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3 Visions For The Future Of Police In South LA

A protester holds a sign with George Floyd's face during a march Monday in Los Angeles to honor black lives lost to police brutality.
Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
A protester holds a sign with George Floyd's face during a march Monday in Los Angeles to honor black lives lost to police brutality.

In the weeks since police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, people around the U.S. and the world have flooded the streets in rage and protest against police violence toward African Americans.

There's particular resonance for Los Angeles, which has a long and familiar history with police brutality and civil unrest. For those who lived through earlier convulsions — the Watts rebellion of 1965 and the Rodney King riots of 1992 — today's events surface intense personal memories.

NPR's All Things Considered spoke with three African American men who bore witness to one or both of those events. Over the decades, each of them has thought seriously about how policing in Los Angeles should change — and each has arrived at a different answer.

Get rid of the guns

Bruce Patton was 13 when the unrest started in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1965. "In essence, we just knew it was a disturbance, and that some black people finally had enough. And like a pressure cooker, it exploded," Patton says.
/ Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
Bruce Patton was 13 when the unrest started in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1965. "In essence, we just knew it was a disturbance, and that some black people finally had enough. And like a pressure cooker, it exploded," Patton says.

Bruce Patton was born in South Los Angeles in 1952 — when the area was known as South Central, the name he still prefers — and has lived there his whole life.

The Los Angeles City Council officially changed the neighborhood's name in 2003 to avoid negative associations that outsiders had with the area. Patton says changing the name doesn't erase the neighborhood's problems or history.

"It needs to be understood that South Central has not been forgotten. The treatment we received in South Central has not been forgotten," he says.

One of his earliest memories of the troubled relationship between police and African Americans unfolded in August 1965 in the nearby Watts neighborhood. A California Highway Patrol officer stopped a black driver, a crowd gathered, a fight ensued, and the unrest ignited existing tensions between police and the black community.

Patton remembers mowing the lawn at his grandmother's house and seeing smoke in the distance.

Demonstrators push against a police car in the Watts district of Los Angeles on Aug. 12, 1965. The Watts riots raged for most of a week. When the smoke cleared, 34 people were dead, more than 1,000 were injured and hundreds of buildings were destroyed.
/ AP
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AP
Demonstrators push against a police car in the Watts district of Los Angeles on Aug. 12, 1965. The Watts riots raged for most of a week. When the smoke cleared, 34 people were dead, more than 1,000 were injured and hundreds of buildings were destroyed.

"We, of course, did not know what it was," the 68-year-old says. "In essence, we just knew it was a disturbance, and that some black people finally had enough. And like a pressure cooker, it exploded."

Patton was 13 at the time. He didn't understand enough to be scared. What he did pick up on was something very different from fear.

"Deep down inside, it was a joy that black people would stand up and have the audacity to stand up and push back," he says. "Fighting back. That was the joy."

The problem, he says, is that his community has been fighting back against an issue that never seems to change: police violence against black people. And at least for Patton, the solution to that problem is clear: He advocates taking all guns away from the police.

Armed National Guardsmen march toward smoke of street fires during the Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1965. The unrest was initiated when a California Highway Patrol officer stopped a black driver.
Hulton Archive / Getty Images
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Getty Images
Armed National Guardsmen march toward smoke of street fires during the Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1965. The unrest was initiated when a California Highway Patrol officer stopped a black driver.

"There's no need for policemen to have a gun. That is what gives them the propensity to kill you," he says. "It's their approach to the people in these communities that makes police officers fear for their lives."

Patton says that's because these police officers go into neighborhoods such as his without asking the right question.

"His mind should be as a doctor is," Patton says. "He should say, how can I help that person?"

He says police in his community don't think about their work this way.

Get rid of the police

Gilbert Johnson is a community organizer in South Los Angeles. He was 8 when the Rodney King riots began in 1992.
/ Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
Gilbert Johnson is a community organizer in South Los Angeles. He was 8 when the Rodney King riots began in 1992.

Twenty-seven years after Watts burned, unrest spilled through the streets of South Los Angeles again — when four police officers were acquitted in the videotaped beating of a black man named Rodney King.

Riots erupted on April 29, 1992 — at the corner of Normandie and Florence avenues, right in front of a liquor store called Tom's.

"It was mayhem. It was crazy. It was like world war or something going on," Gilbert Johnson remembers.

Johnson, 36, is from a different part of South Los Angeles, where he was once part of a gang. For a long time, his gang affiliation meant he couldn't stand at this particular corner because, he says, "there was a very good chance I could get killed or beat up severely."

Ground zero of the Los Angeles unrest in 1992 was the corner of Normandie and Florence avenues, right in front of a liquor store called Tom's.
/ Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
Ground zero of the Los Angeles unrest in 1992 was the corner of Normandie and Florence avenues, right in front of a liquor store called Tom's.

He was 8 during the Rodney King riots. He says there was so much anger in his house at the time that when the looting started, his brother and uncle got in on it.

"Everybody was doing it," Johnson says. "They got out there and capitalized off the situation, too."

He remembers the things they stole: guns, appliances, TVs, food, clothes.

"It was a pretty good moment, as far as if you look at it from that standpoint, because we were all poor," he says. "You know, we used to get free food, stand in lines to get food, recycle cans to get food, food stamps."

People walk in the parking lot of the ABC Market after it was looted in Los Angeles on April 30, 1992.
Paul Sakuma / AP
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AP
People walk in the parking lot of the ABC Market after it was looted in Los Angeles on April 30, 1992.

He says it didn't feel wrong, because the system had already wronged them so many times.

Johnson ended up spending most of his young adult life in and out of prison. He says cycling through the criminal justice system only reinforced his view against law enforcement.

Today, he's a community organizer, leading youth and gang intervention programs.

Johnson (center) helps put on a march Monday to honor black lives lost to police brutality. The group displayed caskets in memory of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in downtown Los Angeles.
/ Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
Johnson (center) helps put on a march Monday to honor black lives lost to police brutality. The group displayed caskets in memory of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in downtown Los Angeles.

But when it comes to policing, he calls himself an abolitionist — as in, abolish the police.

"I've talked to hundreds and hundreds of people across South LA, and they do not want more law enforcement," he says.

He supports alternatives such as gang intervention, mental health services and neighborhood watches where community members "could be first responders."

When asked if he thinks his community can ever have a workable relationship with the police, his answer is blunt: "No, I don't."

A Los Angeles police officer points his gun on seven men near the University of California, Los Angeles on April 30, 1992. The men were detained and later released. Store windows were broken and merchandise was stolen in the upscale college community.
Douglas C. Pizac / AP
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AP
A Los Angeles police officer points his gun on seven men near the University of California, Los Angeles on April 30, 1992. The men were detained and later released. Store windows were broken and merchandise was stolen in the upscale college community.

Get to know the communities

Marqueece Harris-Dawson completely understands perspectives such as Johnson's. "I've been in the place that you're at," he says.

But he doesn't agree.

"I think there's obviously a use for LAPD and other police departments," says Harris-Dawson, a City Council member who is also a native of South Los Angeles.

Los Angeles City Council member Marqueece Harris-Dawson is a native of South Los Angeles. He says he wants to see the police focus on fewer things.
Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Los Angeles City Council member Marqueece Harris-Dawson is a native of South Los Angeles. He says he wants to see the police focus on fewer things.

While Patton wants all guns gone from the Los Angeles police, and Johnson wants to see the police completely gone — Harris-Dawson, 51, says he just wants to see the police focus on fewer things.

"We ask police departments to solve homelessness. We ask them to solve truancy. We ask them to solve blight, traffic problems, pedestrian safety," he says. "We ask them to solve a whole bunch of problems that they oftentimes are not the appropriate set of individuals to do."

And while the Los Angeles Police Department is getting overloaded with all these tasks, Harris-Dawson says he thinks the city is also overloading it with money that could be spent on schools or health care.

Protesters face police in Hollywood on June 2 during a demonstration over Floyd's death.
Kyle Grillot / AFP via Getty Images
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AFP via Getty Images
Protesters face police in Hollywood on June 2 during a demonstration over Floyd's death.

When it comes to policing, he says initiatives such as the Community Safety Partnership are the best way forward. The program, which began in 2011 in the Watts neighborhood, embeds Los Angeles police officers — the same ones, for several years — within a neighborhood. They watch kids grow up there. They get to know the community.

Harris-Dawson says the Harvard Park neighborhood in South Los Angeles had one of the highest rates of violent crime in the city before the program was implemented there in 2017, including six murders that year.

The Community Safety Partnership program assigned 10 officers to the area. Since then, the council member says, there have been no reports of violent crime or homicides in the neighborhood. It's a remarkable decline in crime — and, more important, he says, increase in trust.

"We have a chance to really organize and galvanize all this momentum and push it in a positive way," Johnson, the community organizer, says.
/ Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
"We have a chance to really organize and galvanize all this momentum and push it in a positive way," Johnson, the community organizer, says.

Such programs measure successful policing differently, Harris-Dawson says.

"One of the big differences is oftentimes officers are evaluated by how many citations they give away or how many people they arrest," he says. "Here we say, how many interactions did you have? How many church services did you attend? How many events with young people did you participate in?"

Ultimately, Harris-Dawson says, the more police officers get to know the people they're policing, the less likely people will resort to violence.

In the past, Patton and Johnson say they have seen little improve between police and their community. But the current wave of protests does offer them hope.

Patton advocates taking all guns away from the police. While he says he has seen little improvement between the police interactions with his community, the current protests give him hope.
/ Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
Patton advocates taking all guns away from the police. While he says he has seen little improvement between the police interactions with his community, the current protests give him hope.

There are more people listening and more communities are rising up, they say.

"We have a chance to really organize and galvanize all this momentum and push it in a positive way," says Johnson, the community organizer. "A lot more people are out there protesting because they want change. So, yes, I see this as a moment of hope amidst all the chaos."

Sami Yenigun edited the audio story. Maureen Pao edited the Web story.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Ailsa Chang is an award-winning journalist who hosts All Things Considered along with Ari Shapiro, Audie Cornish, and Mary Louise Kelly. She landed in public radio after practicing law for a few years.
Jonaki Mehta is a producer for All Things Considered. Before ATC, she worked at Neon Hum Media where she produced a documentary series and talk show. Prior to that, Mehta was a producer at Member station KPCC and director/associate producer at Marketplace Morning Report, where she helped shape the morning's business news.