Van Zandt: Comparing the L.A. and Paris riots

Clint Van Zandt • Profile • E-mail

In early March 1991, a motorist identified as Glen "Rodney" King was stopped by the LAPD after driving at speeds of up to 115 miles per hour.  King, with previous arrests for DWI, was thought to be under the influence of PCP.  King resisted arrest and was stunned with two 50,000-volt Tasers.  As he fought with police, four officers were captured on videotape by amateur photographer George Holliday as they fought with and eventually beat King to the ground with 50 blows from night sticks.  "Contempt of cop," or drug induced stupidity some would call it.  Excessive use of force was the legal definition, while the videotape of King's fight with and beating by the police was played and replayed, over and over again across the country and world.  Like the videos taken on the morning of 9/11 in New York City, it was hard for many viewers who watched King's beating to comprehend if each time on TV was a new beating, or the same one played again and again, much like our collective reaction to the playing and replaying of the pictures of fiery crashes of the jetliners into the NYC skyscrapers, resulting in over 3,000 deaths on 9/11/01.

It only takes a spark
The spark that ignited the South Central L.A. riots, though, was the April 1992 acquittal of the officers charged with beating King.  In the hours after the verdict what would become the worst riot in U.S. history began, resulting in arsons, looting, and murder.  The days that followed saw riots in many parts of L.A. as stores and businesses were looted, bystanders, mainly white and Korean, were beaten, with 2,400 injuries, 3,600 fires set, over 1,000 buildings destroyed, and almost 10,000 people arrested, with 55 riot-related deaths.  Just as many had watched the tape of the beating of King one year prior, the world watched-live  -- while white truck driver Reginald Denny was pulled from his truck by black youths who beat him unconscious, crushing his skull with a concrete block.  The attackers then danced in the street around Denny's limp body.  Denny was saved from certain death by fellow truck driver Bobby Green, who, watching television, saw the beating as it occurred and rushed from his nearby home to help Denny.  Green was just one of a number of other neighborhood blacks who also saw the beating on live TV and hurried to intervene on behalf of the injured truck driver.  One of the youths involved in the beating of Denny explained that when he thought about the police officers that were found not guilty in the Rodney King beating, the word "rage" stuck out in his mind.  "Someone had to stand up against this ridiculous verdict, so myself and others around me (who also beat Denny) in my area stood up."  Ice Cube would shortly thereafter release a song entitled "We had to tear this Motherf***a Up" as his statement concerning the trial of the LAPD officers-obviously a song not intended to have a calming effect on the local youth. 

An Hispanic construction worker would similarly be pulled from his truck, robbed, and beaten by another gang of youths who smashed in his head and spray-painted parts of his body black.  Hidden among the chaos was the fact that most looting was, in reality, the opportunistic theft of luxury items.  (We saw this again in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  In the chaos of the New Orleans flood were some looters stealing large screen TVs and automobiles).  Rank and file common criminals used the LA riot to cover their crimes while street gangs went after other gangs, and the police.  And so crime breeds crime, wrong follows wrong, and the explanation for man's inhumanity to man still rings hollow in our ears.

In France, as the story goes, two teenagers, one of Arab descent and one of African descent, were running from the police.  They climbed over a fence around an electric power facility and were somehow electrocuted.  Rioting began Oct. 27 in Clichy-sous-Bois, a suburb of Paris, with all the anger and frustration of a Muslim population burdened by unemployment, poverty, and alleged discrimination. "Obviously" this was reason enough to start riots across France in hundreds of cities that to date have resulted in over 2,000 arrests and hundreds more arsons and a death toll that continues to rise.  Riots are measured by different standards, on different scales, but never as exact as the Richter Scale that's used to measure the severity of earthquakes. The L.A. riots were measured in the number of buildings destroyed.  In France the standard is number of cars burned.  Over 7,000 vehicles have been set ablaze since riots began, sometimes over 500 cars, trucks and buses were set aflame in one night.

The L.A. riots were mainly carried out by unorganized mobs and street gangs turned loose on the city when police officials failed to initially respond in sufficient force. The flash point of the riot was initially the King beating, but the match was struck when the trial results concerning the officers involved in the beating were released.  The message was out-let the riots begin.  Police were hampered by their own reticence to respond in force, notwithstanding the well-known idea that the first few hours of a riot are critical and the initial law enforcement response may well determine how long the riot will last.

The bands roaming and burning across 300 cities in France have proved to be far more organized, using cellular telephone text messages to move their planned mayhem across the country.  Many if not most of the youthful rioters in France are the first generation children of immigrant Muslim and African minorities, reflecting France's failure to integrate these minorities.  Youth, often encouraged to riot by their equally embittered parents, expressed their frustration at French society by throwing home-made Molotov cocktails at cars and buses as they roamed vulnerable cities just as L.A. mobs had, some 14 years before.  While French police have arrested thousands of rioters, it may be more the weather than the law enforcement response that brings an eventual halt to the cross-country civil disorder.

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