Let the Games Begin

The other day, on the sidewalk below my office, a follower of Louis Farrakhan was selling copies of the Nation of Islam newspaper, the Final Call. Even from the second-floor window, the big type of the headline was easy to read:

Will L.A. explode again?

Well, yes, that is the question, isn’t it? The federal rendition of the Rodney G. King beating trial is nearly complete. The jury could begin deliberations as early as Sunday. Most people I know seem resigned to acquittals--why not brace for the worst?--and have moved on to the question of how the city will react. You hear it discussed in City Hall and in grocery store checkout lines, at the carwash, on radio talk shows, everywhere, every day.

“It’s going to happen,” a Sun Valley business executive warns listeners of KFWB.

“Everything’s mellow,” gushes a boozy panhandler working the corner of Florence and Normandie, the infamous ground zero of last spring’s activities.

“There’s been a lot of street talk,” an FBI agent tells The Times.

“This city will not respond violently,” Tom Bradley says at a televised news conference, a conference he nevertheless called to discuss riot preparations--”just in case.”

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Remember the buildup for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics? Back then, as I recall, this town was filled with dark talk of terrorist attacks and traffic jams. We fretted in print about Black Friday and various nationalist fronts. It became something of a bad joke, all the doomsday hyperbole, and, of course, the punch line was that we scared away traffic and the Soviets and everyone had a swell time.

This, too, is a rich time for edgy rumors. By now, everybody has heard one. Gangs are said to be training in military tactics. Police uniforms and license plates have been stolen, weapons stockpiled. Street cops have told citizens to lock and load. The police are spoiling for a rematch. Communist agitators are recruiting in the projects.

The scenarios have become more and more outlandish, and more and more laughable--suggesting a level of organization and devotion to duty never before seen on the part of street gangs or, for that matter, official Los Angeles. And while Mayor Bradley warns of “self-fulfilling prophecies based solely on speculation,” my hunch is that, as with the Olympics, the current riot prophecies instead might work to unfulfill themselves. Certainly all the talk about firepower--my God! This time the National Guard has found its bullets!--will make those less committed to hard-core social revolution think twice. No room for opportunists hoarding Pampers and other amateurs this time. Also, as with all hyperbole, the incessant riot talk has become, frankly, a bit tedious--and tedium is hardly an ingredient in the recipe for urban unrest.

Nonetheless, Bradley and Police Chief Willie Williams summoned the press Tuesday to perform some last-hour rumor control. They stood side by side, two broad-shouldered men in blue suits, projecting an image of readiness and restraint. Williams spoke firmly of “unified management teams” and “unusual occurrence training” and “less-than-lethal tools” like rubber bullets, and he scolded reporters whose questions assumed there would even be a riot. Bradley spoke of “peace and harmony.”

The reporters, at least those who work for television, seemed interested in but one facet of the city’s preparations: Would their helicopters be allowed to swoop low over the action this time? After all, what would a riot be without live footage of the ceremonial first mugging?

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The betting line on the riot question now seems to be shifting. Rumors or no rumors, a lot of people I talked to this week seem to be coming around at last to a belief that it won’t happen, that what occurred last spring was an eruption of anger, surprise and circumstance that simply cannot be duplicated this time, no matter what the trial outcome.

Certainly, expectations are lowered. Everyone now knows the videotape is not the legal smoking gun we once figured it to be. Everyone also knows that, for all the sweet noise political candidates made at their photo ops last spring, the actual payoff has been rather dismal, and so where is the gain in civil unrest? And finally, everyone knows that, unlike his predecessor, Willie Williams is not likely to be attending a cocktail party this time when the deal comes down. It looks like the cops will be ready; even rubber bullets can smart.

Logic, then, would suggest we’re in for a big non-event. Unfortunately, the burning down of one’s own city hardly seems an exercise based in logic. Mass psychology comes into play, along with bad luck, timing, maybe even the weather. So, who knows? Myself, I’m praying for rain on Verdict Day. Just in case.