Panel on LAPD Response Hears Bitter Charges

A special panel studying the police response to the Los Angeles riots got an angry earful Tuesday night as it opened its public inquiry with a meeting in South-Central Los Angeles.

Resentful of conditions that spawned the April unrest and critical of police inaction in response to the violence, several dozen residents sounded off at Foshay Junior High School before the panel headed by former FBI Director William Webster.

“I can’t even say the Pledge of Allegiance the way it’s written anymore,” said Julia Ansley, an elementary school teacher in Watts. “To me, it’s one nation, under white people, for people who are lucky and who’ve got money.”

“The LAPD needs to be educated in ethics,” said resident Cynthia Snordon. “From where I sit, what happened during the riots is what happens all the time in this community. The police talk down to us, and we’re sick and tired of being talked down to.”

Ansley and Snordon were among scores of residents who turned out for the first of several public meetings the so-called Webster-Williams panel has scheduled to gather comments from those in areas most affected by the riot.

“After spending the summer sifting through facts and talking to hundreds of people--policemen, firemen and many others--we want to hear from citizens affected in a direct way,” said Webster, whom the Los Angeles Police Commission asked to head the panel in May.

“We don’t want anyone to say that they didn’t have a chance to express their opinion.”

Resident Bernice Tolliver echoed a common theme: that unequal treatment of blacks by police and other public officials was a contributing factor to the disturbances.

“If black people in America could get justice in the courts, we would not have witnessed what we did in April,” she said.

Others said the police simply responded too slowly when violence erupted at the corner of Florence and Normandie avenues.

“If police would have jumped on Florence and Normandie as soon as the problem started, they could have taken care of the whole thing,” said Joseph Moultin, a Crenshaw High School student. “They had enough police out there to have stopped the few people out there causing the trouble, if they had just acted quickly.”

Dan Morgan, a minister of the Church of Religious Science, offered a similar view.

“I think the police were forced to live down a bully-boy reputation,” he said. “They realized that once the trouble started (at Florence and Normandie), they were not simply going to intimidate people into retreating. Consequently, they made a very serious mistake in withdrawing.”

However, others were more supportive of the police.

“I’m glad they took a long time coming, for one reason,” resident Kipenda Misha said. “The liquor store around the corner from my house is gone, and it’s quiet.

“I don’t know who targeted the liquor stores during the riots, but I would like to thank them.”

Last month, three-quarters of 1,000 people polled by the Webster-Williams panel in a detailed telephone survey blamed the LAPD’s slow response on a lack of leadership and poor planning, although they sympathized with the department’s lack of resources.

A majority of those questioned in the survey blamed the civil unrest on underlying racial tension and economic conditions, rather than on the acquittal of four police officers on all but one charge in the beating of motorist Rodney G. King.

Tuesday’s session at Foshay, at Harvard and Exposition boulevards, was the first of seven public meetings scheduled over the next two weeks and aimed at giving residents in areas most affected by the violence the chance to offer their views on how the police handled the riots.

The meetings are to be followed by two public hearings, the dates and locations of which have yet to be announced.

The panel is expected to issue its final report by October, officials said.

Webster, a former director of the FBI and CIA, was asked to conduct the probe as a special adviser to the Los Angeles Police Commission.

Assisting him as deputy special adviser is Hubert Williams, president of the Police Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, and a former police chief of Newark, N.J.

A core group of 22 volunteer lawyers--including six former federal prosecutors and several business litigators from the city’s largest law firms--is helping in the investigation.

The panel is focusing on the Police Department’s preparedness before the riots and its response once the violence erupted on April 29. It has collected thousands of documents, conducted 200 interviews with public officials and civic leaders and surveyed 75 cities and their police departments in its effort to draw lessons from the civil unrest--the worst in the United States in this century. The mainly volunteer group is studying 11 police departments in depth.

Despite the panel’s efforts, there are some who doubt that much will be accomplished. One of them is Ansley, who said Tuesday night that she and her two children feel like prisoners in their own community.

“The worst thing is, I don’t know what anyone can do,” she said. “All this stuff they’re talking about, what are they going to do about it? We’ve told them all these things before. They see it. They can’t do anything.”

Inquiry Into the LAPD

The Webster-Williams investigation will hold six more public meetings, all beginning at 7 p.m.:

Sept. 9: Gompers Intermediate School, 234 East 112th St.

Sept. 10: Adams Junior High School, 151 West 30th St.

Sept. 11: Berendo Junior High School, 1157 S. Berendo St.

Sept. 14: Webster Junior High School, 11330 W. Graham Place.

Sept. 15: Le Conte Junior High School, 1316 N. Bronson Ave.

Sept. 22: Hollenbeck Junior High School, 2510 East 6th St.