UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS / PART 3 : WITNESS TO RAGE : ‘It was just something to do. It was fun.’

I was on the street corner when I heard about the verdict. And then when I went up to a place I go to eat sometimes, I saw people up in there beating up Japanese people that work behind the counter, taking the money, just tearing up the place, breaking windows, taking food, bread and raw food, and just looting. And they burnt the place. Then I looked across the street, and people were running in and out the other stores. I said I wasn’t moving then and right there. I wasn’t going to do nothing. But then later on that nighttime, my people who got together riding around, we saw a place they want to hit. So we like, what the hell, we hit it. Like, radio stores all over. We were out all night, got back about 3. It was just something to do. It was fun.

Most people were doing it because they had nothing better to do and they seen other people doing it.

If they’d stopped it right there on Normandie and Florence, I don’t think none of this would have happened. People saw that they could get away with it. So they said, “If they can get away get away with it, we can get away with it too.”