Night and the City

The mood of the city is uneasy anticipation, like that of a child huddled down in darkness, searching for monsters in the shadows.

The emotions are not dissimilar. Will morning come before the things in the night leap out and devour us?

Will we have the courage to cope if the worse fears of midnight come true?

A child’s terror, for the most part, is rooted in imagination. Ours isn’t.

L.A.’s night of uncertainty looks toward the eventual outcome of two trials, and what forces those outcomes might unleash.

Will we burn again if the four white policemen who beat Rodney King once more walk free and the blacks who beat Reginald Denny go to prison?

Will the forces of race-hate find strength in verdicts that favor whites to the detriment of blacks?

Will any combination of verdicts appease both those who demand social justice and those who cry out for the isolated splendor of uninfluenced due process?

The trial of the policemen whose brutality was captured on videotape is already in motion with the current selection of a jury.

The trial of three men whose brutality was also captured on videotape will begin March 15.

Rodney King and Reginald Denny have, in their way, become metaphors for all the fear and violence that haunt Los Angeles.

So there is poetic justice, if not civic serenity, in the likelihood that the trials their victimizations spawned will soon intersect.

In the words of a psychologist friend, “The whole thing is making us crazy.”

He was talking as much about the people in Beverly Hills as those in South-Central; as much about movie producers as day laborers; as much about cops as cop-haters.

“We’re all living on the edge,” he said. “Not knowing stokes our deepest fears. And we wonder, if it happens again, will the violence this time reach us? “

I’m getting a little crazy myself listening to those who predict with dire certainty that if a federal jury acquits the policemen all hell will break loose.

A poll shows that 75% of us agree with the anticipation of chaos. Gun sales are up in the suburbs. Fear is a rusty taste in our mouths.

A reader was only half kidding when he wrote in wry concern, “If the four white cops are convicted and the three black guys acquitted, will there be rioting in Malibu?”

Worried anticipation is why Willie Williams busies himself assuring us the riot squads are ready this time and won’t sit around hoping it’ll all go away.

Anticipation is why newsrooms across the city have battle plans they didn’t have before on how to cover civil unrest.

The fires of last spring still smolder in our memories. Images of flames light our nights. Scenes of daytime looting test our incredulity. Was the whole thing a nightmare? Did it really happen?

I was there part of the time, feeling the heat on my face, watching the looters, withering under glances of hostility directed toward anyone in the media.

But a mood of surrealism also prevailed the way it did as we watched the Gulf War on television with its smart-bomb, video-game qualities.

Detachment offers a hedge against reality. There will be no such buffer if South-Central explodes again.

I wouldn’t want to be a juror in either trial. They’ll be dealing with elements greater than anything they’ll see or hear in the courtroom. And whatever they decide is going to be wrong.

On the basis of the videotapes, all seven defendants ought to be convicted. Their brutality is terrifying. Nothing mitigates it.

But lawyers are going to argue that the tape wasn’t running when Rodney King, unarmed and alone, was threatening the cops’ lives.

Lawyers are going to argue that Reginald Denny, alone and unarmed, tempted response by shouting racial epithets in the midst of an angry black mob.

So the cops had to beat King. And the three men had to beat Denny.

Both arguments are utter damned nonsense. But the first somehow worked in the Simi Valley trial of the cops. And the second has credence among many of those who view the Reginald Denny beating as right and proper.

So we can forget the videotapes. What we saw were shadows on the ceiling, somehow not pertinent to the clinical arena of a courtroom.

A lawyer said it to me best, once more with dark humor: “No sense crying over spilt blood.”

We wait and wonder in the dark night of a city’s grim anticipation whether decisions reached before juries will find their ultimate response before gun barrels.

And whether or not the monsters in the shadows will emerge from fantasy to reality and devour us all.