UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS PART 1 : THE PATH TO FURY : CHAPTER 1 : ‘Not guilty . . . not guilty . . . not guilty . . . not guilty. . . .’

Art Washington made a point of staying on top of the Rodney King beating trial, watching the television coverage every night after work. He suspected that prolonged deliberations did not bode well. As late April wore on, as day after day passed without a verdict, he steeled himself that much more for the worst.

That was how this 53-year-old, bald, barrel-chested black man had gotten through the tough times in his life. You programmed your mind to receive the bad news.

Washington was in his truck, driving back to his pest-control business at Western Avenue and 20th Street in the Mid-City district, when the unthinkable verdict--acquittals on virtually every count--was broadcast on the radio. Horrible. Horrible!

But what could you do? His devotion was to his business, his wife of 18 years and their teen-age daughter. He had a stake in the system.

Besides, Washington figured that his rented store, just north of the Santa Monica Freeway, was safe. If South Los Angeles did explode, it was inconceivable that the madness would come that far north. And his home, on Harvard Boulevard between Washington and Venice boulevards, was farther north, and even safer.

It would, he knew, be a sad night of television. But there had been sad nights before.

The Police Officer

Hours crept by like days as Thomas Souza fought to keep his mind on his work. It was no use. He saw everything and focused on nothing.

Finally, someone stopped and opened the door to his office at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Valley Traffic Division in Van Nuys. Officer Souza couldn’t see who it was. But he could hear the man’s voice.

“Not guilty on three,” he said, “and 8-to-4 hung jury on Powell on one count.”

Souza exhaled briskly, as if he had been holding his breath since the jury began deliberating seven days earlier.

It’s over, he assured himself. That’s behind us.

He stood and joined the other officers who were gathering in front of a TV. They switched on the set in time to see spectators filing out of the courtroom.

The Suburbanite

In Simi Valley, public-affairs consultant Steve Frank sat before his television, watching pictures of the trial wrapping up at the Ventura County courthouse just a few miles from his house. Along with his twin daughters, Amy and Emily, he watched the jury foreman repeat the verdict over and over and over again: “Not guilty . . . not guilty . . . not guilty . . . not guilty. . . .”

When he first saw the videotape of Los Angeles police officers beating and kicking King last year, Frank, a white man, thought the four officers should be shot. But now, with the verdict in, Frank was not willing to question the jury.

That’s why we have juries, he reasoned. To sort out things we can’t see on an 81-second videotape. Frank wasn’t sure what those things were in this case, but he was sure that the jurors were sure, and he thought he was in no position to second-guess them.

He respected the jury’s decision, and that was that.

The Gangbanger

Marcus was familiar with the impulse to put your faith in the system and leave the thinking to someone else. He lived in his parents’ working-class home in the Crenshaw district, but he had spent a good part of his youth being bused to schools in the San Fernando Valley.

This, though, was too much. Watching the verdicts being read on TV, his mind raced to find meaning. It was on videotape, he thought. They had literally beaten the man senseless. They had falsely reported that he was on PCP. Then they had joked about it-- laughed about it. Even other cops testified they were out of control.

How could they not be guilty of something?

Marcus was too stunned to be shocked. In a second, though, he began to feel in his gut just how screwed this was. It brewed inside him, the rage.

A few miles away, Marcus’ friend, Cletus, was hitching a ride back into South-Central L.A. when he heard the news. Like Marcus, his high school diploma had earned him nothing more than a security guard’s salary. Unlike Marcus, he was a veteran gangbanger. Cletus had robbed, and he had killed.

These police, Cletus smoldered, they run around with badges and think they have a right to do anything to you.

The Merchants

Myung Lee was perplexed by the jury’s decision when it was broadcast over Radio Korea, a Korean-language radio station in Los Angeles, just after 3 p.m.

She had worked in her small South-Central doughnut shop long enough to see the King case from her black customers’ point of view. She believed the officers were guilty.

First on Lee’s mind, however, was keeping her struggling business afloat day by day. Her chief worry was cash flow, not urban insurrection.

Her neighbor in the mini-mall at Florence Avenue and Figueroa Street, liquor store owner William Hong, spoke better English, so he discussed the verdict with his black clientele. They were angry.

He didn’t have an opinion.

If it’s between blacks and whites, Hong decided, I won’t get involved.

The Immigrant

In the apartment building next to Hong’s store, 27-year-old Leticia hadn’t bothered herself with the Rodney King trial. When she heard a radio report on the verdict in a 5 p.m. broadcast on Spanish station KLVE, she didn’t give it a second thought.

Unemployed and bored, she walked to the mini-mall and rented a video. Then, to pass the time, she drove to Slauson Avenue to window shop. Oddly, though, all of the stores were shutting down--and in a big hurry. She turned around to head home, but was stopped at the intersection near her home.

People were suddenly everywhere, hundreds of them, running all over the street, jumping on her car, acting crazy, scaring her witless.

This is what the end of the world will be like, she thought.

The Auto Worker

His shift had just ended, and Jake Flukers was walking out of the General Motors Van Nuys plant where he had worked as a welder for 15 years. A co-worker collared the tall, black union representative to tell him the verdicts were in. On all but one charge, the four officers had been found not guilty.

Jake could not believe it. He had seen the whipping that man got, and in his mind he could see no way that a jury could find those people innocent.

He shook off a hollow feeling and went to phone his two sons, ages 12 and 13. If they had heard about this, they would be furious. He wanted to talk them down.

The Restaurateur

“Guess what?”

Mark Peel looked up from his work at Campanile, the smart La Brea Avenue restaurant he runs with his wife, Nancy Silverton. The stone-faced employee stared at him and delivered the news.

“They found them all not guilty.”

Peel thought: How can that be? He replayed the awful videotape in his mind, recalling blow after blow. He could not fathom what kind of mitigating evidence could persuade 12 sane people to shrug their shoulders and say, “Oh, that’s OK.”

Elsewhere in the restaurant, a friend had Silverton on the phone.

“I think they just delivered the verdict,” the caller stammered, “and I think, I think they’re all innocent.”

Oh, no, Silverton said. When do the riots begin?

The Youth Worker

Fred Williams heard the verdicts, but the 33-year-old ex-gang member thought that all the talk about a riot was bunk.

We don’t have it in us, he said bitterly after the acquittal. That’s how beaten down we are. Nobody rioted when they beat Rodney King. Nobody rioted when that Korean grocer got probation for the shooting death of a black teen-ager in her store. Why now? Why should anybody be surprised at the verdict?

Williams, who runs a private stay-in-school foundation for black inner-city neighborhoods, figured that the government brought blacks over on slave ships and killed half of them--and now knew they could beat us and get away with it.

At first, he longed for a strong leader to motivate the masses. But then he realized that the people are going to have to lead, and the leaders are going to have to follow. All these “leaders” telling others to stay calm--the political leaders and church leaders and community leaders--those voices mean nothing to people.

The Social Worker

It was family day at the View Heights Convalescent Hospital, at 126th Street and Avalon Boulevard, that time of the month when relatives visit the mentally ill patients and meet with doctors and staff members.

Nettie Lewis was working her regular shift as a social worker, watching television in her office as she prepared to meet the families. She froze at news of the King verdicts, listening but not believing.

But this was a busy day, and for a time she put it out of her mind and caught up with her clients. When she finished and stepped out of her office to talk it over with her colleagues, one startled her with still more news: People were on a rampage, looting and setting fires.

Lewis walked over to a TV set in the dining room in time to see the live news pictures of a white man being pulled from his truck, struck and repeatedly kicked by several assailants as he tried--and failed--to ward off their blows.

She and other staff members realized that the 15 relatives visiting the South-Central hospital included whites, Asians and Latinos. The health-care workers warned their supervisors to cut the visits short.

Get these people out of South-Central as quickly as possible, she thought. They don’t deserve to be hurt.