For Some a Melee, for Others Just a Party

Some Laker fans saw hardly any police. Some saw too many. One saw the police chief standing around in civilian clothes.

Where some saw a riot, others saw drunken revelers dancing around bonfires.

“I work in the music business, I’ve spent time on the road with groups like Metallica,” said Ron Laffitte, vice president of A&R; for Capitol Records. He said the outside of Staples Center looked like a giant mosh pit. “I was standing by the front door when they had the fires going on. I said, ‘Oh, cool, looks like a Rage Against the Machine show.’ ”

Those lucky enough, and affluent enough, to get a seat inside Staples Center for the sixth game of the NBA finals had to venture, at some point, into the postgame frenzy. To TV viewers, it looked less like euphoria than chaos.

Screenwriter Jonathan Fernandez said he first faced the crush of people inside Staples Center. Then, there was the throng outside. “I said to my friend, ‘This is really strange. There are no police.’ ”

Fernandez walked out of the Staples Center on 11th Street. When he turned the corner onto Figueroa Street, he saw eight Los Angeles police officers standing in a line--the only cops he saw all night.

As he made his way to Olympic, he saw a crazed mob jumping up and down on cars. He called 911 from his cell phone. “I said, ‘Look, you’ve got people rioting on Olympic and Figueroa, and there are no police.’ They said, ‘OK, sir, we’re going to get there.’ ” But as Fernandez kept walking down Olympic toward his car on Grand, he saw more people jumping on cars. A taxi driver sat helpless as people pounced on his taxi. Still no police. He called 911 again. “Sir, you have already called,” the emergency operator said.

Fernandez made it safely to his car.

“Having lived in L.A., I know how to deal with riots and crowds,” he said. “You want to become part of the mob. You just sort of march along and say ‘Go, Lakers!’ You want to be low profile, you don’t want to make eye contact.”

Actress Dyan Cannon, a Laker fan often seen on TV at games, stayed inside Staples after the Laker win to visit with players. She and a girlfriend finally left in a private car with a hired driver--”We park downstairs where the Lakers park.”

“All we could see were screaming fans,” she said. The crowd, as she passed, was more jubilant than malevolent. “I was yelling out the window and we were high-fiving with people on the street,” she said. “It was fine.”

But Cannon says some friends of hers had a rougher time. One got knocked down and another, she said, got shot at. None was injured.

“I’m sorry every one of those people wasn’t dealt with,” she said of the vandals. “They’re going to have to live with themselves. This shouldn’t overshadow [the Lakers’] victory. Our guys brought home a ring.”

Many of the fans who saw the game tarried after the final buzzer to watch the presentation of the NBA championship trophy and the MVP award. They chatted with equally giddy fans and waited in long lines to buy Laker T-shirts. Once outside, many milled around with friends and strangers celebrating.

“We were kind of mingling, high-fiving people we didn’t know. People were really in a jubilant mood,” said Joel Amsterdam, a vice president at Elektra Records.

“I don’t know what changed and made it weird. When I got home and watched television, they really made it seem much worse than it was. They’d show a close-up of a small bonfire and say, ‘L.A. burning, film at 11.’ ”

Others couldn’t resist making fun of the image of madness portrayed on TV news.

“I’m just leaving the Staples Center now,” said Marty Adelstein, a partner in the talent agency Endeavor, late Tuesday afternoon. “I’ve been here all night.”

Adelstein said he, in fact, had no problems leaving the arena--though he and the thousands of fans inside Staples Center were stunned to learn shortly before the end of the game that there were thousands more outside. A televised image of the outdoor crowd flashed on video screens in Staples during the fourth quarter.

“I was thinking, ‘Man, it’s going to be one heck of a welcoming party when we leave,’ ” said Bud Treece, executive director of the Assn. for Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriffs, who was at the game.

Fans had differing views of the LAPD in action. Orthopedic surgeon Don Sanders walked out of Staples Center at 11th and Figueroa and ran into LAPD Chief Bernard Parks.

“Chief Parks was standing right at a blockaded entrance,” Sanders said. “He was there, his wife was there. He was kind of observing.” He recalled that Parks was not in uniform and was standing near a black car. Sanders, who had chatted with Parks at a previous Laker game, waved at him and Parks waved back.

Laffitte, the music executive, bought T-shirts and made his way out of Staples Center, heading north up Figueroa. He said he was met by a line of 40 police officers in riot gear advancing south toward him and his girlfriend, even though there were only a handful of people on the street at the time.

“And we were not threatening,” said Laffitte. “Me with my three bags of T-shirts and my skinny girlfriend.”

Laffitte thinks police mishandled the revelry.

“I think if they had hired concert security instead of police, they would have had a much more peaceful solution,” said Laffitte. “I’ve seen a lot more radical responses at heavy metal concerts than I saw at Staples Center.”

People who stayed late had to decide whether to stay even later to avoid the pandemonium outside. “As soon as they lock this place down, I thought, ‘We’re going to be in here forever,’ ” said Jack Burditt. “As soon as I got outside, I thought, ‘Uh oh.’ ”

Stuck in traffic gridlock, he watched as fans hopped on cars, making their way across the street atop hoods and trunks. One fan grabbed a Laker banner off a slowly passing car, he said. The driver got out to argue for the banner’s return. “I was with my daughter, she’s 20. She was freaked,” said Burditt, a TV producer.

“Mostly people had their windows open and were shaking hands with people outside,” said attorney Michael Gendler, who also spent half an hour inching his way two blocks to the freeway. “The people I saw were mostly young and mostly wild with enthusiasm, dancing around and drinking.”

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Times staff writer Beth Shuster contributed to this story.