UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS / PART 3 : WITNESS TO RAGE : ‘People said: You’re one of them. You’re a sellout.’

I was in Parker Center setting up to cover a news conference when the verdict came in. I went up to the press room, and they said, “All ‘not guilty,’ so far.”

I was stunned. I turned to ice. I became very frightened. I feared there would be terrible reactions, particularly in the black community. I even felt that that would be the case in some white neighborhoods.

We all had the same reaction, except the police officers. They were happy in the press room. They were delighted at that verdict. I got my pen and went around interviewing officers. They all said the same thing: “We think it was a correct verdict.” That raised a question in my mind: “My God, if they think this verdict is correct, that would suggest to me that these officers thought that everything they saw on that tape was OK.”

Finally, I was relieved by another reporter, who was going to go down there and do live shots. And I wanted to know, “Why the hell am I being pulled off this story now, when you’re about to go and do live shots?”

And the news director tells me, “Warren, you’re not very good at doing live.” I was torn between anger and disappointment.

The next morning, when I came in, the morning assignment editor said, “We’re just going to send you out. You can start down in Crenshaw area.” And that was the limit of instructions as to what I should do. That was it: “Go down. We’re going to do live shots.” It gave me a great sense of freedom and I ended up doing 15 live shots that day.

A messenger was assigned to take me down there to meet my crew, which was already out in the field. And this happened to be a young white kid recently out of college, driving a car that I was afraid wouldn’t make it. He didn’t know the way, so I directed him. We went down Crenshaw, and by the time we reached Pico I could see broken windows. Stores had been looted.

I really was concerned for him, then. I was just overwhelmed at the destruction that I’d seen going down there. I had no idea that as much damage had been caused by then. Once we found the crew, I didn’t know how to tell this kid to get out of there. And I was more concerned with him than I was my assignment at that point. Forty-five minutes later, or so, I called to make sure that he’d gotten back OK. He had.

The first live shot we did was in front of a burning Thrifty drugstore. People were angry, but over Rodney King, not the burning. I saw no policemen. None. Not a single one. When we did our first live shot, I had in my mind what the news director had said to me. It was sort of bothering me.

But I thought, “Warren, just go out there and do it.”

And there I was, standing in front of the camera, describing and talking about what was going on. And I felt excited about it. I really did, I felt excited about it, because I didn’t want to just talk about the looters. I wanted to have some definition of what was going on here. People were striking back. They were saying, “You gave us this verdict. We’re going to give you this.”

Finally, the police came. They stood on one side of this huge mall parking lot. The looters were on the other side, stealing at will. I saw someone going into a cleaners, and I said, “You’re taking somebody’s clothes, someone that had brought their clothes in to be cleaned. Why take their stuff?” It was the same thing. It didn’t matter. They were just striking out. I saw babies in the arms of their mothers, and they were taking baby things. They were taking food.

There were times when I was confronted by people who were very hostile, “You’re one of them. You’re a sellout.” At one point, it became so hostile that I felt threatened, and I felt my crew was threatened. So I interviewed people, allowed them to just talk. That was, of course, recorded. I intended to send it back to the station where they could make the final decision about whether to put it on air or not. Some of the things I thought should’ve gone on the air; others were profane. But that was one way that I knew to defuse what was potentially a very explosive thing.

We were driving down Crenshaw shortly afterward, when the first bottle was thrown at our van. We kept driving around, going from one fire to another and, while we were stopped in traffic another bottle was thrown at us.

The guys who did it looked at me and said, “Hey, you’re one of us.” And I said “Well, yeah, so why are you throwing at me?” And you know what they would say? “We’re not throwing at you. We’re throwing at your driver.” That didn’t make me feel any better, because let me tell you, if you’ve got mobs, that mob mentality gets going. People don’t see color. They see a thing.

After we left the Crenshaw shopping mall around 1 or 2 in the afternoon, we drove in a different direction and ended up at Martin Luther King and Vermont, where we remained for most of the afternoon. And that’s where I did most of my reports from.

Everything was going on there--looting and all sorts of things. I went up on the roof of a burning building to shoot the attempts to save it. It was not until this guy said to me, “Hey, you’re in danger, too,” that I realized two things: No.1, he’s right. No. 2, six weeks ago, I was at Cedars-Sinai being treated for a heart attack. Suddenly, it hit me: You ran up those stairs, ran through somebody’s apartment where the door was open, stepped on somebody’s couch, and went out the open window to where this man is trying to put out this fire with his water hose.

I’d forgotten the heart attack. My doctor had just given me permission to go back to work that week.

Suddenly, it hit me: You ran up those stairs, ran through somebody’s apartment where the door was open, stepped on somebody’s couch, and went out the open window to where this man is trying to put out this fire with his water hose.

That night, when I got back to the studio, the news director met me at the door. He said, “Forget about what I told you last night, Warren.”