Buchanan Assails L.A. Leaders’ Riot Response as Irresponsible

Republican presidential contender Patrick J. Buchanan criticized Los Angeles leaders Friday for failing to protect the city and its citizens during the recent riots and specifically accused Mayor Tom Bradley of “giving moral sanction to the mob.”

“Government failed utterly for 48 hours,” asserted Buchanan, a conservative political commentator. “The mob saw government was too paralyzed morally or politically or whatever to act, and it looted and burned. . . . That is a failure of the leadership of Los Angeles to defend and protect this city.”

Instead of “wringing their hands over the anger in the community over some verdict in Simi Valley,” local leaders should have immediately used “maximum force” to quell the disturbances, Buchanan said. “I would certainly include the mayor among those who I would criticize for giving moral sanction to the mob with the statements he made about the King verdict.”

While calling for calm on the day of the verdict, Bradley was visibly angry over the not-guilty verdicts in the trial of four Los Angeles police officers accused of brutally beating Rodney G. King. Bradley said he was left “speechless” by the “senseless” verdicts.

Buchanan made his remarks at a Los Angeles breakfast meeting of the Twentieth Century Round Table, a group of businessmen and professionals who gave Buchanan a standing ovation before he left to catch a plane to Arizona.

While President Bush has the Republican nomination locked up, Buchanan is actively campaigning for the June 2 California primary, hoping to make a strong enough showing to continue to nudge Bush to the right.

His pro-business, law-and-order message went over well with the all-male Round Table club, whose members are predominantly Republican business executives. “I think he’s right on the money,” William E. Myers, president of Myers Building Industries, said approvingly.

“I think he appealed to a lot of our instincts,” remarked James Stancill, a finance professor at USC. “He has the courage to say things a lot of people are thinking but are politically unacceptable to say.”

Stancill added that he has mildly resented Buchanan’s challenge of Bush but, after hearing the presidential hopeful, was glad he remained in the race as “a counterweight.”

Devoting much of his speech to the riots, Buchanan took offense at criticism that the policies of Bush and former President Ronald Reagan have contributed to the discontent that fueled the disturbances. “The scapegoating of Republicans for what is going on in Los Angeles is unconscionable,” Buchanan declared, blaming the unrest on a “criminal element who will loot and burn and pillage and lynch if given a chance.”

To stop the rioters, “all it takes is some of those troopers who are willing to take a couple of them out,” Buchanan said.

He again maintained that illegal immigrants were extensively involved in the Los Angeles mayhem and said law enforcement needed more support.

“We are constantly browbeating the people who are defending us and nowhere is that done to a greater extent than the city of Los Angeles,” Buchanan said.

He also expressed little hope that some of Bush’s cures for inner-city problems--such as enterprise zones that give tax breaks to new businesses--would be of much help. “What sane man is going to put a new business inside a community where a mob just roamed free and burned down 10,000 old businesses?” Buchanan asked.