What Really Happened During the Rodney King Riots
July 8th, 2008 . by HSLEADERFrom PoliceMag.com, by Richard Valdemar
Gang members had been planning an attack on the police and the public for months. The Rodney King verdict was just an excuse.
Los Angeles’ dynamics radically changed for the worse, on the evening of Wednesday April 29, 1992. It began when major rioting broke out following the acquittal of four LAPD police officers accused of beating Rodney King. But the trouble had been brewing in L.A. for many years.
Most of the media would attribute the causes of the riots to the same old politically correct BS: lack of jobs, racial profiling, and years of police abuse. However, during that time I was a sergeant working the LASD Special Investigations Bureau (SPI) and I was privileged to read and review all the police intelligence reports of that period. So I have a very different opinion.
For several months prior to the riots, intelligence reports rolled across my desk about activity in the Jordan Downs, Imperial Courts, and Nickerson Gardens Housing Projects. Drug dealers were financing meetings of gang members from rival gangs, and these meetings were being arbitrated by OGs (veteran gang members) or the Fruit of Islam, Black Muslim security units.
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