COLUMN ONE : Weary L.A. Looks to Its Future : The last three years changed the city forever, residents say. Some see hope, but others are wary. ‘I don’t think it will ever be over,” one woman says. ‘A Pandora’s box has been opened.’

Los Angeles’ seemingly endless cycle of trial, verdict and upheaval reached a milestone Tuesday. Damian Monroe Williams headed to prison and Henry Keith Watson headed home.

Their sentencing provides an ending of sorts--a symbolic step in the recovery of Los Angeles as it finally shifts its attention from the violence that has dominated its recent past.

The last three years--starting with the beating of Rodney G. King by Los Angeles police officers and culminating in the sentencing of the men who beat Reginald O. Denny--have remade much of Los Angeles. A new mayor, backed by a new coalition, armed with a mandate for change and fortified by a stern commitment to law enforcement, sits in City Hall. Nearly a third of the City Council is in its first term. A new police chief commands the embattled LAPD while the old chief anchors a radio talk show.

But beneath the historic changes in the city’s leading institutions, the past 33 months have taken a quiet toll on residents and shopkeepers, doctors and cops.

And they say the scars will not soon heal.

“The (Denny) trial became sort of a sinkhole for people’s emotions and hatreds and fears and prejudices,” said Lou Negrete, a Chicano studies professor at Cal State L.A. and a leader of the grass-roots Eastside community group, United Neighborhoods Organization. “I think we’re in for a big disappointment if we think that race relations have been solved by the closing of this trial.”

‘A SENSE OF SADNESS’ / A Deepening Feeling of L.A.’s Divisions

“I think there’s a sense of sadness in this town,” said actress Deborah Hedwall, who moved to Los Angeles from New York in 1992. “I think it’s a result of the accumulation of a tremendous amount of turbulence. . . . I’m constantly running into people who are deeply concerned about the ennui, the sadness, the turmoil that people are in.”

Louis Simpson, a psychiatrist at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center who treats teen-agers, said the trials and the riots have not brought peace to Los Angeles, but rather have deepened its sense of division.

“Our society in Los Angeles is being divided into the haves and have-nots,” Simpson said. “There are a large number of individuals with no prospect for hope who live on the margins.”

As they reflect on the trauma of the past three years, many cite increased racial tension as the most devastating consequence. Still, some discern a new openness about race, and they see that as at least small evidence that some good may come of all this.

“I think if there’s anything positive to be said about it, it is that people now talk about things they didn’t before,” said Warren Olney, the host of KCRW-FM’s weekday call-in show “Which Way, L.A.?” which was created in response to the riots. “I think it’s positive that people are taking a more realistic look at the place they live in.”

Carlos Vaquerano, who works at the Central American Resource Center near MacArthur Park, credits the willingness to talk with helping race relations. “At least among the leadership, there is more dialogue than before,” he said. “Before the riots, we didn’t even talk among Latinos.”

But, Vaquerano added, “in the neighborhoods, there are still tensions.”

And there still is widespread agreement that destructive racism exists in virtually every corner of Los Angeles. That anxiety is especially strong in the Korean American community, which absorbed much of the damage in the riots and where many residents felt abandoned by police. The aftermath of the unrest brought new attention to the difficulties faced by Korean Americans in Los Angeles, but it also prompted deep soul-searching.

“As an immigrant, I never experienced the depths of racism in America until the riots,” said Kapson Yim Lee, editor of the Korea Times English edition in Los Angeles. “The riots and their aftermaths have been a lesson in American racism. As long as white Americans don’t get involved actively to be part of the multiethnicity of this community, talk of diversity and multiculturalism is hollow. When I think of my son’s future in this society, I feel sad.”

If race relations have become Los Angeles’ most-explored topic, a close second has been the conduct of the judicial system. The riots erupted in April, 1992, after what many considered a jury’s unjust not guilty verdicts for four Los Angeles police officers accused in the beating of King.

Conversely, many were overcome with joy when a federal jury convicted two of the officers on civil rights charges a year later. Most residents polled by The Times--particularly white residents--believed the verdicts in the recently concluded Denny case were too lenient.

Such reactions have divided public opinion about how well the judicial system has served Los Angeles. Some who once held out hope that the courts could resolve society’s most troubling ills have scaled back expectations; others hope the trials have shown that even though not all verdicts can please all segments of society, some justice can be won in a courtroom.

“At least in our case, I would hope that members of the community who believe that the justice system doesn’t work for them saw that it can,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Steven D. Clymer, one of the lead prosecutors in the federal civil rights case. “I guess I am optimistic about that.”

Michael Dear, a USC professor of geography and co-author of “Malign Neglect,” a book about homelessness in Los Angeles, said the trials have shown that justice is neither blind nor always fair. Rather, Dear said, they have proven that justice reflects the society in which it works.

“The greatest folly that we’ve ever perpetuated is to hold the justice system up above, immune,” Dear said. “It’s right down here with us.”

LAPD BLUES / Image Plunges, Then Begins Slow Rebound

Nowhere has the past three years forged more pronounced changes than at Los Angeles police headquarters. Parker Center came under siege within minutes of the first broadcast of the videotape of the King beating in March, 1991. The department’s standing with the public plummeted overnight, and the LAPD, once considered America’s finest police department, was accused of sanctioning violence against the citizens its officers are sworn to protect.

A year later, the riots that erupted after the verdicts in Simi Valley brought the LAPD under attack again: This time, the department was pilloried for its confused and ineffective response to the unrest.

Today, public confidence in the agency is on the rebound, propelled in part by the popularity of second-year Chief Willie L. Williams.

But rank-and-file officers still feel the sting. Two of their colleagues are in federal prison. And while by no means all officers believe the King beating was justified, many say the reverberations of that case echo through Los Angeles. Many say they are reluctant to confront suspects and hesitate to do aggressive police work.

“None of us will ever forget that Stacey Koon and Larry Powell are in federal prison,” said Detective Jeri Weinstein. “That could be me in there. I’ll think about that for the rest of my career.”

Driven into retirement by the fallout from the King beating and the riots, former Chief Daryl F. Gates hosts a radio talk show, where he rails against those he believes are responsible for driving the LAPD downhill.

Others, such as Jesse Brewer, a former LAPD deputy chief and ex-police commissioner, say they believe the department has turned the corner, that finally, after years of turmoil, the police and the community are prepared to work together.

On the street, officers are less sure the changes have been for the good. Some hail ongoing attempts to reform the department and welcome Williams. Others pine for the days of Gates and bemoan the criticism the department has endured. All agree it has been a terrible and tumultuous time to be a cop in Los Angeles.

“When I first became a police officer, I was like a wild stallion out there. You weren’t going to break me,” said Detective Reggie Jackson, a 14-year veteran. “There was a time when I would talk to people and they would accept my authority and respect my position. After all this, though, I talk to people, and I wonder: ‘What happened to the respect I used to enjoy in the community?’ ”

NEW POLITICAL LANDSCAPE / One-Third of Council, Bradley Are Replaced

The odyssey from the King beating to the riots to the trials of those who attacked Denny and others at the Florence and Normandie avenues fed a weary and frustrated public’s appetite for new political leadership.

First came Williams, the outsider police chief, followed by the election of Mayor Richard Riordan and four new council members in June. Although it all cannot be attributed to the tumult of the King controversy and the riots, the political overhaul has marked one of the most sweeping changes of City Hall leadership.

One of the clearer--some say hopeful--signs of change has been the image of the new white mayor working hand-in-hand with the African American police chief--a sharp contrast to the bitter, often petty, rivalry of their predecessors.

Particularly striking and powerful, analysts say, was the side-by-side television appearance of Riordan and Williams in the wake of the Denny trial verdicts, when both appealed for calm.

“(That) really pinpointed the change,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, senior associate at the Center for Politics and Policy at Claremont Graduate School. “The mayor and police chief together, on television, talking to the city and looking . . . as though they had been communicating with one another. They (were) visible--and visible together--in a way that (former mayor Tom) Bradley and Gates were not.”

Until he retired last summer, Bradley had won five terms as mayor by cobbling together a constituency of black, Latino and liberal-to-moderate white voters. Heightened fear of crime--which many observers attribute in part to the riots--shattered that alliance, uniting many white moderates and Latinos, and leaving most blacks and liberals on the losing end of a mayor’s race for the first time in decades.

Riordan, who offered the clearest anti-crime message, easily defeated former Councilman Michael Woo, winning lopsided vote totals in heavily white, suburban areas of the Westside and San Fernando Valley, where, according to surveys, concerns about crime tend to be the greatest.

Still, city officials and political analysts say it is far too soon to know if the new leadership at City Hall can reduce crime, let alone effectively address the poverty and alienation that contributed to the riots.

“I, at least, am feeling people are trying to work much more with each other. There’s more more interest in collaborating,” Councilwoman Ruth Galanter said.

‘A NEVER-ENDING TRIAL’ / Little Help With Underlying Problems

Even among those who agree with the verdicts in one or more of the recent trials, there remains deep concern about where Los Angeles is headed.

Today, more than 18 months after the riots, roughly 350 empty lots sit where buildings once stood. Recession has outlived the beatings, the riots and the trials, and many residents desperately need work. For them, the rhetoric of change is painfully hollow.

“I’ve seen a lot of politicking and promises of jobs,” said Carl Vrooman, a retired insurance company employee. “The unemployment is still going on. . . . The politicians are guilty of benign neglect. It’s not that they are doing harm. They’re not doing anything.”

Disaster relief and emergency loans helped some people who lost homes and businesses. But little help has trickled in to deal with the underlying problems. The state and federal governments have targeted riot recovery funds of $35 million to $55 million for training and business development in impoverished neighborhoods.

About $585 million in private investment pledges have gone to the inner city, according to RLA, the nonprofit organization charged with revitalizing neglected neighborhoods. Yet, except for expansion programs announced by three supermarket firms, only about 10% of the investment is slated for new businesses or jobs.

Until more money begins to find its way to those who need it and the reminders of the riots begin to recede, few people will be ready to close the door on the city’s battle to regain its equilibrium.

“In the sense these (trials and verdicts) were emotional markers in people’s heads, having them settled may remove some of the intense emotionality over the city,” said Kathy Garmezy, executive director of the nonprofit Hollywood Policy Center, an educational and media advocacy organization based in the entertainment community. “But the idea that a door is shut, that the city can breathe a collective sigh of relief, I think that’s not true.”

Indeed, it sometimes seems as if the ordeal will last forever. Still to come are the trials of King’s lawsuit against the city and of defendants in a few remaining riot cases.

“I don’t think it will ever be over in L.A.,” said Gloria Romero, a visiting associate professor of Chicano studies at Loyola Marymount University and a member of the Hispanic Advisory Council to the LAPD. “A Pandora’s box has been opened, and what has come out is going to play itself out in a very antagonistic fashion between white and non-whites, between policing and policed communities.”

The problems are profound and troubling, she said. And, as she and others insist, they will never be resolved by a single case or a single sentence.

Romero said: “It’s a never-ending trial.”

Times staff writers Rich Connell, Paul Feldman, Carla Hall, K. Connie Kang, John L. Mitchell, Richard Simon and Amy Wallace contributed to this story.