Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [37]
It took me and a few of the other officers about two seconds to make up our minds that we were going to disobey the command. It took Sgt. Williams about three seconds to officially order us to disobey and leave the parking lot. Within fifteen seconds, we were in vehicle pursuit of the suspects who’d been shooting at the officers at Venice and La Brea.
The suspects shot back at us as they tried to escape into the School Yard area that the Crip gang had claimed as its turf. A shooting occurred shortly after as the suspects attempted to run from their vehicle. It was the first shooting I witnessed over the next six days, and it wouldn’t be the last.
From that point on, I was out on the streets attempting to stop the bad people from hurting the good people. For me, it was as simple as that.
It’s hard to explain what I saw in those next two days, but imagine a war breaking out in your neighborhood, where no home, store, building, or car is spared from senseless destruction at the hands of an endless, angry mob.
It seemed everywhere I turned, buildings and cars were vandalized and on fire. The stench of burning buildings was heavy in the air. I could hear glass breaking as looters hurled garbage cans into storefront windows to gain entry and take merchandise they couldn’t possibly have any use for. Some of the overconfident looters pulled U-Haul trucks up to the exposed storefronts. In Koreatown, I watched store owners shoot at the ones who entered to rob them in plain sight.
People randomly shot at us as we moved from situation to situation trying to regain some semblance of order. Shots were even being fired at firemen as we offered them extra body armor so they could save some of the buildings from burning down to their frames.
Victims stood on the corners pleading for help, but there was just too much to respond to at once.
I watched looters get run over by cars as they left a store across the street. Good, I thought. You deserve what you just got.
The natural order of things was out of whack, and the police, of whom there weren’t nearly enough, had to adapt. We set up an abbreviated justice system in which normal procedure and paperwork went out the window. We stripped it down to the basics. Some of us took to the streets and apprehended lawbreakers, jammed them into police cars, vans, and buses, and sent them off to the stations where other officers would do the paperwork, book, and jail them. When one station radioed back that it was full and couldn’t possibly take another body, we took them on to the next station.
At a Vons grocery store where the sprinklers had been triggered at full blast, we watched as shoplifters waded through several inches of water, sweeping items off shelves into big garbage bags. There were so many of them ignoring our commands that we finally stood at the entrance and clocked anyone trying to leave with anything more than the clothes on their backs.
For two days it was absolute chaos, but they were the greatest two days I’d ever worked for the LAPD. I didn’t have to worry about use of force reports or paperwork or procedure. It was a free-for-all, and the world suddenly became clear to me. There were good people trying to save their businesses, homes, and families; they weren’t doing anything wrong. The rest of them, regardless of color or race, were animals.
I was scared to death for Elaine, who’d just finished the day watch and was on her way home when the riots broke out. I’d called her and told her to not answer her phone when the department rang to ask her to come back in for duty. It was wrong of me, but I was afraid she’d get hurt. She did the right thing and went to work the next day when she was called. Her station assigned her to security on the rooftop with a shotgun. She completed her shifts there for the next two weeks.
For two days, the LAPD used every resource it had to regain control of its hostile city. President George H. W. Bush even authorized and mobilized members of the National Guard before it started to calm down. By the sixth day, a citywide curfew was