UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS / PART 3 : WITNESS TO RAGE

There’s a lot of bridges that have to be crossed. We need to get everybody together to work as people--not my people or their people. That’s the the biggest roadblock, people are worried more about their own people then they are about anybody else. We all gotta live in L.A. We all gotta make the best of it.

Isaac Galvan, Los Angeles police officer, Foothill Division

I had one friend that died. His name was Louis Watson. It was the first night of the riot, and my brother was there. They tried to break into the swap meet. It was like 60 teen-agers trying to break in. A car rolled by and just started shooting. And they shot him and this other dude. The other dude died as soon as he got shot. My friend, Louis, died at the hospital later on. Thursday, I was playing basketball. And the police pulled up and they told us to leave, because some dude was trying to burn down the school. And the police thought I did it. They told us just to sit down and, you know, to take our hands out of our pocket. But, the neighbor that called in said it wasn’t me.

Aloic Reneau, 13, Student at John Muir Jr. High School

If Rodney King happened six months ago, nothing may have happened. But when you add up the number of injustices that we do receive, that we perceive to receive, that we actually inflict upon ourselves, this particular one took on a life of its own. I saw angry people. Furious people. I also saw people who were going to take advantage of the situation. After a few minutes I wasn’t afraid. There was no anger directed to me. They were hitting Korean businesses. They were looking at people who had abused them in the past. I got back to the office and got the things I needed. I thought about taking my computer out. But it occurred to me it would look as if I were looting. When I went back home Thursday, I had some significant hassles. And I understood why. The Koreans were getting their businesses attacked and they saw a black guy--you know, I was receiving their hostility.

Harry Reed, 42, Owner of Karmi Industries, a 20-year-old janitorial supplies and equipment firm located in the Crenshaw neighborhood

“It’s good for the rest of the city to see what happened here. It’s good for them to know what many fine people here have to put up with and that they’re stuck here because they’re poor. It’s not because they’re evil, and I really wish that others would not treat this place as a kind of a diseased colony.”

Father David Herrera, 45, Pastor of Nativity Catholic Church on Vermont Avenue and 56th Street in South Los Angeles

I was in my house looking through the window. I saw a lot of rioting, people running up and down the street, screaming at the cops. I was scared. I had a gun in the house, sitting there. I loaded it and I put it right by the door. Gunshots went off, people started going crazy into our back yard. They were just running through, running across, trying to get away from the police officers. They were saying, “Well, who are you against?” I said, “I ain’t with nobody. I live in front of a police station. Does that make me a bad person?”

Hector Reyes, 23, An unemployed plasterer from Pacoima Name

It’s very sad to see the city in the shape that it’s in. I would like it if they wouldn’t have attacked our stores. With the liquor stores, I agree, it’s a nasty habit. But the stores, where one buys milk for their children, it’s horrible. It embarrasses me as a Latina that Latinos did looting in stores. I lament all this.

Guadalupe Guerrero, 40, Lives in South Central with her husband and three children,

ages 12, 10 and 2

It just wasn’t right when they let those four police officers off. They should have called them guilty and they should have been taken off the police force and put them in jail. Then none of this would have never happened. This building would still be up. People would still be shopping at those places. Now there’s no places to shop. What was bad about the rioting was they would take white people out of their trucks or cars and beat them up. I felt that the people that were beating people up should go to jail. During the riots some people went looting, and some people just stayed home and watched the news to see what was going on. And some people went far out places to go shopping. Some of my friends went to loot but I guess they got scared and dropped everything, ‘cause they didn’t get nothing.

Jamal Riddick, 11, Lives in South-Central Los Angeles with his grandmother, sister and nephew