Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [36]
Not only did I know this move was going to ruin my dad’s reputation at the LAPD, but I also knew he didn’t really have a handle on what was going on. “Don’t sit here and judge somebody you don’t know based on your experience as a police officer,” I said. “You got to work with the best, so the results you got were the best. When you work with crap, you get crap, and you can’t always blame the supervisor for what’s happening.”
Thankfully, my dad listened to me and withdrew from the trial. But the real fireworks were yet to come.
On April 29, 1992, in a court in Simi Valley, about thirty miles outside of Los Angeles, with a jury absent of any black members, one of the four police officers was acquitted when the jury couldn’t come to a decision on one of his charges, and the other three were exonerated of the charges altogether.
Much of the Los Angeles South Central community, made up of many black and minority residents, took to the streets immediately in sporadic groups. At first, they yelled obscenities at passing cars. Then they threw rocks and other objects at them. The more brazen groups of disgruntled teenagers and adults then swarmed on the vehicles, smashing out the windows with pipes, as other terrified drivers looked on in horror.
Officers were dispatched to the disturbances, but quickly there were too many instances with too many aggressive civilians involved for the police force to handle. Officer reserves quickly ran dry. Unable to control the tide, a supervising lieutenant from 77th St. Division ordered every LAPD officer off the streets altogether. That proved to be an unwise decision because the groupings combined and grew, then migrated to the streets of South Normandie and West Florence Avenue, in the heart of South Central.
On that corner, a white man driving an eighteen-wheeler was stopped, dragged out of his cab, and thrown onto the street. Six black men, all between the ages of nineteen and twenty-seven, beat Reginald Denny with their hands, feet, and random objects they found on the ground. The final blow came from Damian “Football” Williams, a nineteen-year-old gang member who knocked the battered and bloody Denny unconscious with a slab of concrete, then did a jig over his body. Not a single officer came to Denny’s aid. He eventually came to, blood streaming down his face as he writhed in pain next to his red truck.
A news helicopter caught the attack overhead and aired it live for the entire country to see. This was the flash point of the Los Angeles Riots.
The court’s verdicts had come in just as my unit had been finishing roll call at our station next to the West Los Angeles Courthouse. When I heard that the officers had been acquitted, I knew there would be hard feelings in the community. I didn’t realize how bad it would get.
My partner and I were scheduled to go out into Pacific Division that afternoon, and we started to drive down toward the Oakwood area to check on the Venice Shoreline Crips. I had no idea what was beginning to bubble over at the corner of West Florence and South Normandie, but all hell was about to break loose.
My sergeant called for a Code Alpha at the nearby Wilshire Division’s parking lot, which meant my entire unit was ordered to meet up at that location and wait for further instructions. We congregated with our two sergeants, Chuck Wampler and J. P. Williams, and waited. From every direction we could hear shots ringing out.
Soon a call came over the radio. “Officer needs help, shots fired.” The location was a block away at the Shell Station at Venice and South La Brea.
We all jumped into our cars, but another order came over the radio from the area captain, J. I. Davis, which stopped us in our tracks: “Stay at the station. Do not respond to the call for help.”
The order went against everything we’d ever been taught. When another officer’s call for help came, you dropped everything and went. This order just proved what I’d always thought: the command staff of the LAPD were cowards who would run and hide when the shit hit the