Though it’s been 25 years since the Los Angeles riots, or L.A. uprising, as many prefer to call it, questions still remain about what happened.
Over the next two weeks, networks will be airing at least five documentaries and a one-man show that attempt to provide perspective on the traumatic event.
On the afternoon of April 29, 1992, Los Angeles was on edge as people waited for the verdicts in the trial of the four white Los Angeles Police Department officers accused in the beating of Rodney King, a black motorist. The beating had been caught on tape and made national headlines.
Tensions were already high in the African-American community after the shooting death of Latasha Harlins the year before inside a Los Angeles liquor store. The 15-year-old girl had been shot in the back of the head after a dispute with the grocer. Though a jury recommended a maximum 16-year prison sentence for the shooter, who was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, the judge gave the teen’s killer a suspended sentence with a small fine, five years of probation and 400 hours of community service.
There had been outrage over the light sentence, which only confirmed the perception of some that the judicial system was rigged when it came to African Americans. That those involved were of different races — the judge was white, the victim black and the killer a South Korean immigrant — added to the stew of tensions.
So when the acquittal of the four LAPD officers came down, it was perhaps no surprise that violence erupted — except perhaps to LAPD Chief Daryl Gates, who infamously was attending a Brentwood fundraiser as the city went up in flames. No one, however, seemed to have predicted how events would spiral out of control.
But a point that three of these documentaries argue in strong terms is that the issues — involving racial divides and policing practices, to name just two — that helped ignite the protests started long before that day in 1992. And we continue to struggle with these issues.
Showtime, A&E documentaries hit home
Toward the end of Showtime’s “Burn Motherf***er, Burn!,” which begins airing Friday, there is a telling moment when filmmaker Sacha Jenkins (“Fresh Dressed”) is interviewing gang expert Alex Alonso. During the conversation, the respected university professor calls his 12-year-old son over.
“What do you do if we’re driving and stopped by the police?” Alonso, who is black, asks his son, who explains he must put his hands on the dashboard to reduce the risk of being shot.
“That was totally spontaneous,” says the filmmaker. “I couldn’t have planned it. It was a very powerful moment in the film.”
Both Jenkins’ film and John Singleton’s “L.A. Burning: The Riots 25 Years Later” begin with recent police shootings of African Americans.
For Singleton, a South Los Angeles native, his documentary (Tuesday on A&E) is a way to re-examine the events that he found himself caught up in during the riots. He was 24 at the time, barely out of USC Film School, but he already had two Oscar nominations for his film “Boyz n the Hood.”
The day the verdicts were being announced in Simi Valley, the filmmaker happened to be in the area shooting his next movie. He rushed to the courthouse and, like many, was shocked when the all-white jury let the officers walk away without even a slap on the wrist despite what had been witnessed on the tape.
“By having this verdict, what these people have done, they’ve lit the fuse to a bomb,” Singleton angrily told news organizations covering the trial outside the courthouse. In the documentary, he admits he was asked to refrain from saying something more inflammatory.
Outside the courtroom where supporters of the police and those supporting justice for King had gathered, tempers quickly flared, but that ruckus would seem almost tame compared to what followed. The five days of violence would leave at least 58 people dead and more than 2,000 injured, and cost more than $1 billion in property damage.
Ridley’s doc in theaters and ABC
John Ridley takes a measured approach in his documentary “Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992,” which opens in theaters on Friday and then will air April 28 on ABC. The Oscar-winning screenwriter of “12 Years a Slave” spends a fair amount of the film examining factors that led up to the civil unrest.
In interviews with a wide range of experts and eyewitnesses, he looks not only at the dynamics of black and white relations, but also with the Hispanic, Korean, and Japanese-American communities. Ridley spends less time on the actual uprising than some other documentaries, and perhaps more time on the immediate aftermath than any other.
National Geographic’s documentary “LA 92” approaches the events in a unique way by telling the story entirely through news footage and amateur video without a narrator or interviews.
“Because our film is all archive driven, we didn’t find our characters. They sort of found us,” explains producer and Emmy winner Jonathan Chinn (“American High”). “You know, we wanted to tell the story of the events in ’92 in Los Angeles through the eyes of the people that lived through it, without having them talk about it now.”
Smithsonian Channel’s “The Lost Tapes” documentary uses a similar method, including news footage, home videos, and photographs to reveal the story. It also includes never-before-heard Los Angeles Fire Department dispatch calls, in which firefighters desperately plead for police backup as they were being fired upon.
Meanwhile, Spike Lee filmed actor Roger Guenveur Smith’s one-man show, “Rodney King.” It will be available on Netflix on April 28. It was King’s plaintive plea — “Can’t we all just get along?” — that helped change the energy of the riots from violence to people helping one another as if waking from a bad dream.
It’s clear from the documentaries that the civil unrest left victims of all colors. Many involved were swept up in the turmoil — for good or ill — and often their split-second decisions left a lasting mark on the city and its people.
“If you look at what’s happening now, it’s been going on for years and years and until certain things change systematically we will continue to have the same problems,” says Jenkins.
He hopes his film reminds people of how much young people are damaged by continuing racial divisiveness.
“Imagine a film where a white father has his cute, 12-year-old son tell the world about how he must act around the police to be safe?” he asks. “People would be outraged. Hopefully, my film sheds some light on that and bring some sensitivity.”
