Years of ‘2-Cent’ Insults Added Up to Rampage : Looting: Many say they were repaying merchants for lifetime of injuries. Opportunism, panic are also factors.

For Jose, a 22-year-old Latino who reaped 37 cases of beer, two sides of beef, three cases of soda, two gold chains, an imitation Rolex watch and a whole butchered goat in a wild day of looting, the rioting boiled down to a two-cent insult.

He didn’t care a hoot about Rodney G. King, he said. He didn’t even like the guy.

If there was any rationale as he ran from store to store with his arms full of booty, it was all the times he had been turned away from a store because he was a few pennies short on a purchase.

“They throw it back at you,” Jose said, referring to shopkeepers of any race, color or ethnic background. “That’s the way they treat us.”

In a raucous back-yard party later that night, he and his friends barbecued the stolen goat.

“We got what we wanted,” he said. “We paid back for all those two cents.”

The anger of the riots, which seemed so blind and random in the blizzard of images--a family pushing an organ up the street, children running from stores with mannequin parts, a Jeep-load of yuppies scrambling through a Gap clothing store on Melrose Avenue--was for many looters an outpouring of fury that sprang from a deep and chaotic pool of emotion.

For some looters, it was simply an opportunity to grab that beautiful imitation-leather couch or 19-inch stereo color television in a storefront window that they had coveted for so long.

Others spoke of the panic during the riots over the lack of food and the rush to stock up before supplies ran out, preferably at a store that had gouged them for years.

But underlying many of the looters’ explanations for joining the free-for-all was a searing bitterness over the powerlessness and anonymity of their lives.

The outrage may have started with the verdict in the King beating trial, but it ended in an entirely different world, where it was time to “pay back” for a lifetime of tiny wounds.

“The cops can do anything they want and nothing happens,” Jose said. “Well, we got away with our stuff. Daryl Gates can kiss my ass. It was fun, lots of fun.”

Throughout the city, the sight of chaos drove home a simple message: It’s so easy. There’s nothing to stop you.

For Sylvia, a 15-year-old Latina, the sight of the street filled with looters and not a police officer in sight was like a dream come true.

“Everybody was doing it,” said Sylvia, who like others did not want to be identified for fear of arrest. “It was all free. Why not?”

On the first night of the riot, Sylvia and a friend dashed into the streets and hit a music store.

The next day she took her cousins, ages 4, 6 and 10, to accompany her. They grabbed two pairs of shoes each from a local store. The biggest danger was fighting with other looters over the booty.

Sylvia came away from the riots with seven pairs of pants, sweaters, shirts, tank tops and a basket.

“All the clothes we could have gotten through our parents,” her friend said. “But it was fun. We wanted more. We wanted everything at the same time.”

Jeffrey, a 20-year-old fast-food restaurant worker from Inglewood, said he was proud to have joined in the looting, saying it showed the power of the black and Latino communities. “We’re taking back our community,” he said.

He was ecstatic at what he got. “Mostly, I did the swap meets,” he said. “That’s where the stuff was.”

His only remorse is that so much of the community he wanted to take back was burned in the process. “I didn’t like the fires,” he said. “That just makes no sense to me.”

For many of those who stumbled through the streets, their arms laden with goods, there was often no logic to what they took. One man ran from a pizza parlor with an insulated bag for transporting take-out pizzas. Broken televisions were stolen from a repair shop. More than 200 police uniforms were grabbed from a dry cleaners.

“It was just the taking,” said Marcia, whose husband was arrested for looting on the first night of violence. “It wasn’t like they took gobs of food. They took such stupid things.”

In three hours, her husband dropped off two truckloads of looted material. He brought home 35 cartons of cigarettes. Neither of them smokes. There were six cases of beer. They rarely drink. He brought a heaping load of skateboards, tricycles and six boxes of disposable diapers. They don’t have children.

She hadn’t seen him so happy since their last vacation. “He was like a kid in a candy store,” Marcia said. “He came in the house with a smile on his face like, ‘I won,’ ” she said. “It was like he got his hand in the cookie jar and didn’t get caught.”

After his last load, she warned him not to go again. “You’ve been lucky,” she said. “Stay home with me.” But there was no stopping him. “It was like, ‘This is our turn to win, and we’re going to take it,’ ” she said.

He laughed and drove off. He was arrested later that night.

Some looters in the riots said stealing, at least in part, became a matter of survival as food supplies ran short. Others resisted the urge despite the temptation.

Andres, a Salvadoran refugee who fled the war in his native country in 1988, spent hours during the riots walking through his Pico-Union neighborhood, watching the looting around him. Disposable diapers, he marked in his mind, were a popular item. He walked past a Tianguis supermarket. Looters were scooping bags of tortillas off the floor.

“I felt some shame,” he said. “But I thought, if we don’t take the food now, what will we give our children to eat? When will we be able to buy food again?”

Andres said he took nothing during the riots, but was sorely tempted several times. At one point, he saw a new iron lying on the street. “We need an iron in our house,” he said. “But how would it be if I went home with the iron? How could I explain? It would be a stain that could never be removed.”

For many Salvadorans, who find themselves at the lowest rungs of society here after fleeing their war-ravaged country, life is a “chain of oppression,” he said.

Day laborers are chased away from corners by merchants, refugees live in constant fear of deportation, people work for wages that barely allow them to survive.

“I felt shame because I knew the image of the Latino community would be stained,” he said. “But I was in favor of protesting the (King) verdict. It would have been much more shameful if nothing happened.”

Now that the riots are over, the police crackdown on looters and the public outcry over the devastation has prompted feelings of guilt and shame in some looters.

Law enforcement officials report that truckloads of stolen goods, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, have been returned to police stations and churches.

Sylvia, whose mother and aunt joined in the looting, said she now feels ashamed when she sees televised images of looters running through the streets, but she has no plans to return her booty.

A friend said that after all the fun, they now have no stores left even to buy basic food items. “The thing is, now that we’ve done it, we feel sorry,” her friend said. “We got nowhere to shop.”

Marcia, whose husband was arrested for looting, said that now that the riots are over, the looting seems even more senseless.

Before the riots, she and her husband made a comfortable living recycling metal, paper and other products.

Now, her husband, who has been arrested before, could face a prison term.

Since the riots began, she has dutifully waited at the downtown Criminal Courts building, scanning the endless stream of jumpsuit-clad defendants, hoping to find her husband.

“He’s been in there somewhere,” she said in a desperate tone.

Before her husband left to loot the neighborhood again, he told her to sell everything--all the tricycles, the diapers, the skateboards and the beer.

Marcia, however, said she didn’t have the heart to sell the things, which they never needed in the first place.

She gave everything away to families in the neighborhood. The skateboards and tricycles went to the children, the diapers and cigarettes to the adults.

The only thing she kept for herself was a few beers.

“That,” she said, “I drank after court yesterday.”

Times staff writers Greg Braxton and Eric Young contributed to this story.