LA Riots... 10 years later.

I remember I had fallen alseep with the television on only to be woken up by the telephone around 2am or so. It was my mother-in-law letting us know about the birth of our niece Berklee.

During the phone call, I heard something on the TV about the Pepperdine campus being on fire. At the time, I had applied to the MBA program at Pepperdine and was seriously considering moving out to Los Angeles and attending the program. Even though it was eventually revealed that it wasn't the current Pepperdine campus that was on fire (or at least not the main campus in Malibu where the MBA program is), I pretty much decided that night that I wouldn't be traveling out to the coast to go to grad school (went to Baylor instead for a graduate career that lasted all of a semester before I quit the program).

I still have the Amarillo newspaper from the next morning, as well as a copy of Newsweek and of US News and World Report dedicated to the riots.

 

I can still remember the white truck driver who got stuck at an intersection, pulled out of his truck and beaten to a pulp with a concrete block and kicked repeatedly...all captured on video by a news chopper. I think his name is Reginald Denny. It sucks that I still even know his name.


os

 

I just found this:

Other beating victim Denny lives quietly in Arizona

By LEON DROUIN KEITH Associated Press Writer
(Published Tuesday, April, 23, 2002 7:55PM)



LOS ANGELES (AP) - Reginald Denny was delivering sand to a cement plant when he exited a freeway and unwittingly drove into the epicenter of rage.
Television viewers were shocked by helicopter footage showing several black men pulling Denny, who is white, from the cab, then kicking and beating him. They smashed Denny's skull with bricks and a fire extinguisher, and he lay bleeding on the ground for about 20 minutes before four blacks risked the crowd's wrath and drove him to a hospital.

Now 46, he lives in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., where he repairs boat engines and tries to avoid the kind of publicity that made him a household name a decade ago.

Of his decision to move to the small town along the Colorado River in 1999, Denny told "Inside Edition," "My way of dealing with people is - if they're not here, I don't have to deal with them."

He did not respond to requests for an interview by The Associated Press.

Denny was unable to talk when he awoke days after the attack, but he soon became aware that he had become the riot's most famous victim. Many people sent prayers, get-well wishes and money to help cover medical expenses.

"I'm just a regular guy," he wrote to a social worker at Daniel Freeman Hospital shortly after the attack. "I work. I go home. I never wanted to be famous."

Denny has required numerous surgeries to repair his shattered head, replace an eye into its socket and reset his jaw back. A lump remains on his right temple.

He also has been hospitalized since the attack for seizures and blood clots in his leg and lung.

On the day of the attack, Denny said he hadn't been listening to the news. When he arrived at Florence and Normandie, he stopped his truck to avoid running over rioters.

"You got cars, broken glass, people running around. And I didn't have a clue what was going on," he told "Inside Edition." "I just thought I'd stop; they'd get out of the way and I'd go. It didn't work out that way."

Despite being beaten nearly to death, Denny showed little anger toward the four men prosecuted in his attack, even as they were acquitted of the most serious charges.

Damian "Football" Williams was sentenced for mayhem and misdemeanor assault, but the other three defendants - Henry Keith Watson, Antoine Eugene Miller and Lance Jerome Parker - all received probation.

After testifying in the trial of Williams and Watson, Denny hugged the defendants' mothers. He also opposed prison time for Williams.

"I would just recommend a very strong probation, one which Damian Williams would have to check in and totally be accountable," Denny said on NBC's "Today" show in 1993. "That man has to understand that that type of behavior is unacceptable."

Williams, 29, who served about four years of his sentence, is back behind bars, charged with shooting a man in the back in 2000 as the man ran through a southwest Los Angeles alley. His trial is scheduled for May 3.

Denny sued the city over police officers' decision to pull out of the riot area, but the lawsuit was thrown out in 1998.

"The joke is, I'd have been better off spilling coffee on my crotch," he told "Inside Edition." "I would have at least been a million dollars richer."

 

The LA Riots were so bad the Lakers had to play their 1992 home playoff games in Las Vagas.

 

Its good to know that such hefty punishments as probation await those who nearly beat a man to death because he is white.

 

kidrock -- i honestly don't see that anything good came of those riots. if the area has improved, i don't see any correlation with the riots of 10 years ago. if anything, those riots reinforced stereotypes in the minds of many...that to me is the real unfortunate result.

 

I wonder how many were calling for hate crimes legislation after that one.

 

Those four that took Denny to the hospital are heroes.

Nothing good came from the riots. If there's an event that damaged race relations more than that did in my lifetime, I'm unaware of it. I wonder how many little racists were born after seeing that crap on tv.

And then there's Maxine Waters, instigating the crowd with cries of "no justice, no peace".

 

Wow, a thread on a subject I have first hand knowledge about!

I was living in an apartment near the intersection of Cloverfield and Ocean Park in Santa Monica when the riots occurred in 1992. I was working at the time in a high rise office building at the intersection of Santa Monica Blvd. and Sepulveda, on the 12th floor. I was playing in a band out there at the time as well.

So here is my riot story.

The police officers were acquitted that Thursday afternoon around 4PM. Word of the verdict spread around my office quickly, and I left work around 5PM.

I talked to my Mom here in Houston long distance after I got home. We spoke about the verdict and I mentioned to her that "some people are going to get pretty angry over this". I told her about the gig I had that evening at the Palomino in North Hollywood.

I watched TV as I was eating dinner and getting ready for the gig, and watched the horrible stuff start to get really bad. I watched people going nuts at the downtown police station and I watched what happened to Reginald Denny in South Central LA.

I left for the gig around 8:30 PM. When I got there, there were around 5 paying customers in the club (the club held 500 people). There were three bands scheduled, and mine was the last. Between bands, they showed live riot news coverage on the big screen TV (instead of playing music through the PA system). When it was time for my band to go on, the club owner came up to the stage and told me "play three songs and then get the hell out of here". We did, and I split the club around 11:30 PM.

Got home safely and turned on the TV. Watched more riot coverage and had a couple of beers before I went to bed.

Got up the next morning (Friday) and got dressed and left for work. When I stepped outside, I could smell burning wood, like a bonfire.

Got to work, where there were 3 or 4 TVs in the office all with live riot news on. My office had lunch together in the conference room watching the stuff. As you walked around the panoramic view the office had, you could count the number of fires burning around Los Angeles by counting the individual streams of smoke that were going up into the air. At 2PM they shut the office down and told everyone to go home.

Got in my car and left, but the traffic was absolutely ungodly. The worst I ever saw in the 12 years I lived there. My drive from work to home was usually 10-15 minutes (three miles or so), depending on the traffic lights. That afternoon, it took me two hours to get home.

Curfew was instituted that afternoon. Lots of places were shut down, but I still managed to sneak out to the corner pub which was still open for a couple of pints that Friday night. It was only a couple of blocks away (the Daily Pint).

Lots of people split town and headed down to Orange County or San Diego for the weekend, but I stayed. I remember riding my bike to Venice Beach that Saturday afternoon and seeing everything shut down and a line of National Guardsmen along the beach.

Needless to say, it was scary, and the riot and the 1994 earthquake were the two things that started me on the way to deciding to move back to Houston, which I did in 1998. I am very happy I do not live in Los Angeles any more. Lots of people love it there, and I'm happy for them, but it's just not for me any more.

 

Hmm, just like police officers that beat a black man?

 

You know, the four men should tied Reginald Denny up to the back of his truck and dragged him around South Central until his head and limbs were ripped off.

 

RM95 -- how do you feel about hate crimes legislation??

i personally could care less if race was an issue...if you murder someone and you're found guilty (and absent an extraneous issues) you should be convicted to the fullest extent of the law, regardless of the color of the skin or religion of the victim.

 

As long as age of victim, or <I>who</I> the victim was, I'd agree with you. However, if someone murders a little boy or a police officer as opposed to a normal 35 year old or a drug dealer, the reactions are different. I think if you kill someone, you kill someone, but it doesn't work that way.

 

Wanna burn, wanna let it burn, wanna let it burn, wanna wanna let it burn.


There's a song called April 26th, 1992.

There was a riot in the streets, tell me where were you.

nevermind that.

I still remember those images of LA burning. Stores being burnt and looted.

Madonnas conical bra was stolen.

 

Since the verdict and riots didn't happen until April 29, 1992, you'd think they'd use that date for the song.

 

Yes...

But that is what Mr. Nowell was doing that day. He stole a guitar that you hear today (well, not today seeing as he is dead), stole beer that he couldn't afford, got some new furnishings. Good day I suppose.