists, barbers, “whatever they need.”

View From City Hall

At City Hall, the mood became one of relief as Bradley, looking more relaxed and rested, announced the lifting of the curfew and proudly ticked off the resumption today of many disrupted city services: trash collection, home mail delivery, public transportation and electricity.

He also reported “no significant” criminal activity for the second day in a row, confirming a growing sense of calm felt on the streets from South Los Angeles to Westwood. For the first time since rioting erupted Wednesday he talked about “de-escalation” of the crisis.

1/15

Rodney King shows the bruises he sustained at the hands of four Los Angeles police officers. A citizen with a video camera, George Holliday, had recorded from his balcony the prolonged beating of King by four white police officers.

(KEVORK DJANSEZIAN / Associated Press)

2/15

Steven Lerman, attorney for Rodney King, displays a photo of his client during a press conference at his office in Beverly Hills on March 8, 1991. King’s doctor outlined the extent of the man’s injuries for reporters during the meeting.

(Nick Ut / Associated Press)

3/15

George Holliday, who captured the Rodney King beating on his video camera, in February 2006

(Michael Kelley / For the Times)

4/15

Fires burn out of control on the second day of rioting in Los Angeles following announcement of the Rodney King verdicts.

(Kirk Mckoy / Los Angeles Times)

5/15

Rodney King asks the now-famous question, “Can we all get along?” in a press conference outside his lawyer’s office in Beverly Hills. King asked that the killing, looting and destruction spurred by his case would stop.

(Larry Davis / Los Angeles Times)

6/15

Darryl Gates, former LAPD chief, arrives at the Roybal Federal Building and is surrounded by news media. Gates was chief during the King beating and subsequent rioting.

(Leffingwell, Randy / Los Angeles Times)

7/15

Warren Christopher hands a copy of the Christopher Commission report to Police Chief Daryl F. Gates in Gates’ office at Parker Center. The report examined the operation of the LAPD, especially its recruitment, hiring and training practices, internal disciplinary system and citizen complaint system in the wake of the King beating.

(Rick Meyer / Los Angeles Times)

8/15

Rodney King looks at a picture of himself from May 1, 1992, the third day of the Los Angeles riots, which hangs in the living room of his home in Rialto, in 2012. At that press conference, King uttered the famous words, “Can we all get along?”