UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS / PART 3 : WITNESS TO RAGE : ‘Everybody was going in. I just happened to be part of the crowd.’
We’ve been mad for so many years, and people have been trying to let frustration out. This wasn’t because of the verdict, it just gave them an excuse to get out and do what they did. With the looting, I got out there ‘cause I saw an opportunity to get some clothes that I couldn’t get ‘cause right now I’m not working. And I’m trying to make my ends meet with my bills. I need clothes, so--I saw the opportunity to go out there and get it, and--hey, it was a perfect time.
I rode through my neighborhood where I grew up, and I was just looking how everything had burnt down--stuff they had just built, hadn’t even been up a good year or two, The Laundromats, they looted the Boys market, our liquor stores. Just about everything else they messed up. Total destruction.
And I wasn’t there, but I would’ve liked to have been, “cause--in a way it was sort of like adventure and sort of fun and scary all at the same time. It seemed fun, you go in there that first night when it all jumped off, you could’ve got anything.
The second night, the police were sort of aware of what was going on and what everybody was trying to do, so they’re prepared. But they couldn’t be everywhere at once. Last Thursday, I was in the street. We went over to my girlfriend’s mom’s house, sat there for a minute, and then we were at the Hawthorne Mall.
So, it wasn’t wasn’t my community where I looting. We didn’t touch the cleaners and the little hamburger stands and the stuff that was black-owned.
Everybody was going in, and I just happened to be a part of the crowd. We went through Montgomery Wards and people were just looting, people were running out with TVs, everybody’s just grabbing clothes.
It was three of us, me and two other people. Somebody else drove. We got the kids enough summer clothes to last them just about for the whole summer. I got me some shorts, mainly, and that’s about it. Lot of shorts. But we got the kids a lot of stuff.
We were trying to find something else to get into, you know, but we didn’t know exactly where to go, ‘cause we were looking somewhere we could’ve got a TV or something like that, ‘cause we don’t have the money to pay for it right now.
‘Cause times is pretty hard with this recession. Like my father, he has been working at his job, he’s been working at his job for like 24 years, and they laid him off and hired some of their family members.
I’ve done warehouse work all over South Bay area, and I’ve worked at different stores in the mall as a stock clerk, you know. But now, I’ve been laid off since February, it’s about three months.
I watched television during the beginning of the trial. I watched every morning about the first two to three weeks, of the trial, and then, as it started coming down to the end I started watching it maybe two or three times a week instead of every morning.
When they was reading the verdict, I was watching it on the TV and I told my girl, “No, this couldn’t be true.” I said, “Ah, there’s gonna be some stuff jumping off now.” Over there Florence and Normandie, over there where I sort of grew up, that’s where everything started. The police were all over there, but then I guess the police left.
The police shouldn’t have never left there. They should’ve got all the people to leave first. ‘cause once the police left there, that’s when everybody went up to Florence and Normandie--and just--total chaos broke out. Wednesday night I just sat here cooling off. Because everybody I know stays in LA, and we don’t have a car. I was calling my mom, seeing if everybody was all right, and my father, he stays in Inglewood, see if everything was all right.
The Koreans got it in the South Central area ‘cause the Koreans did not treat us right. You go into a store and they come up behind you. They always think you’re gonna steal something. I can understand that a lot of black people are like that, but you can’t put that on everybody. I don’t really have nothing against the Koreans, though they didn’t treat us right. I feel sorry for the community and the people that lost everything. I don’t think the looting and the burning was the right thing to do.
I hear a lot of people now who say it’s not over. I don’t know. They think that when everything gets clear, it might just start right back up. The bangers say, “The s--- ain’t over, We just waiting for these m-----f------ in this green to get up out of here.”
I really can’t say the right thing to do would’ve been to protest, that wouldn’t have helped. Everybody saw the verdict coming. They were guilty. Regardless of what he did, you do not beat a a man like that. You see what they did to that man when he kicked that dog? They sent a man to jail for kicking his dog. They beat a human being, and look what happened.
Black people just wanted something to do, I guess, right then. And by that--by that verdict, it just made people say “Well shoot. Ain’t s--- going to happen to the officers, shouldn’t nothin’ happen to us if we go burn and loot” you know. They damn near beat a man to death. So all we doin’ is stealin’.
My sons watched the Rodney King case with us and asked, “Just ‘cause he didn’t stop when he was supposed to, they beating him like that?’ I said, “Yeah, you see how the police are?
A lot of people say they think the police gonna be scary. They are always harassing you. It’s like when we went to the Del Amo Mall to see a movie. Next thing you know, a police car’s following right along with us. You know, we’re just trying to find a parking space so we can go to a movie. We get out the car, he’s out with his gun telling us to get away from the car. There were like seven or eight police officers. And they asking us, what are we doing out here to see their movie. They said, “Why y’all come out here to see our movie.”
The police officers try to use their authority to an advantage. I mean, they put down that badge and that gun, I bet it’d be a whole different story. Treat me like a man. That’s all I ask. Treat me with respect and I’ll respect you.
