Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 209 - American Riots: the 1992 LA Riots and So Much More

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

LAPD and California Highway Patrol officers chased, arrested, and beat Rodney King, a twenty-five-year-old Black man, in 1991, and the fateful encounter would lead to a verdict of “not guilty” for the four officers that brought the city of LA to its knees. Long standing racial tensions bubbled over the surface, and inflamed by a video of the altercation, people took to the streets, burning, looting, and brutalizing their fellow civilians. The LA riots happened just under thirty years ago, yet from a historical perspective - so recent. And they are one of many. Tulsa in 1921. Watts in 1965. Ferguson in 2014. So many in 2020. Why? Are black Americans actually being unfairly targeted by law enforcement? Or is that just the perception? The answer, as is so usually is, seems to be more complicated than many in the media would have you believe. I do my damndest today to answer some really complicated, complex, and culturally volatile and polarizing questions in this “Why can’t we all just get along?” edition, of Timesuck. Donated $7000 to the SBP. Founded in 2006 by a couple in St. Bernard Parish, its model is focused on streamlining the recovery process, which includes quickly rebuilding homes and restoring local businesses, and supporting policies that aid long-term recovery. Go to https://sbpusa.org/ to donate, volunteer, or find out more. Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_PXWkpXRjEk Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions: https://badmagicmerch.com/pages/contact Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 9500 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits

The LA riots of 1992. LAPD in California Highway Patrol officers chased, arrested, and beat Rodney King, a 25-year-old black man in 1991, and the fateful encounter would lead to a verdict of not guilty for the four officers that brought the city of LA to its knees. Longstanding racial tensions bubbled over the surface and inflamed by a video of the altercation, people took to the streets, burning, looting, and brutalizing their fellow citizens. The riders didn't agree with the innocent verdicts, and they took out their rage sadly, mostly on their own innocent neighbors.

The LA riots happened just under 30 years ago, and many people alive today remember seeing images of LA, particularly South Central LA, up in flames, storefront windows shattered, people taken to the streets with homemade weapons and stopping cars, injuring hundreds of citizens, and causing millions and millions of dollars in damage. And for those people that remember all of this, 2020 might feel like deja vu. Why are racial riots still happening now? Is it because there's a real epidemic

of police brutality in America? Or is there mostly just the perception of one? Can perception alone lead to rioting? What's going on with the police today? Can perception alone lead to rioting? What's going on with the police today? Are black civilians being unfairly targeted? If there is not an epidemic of police brutality, of racist brutality, then why are there riots?

What other problems are leading communities to break out into communal anger and rage and often violence? Doing my damnedest today, to answer some really complicated, complex and culturally volatile and polarizing questions. In a please, Nimrod, let me get this shit right. Why can't we all just get along?

A riot is the language of the unheard addition of TimeSuck. Just a, to time, stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm Dan Cummins, the mustashioed, mushmouth, profit and Nimrod, Richard Chase's therapist, Titanic assistant poop deck captain, and you are listening to TimeSuck. This coming Saturday, September 19th

is the four year anniversary of TimeSuck. This experiment has been way more successful than I ever realized it could be when I first released a short, kind of organized episode about the lizard illuminati conspiracy back in September 19th, 2016. I mean, of course, you dream, you hope, things are gonna go well.

But I'll be lying if I said I really thought this would grow into a business with multiple employees and a couple hundred thousand listeners and what a fucking ride has been. It's changed my life, my family's lives, and I think it might get even more exciting going forward. I hope so, I love it. Still even more exciting going forward. I hope so. I love it.

Still as curious as ever. I hope I can keep this going for a long, long time. Thank you for making this ride possible. Thanks for four years of support. I will be eternally grateful to all of you. Strange, curious and often dark and beautiful bastards. Hail fucking Nimrod. You look great, Lucifina.

Long live the suck. If you like free stickers, go to badmagic.com right now, push pause, push pause, go, get going, get it, get over there. Time sucks treat team, round three is here and it's first come first serve. There's 300 slots available in the time sucks store. Once you run out of spots, that's it for round three. So if you really want to help us spread the suck after four years by slapping some stickers in your neck of the woods or to your packs

now. Once you reserve your spot, your free stack of stickers will be mailed out. Once you receive your stickers, hopefully you'll be hitting the streets because these aren't stickers for your personal sticker collection. The goal is to slap the stickers wherever you think people will see them. Once you've stuck the suck, snap a pic, upload it to social media, use the hashtag spread the suck. Very important. No spaces hashtag spread the suck. If no spaces hashtag spread the suck if you don't tag it we can't find it easily online. So make sure to tag your photos with a spread the suck and then we're around three comes to an end on November 30th will randomly select a winner and that winner will receive a hundred bucks in time suck merch and an autographed

street team street side to hang on your wall. And as an added bonus to this round all around three street team members will have exclusive access to a time sucks street team t-shirt. You don't have to buy it, but if you want to rep some street team pride, you'll be able to now. That's going to be a raffle style drawing to see who wins, tagging more photos on social media increases your chance to win. Get you more tickets essentially for the raffle. All right, see you.

So hopefully you got it now. Great. Good luck. Get out there and spread the suck and thank you again. All right, time to get to an episode now. It definitely cost me some sleep this week. Zach, the scriptkeeper spent more time on it than normal when he did the first round of notes.

Had more questions than normal, more concerns, Sophie Evans, she spent more time than normal when she did a second pass on the notes and some additional research. She asked more questions than normal. Again, you know, just more concerns than normal when she did a second pass on the notes and some additional research. She asked more questions than normal. Uh, again, you know, just more concerns than normal. And then I spent way more time on it than usual, just going over the notes and the data over and over and over, going over my own thoughts, scrutinize my own mind, maybe more than ever

for this one. Uh, before we really get into all of this, I want to acknowledge that this white dude, this white dude who grew up in a small, very white town does not think for a fucking moment that he understands on a meaningful level whatsoever, any meaningful level, what it feels like to be black in America. I can't know that. I can never, ever know that. And I want you to know that I realize that.

I also have no clue what it's like to work in law enforcement. Never done it. Ride-alongs do not equate to real experience. Also, no matter how many times I've gone over all this prior to recording all my notes, know that I don't expect to get everything right in the suck. But I do hope to add something of value to an important and ongoing cultural discussion. The heart of time suck is a quest for knowledge, a yearning for truth, a mission to share it. And when it comes to that core ethos, I do feel like I did my best with this one.

And now, don't kill the messenger. It's fucking right time. Hell no, not. One more quick disclaimer. Not going to be a real comedy packed episode. This is your first time listening to Time Sucks today's show, Tonely, not really indicative of the overall catalog. Some episodes tend to be a little more serious than others. This is definitely one of those. I don't think it's gonna be any less entertaining. I sure hope it won't be.

It's just not gonna be as crazy and dark and weird in moments. Hope you still like it. On today's time, it's like, we're not gonna just explore the 1992 LA riots, not even close. We're going to also look into the legacy of American riots that led up to the 92 riots. A legacy of rioting based almost exclusively in acts of retribution against or at least

due to an extreme frustration with either a variety of racist actions carried out against African-American individuals or entire African-American communities or in some instances the perception that racially motivated abuses had taken place. A perception based largely on the very real history of other racist actions. After looking at some right history, we'll jump into a timeline of the 92 rights, explore this major historical event that happened almost 30 years ago, but feels so very timely and relevant todays, feels so fresh. And then this is where I make it some emails and some one star reviews no matter how I

approach this question and a highly polarized and angst-filled cultural landscape of 2020. I'm going to present a lot of stats and try to answer to the best of my ability. The claim that America's police are currently unfairly targeting black Americans and violently abusing them more than members of any other race. Historically this claim has certainly been true, but is it currently true? The numbers regarding this claim are interesting and not what I expected to find. The question of whether or not American law enforcement in general is racist is a question a lot of my peers seem to have firmly answered without appearing to have done any real in-depth

due diligence investigation. It watched a few heartbreaking videos become emotionally outraged, then made up their minds, and the actions of the few are representative of the many, but is that true? Our American law enforcement is the system really infested with systemic racism. I'm sure some people actually turn off this podcast simply for me as a white man, even having the gall or the balls, whatever you want to call it, to publicly ask this question. And that's really unfortunate. I have no agenda to announce this claim. I only want to dig past headlines and get to as much nonsensationalized truth as I can. It's important to do that. You cannot fix a problem if you don't know what the problem

is. Do many of us believe what we seem to believe about American law enforcement and their relations with the black community because it's objective reality? Or do we believe what we believe large because of modern media's many, many, many clickbait based headlines digital and pervasive yellow journalism headlines based more on pleasing advertisers and spreading unbiased information headlines based on getting the most traffic. Traffic often based in outrage. Headlines based on emotional manipulation to create that traffic.

If it bleeds, it leads. I've talked about that old tried and true adage before. And stories, true stories of deaths, of homicides, racially motivated homicides, carried out by the same people literally paid to protect us from being killed, My, oh my, do those stories bleed, bleed, bleed. And because they're so inherently outrageous, so inflammatory, the media loves to feed us article after article after article about them. So fucking many articles, so many headlines that are problem that may actually be the exception to the rule can really start to seem like the rule. And by the way, I'm not even saying at this moment that that is the case, merely that it could be the case and it's something that needs to be examined.

And if after hearing what I have to share and say today, after hearing all of it, if you come to different conclusions than I do and you want to send an email, please do so. Just don't send one without links to some stats to back up a different argument. I've had enough baseless opinions, heard enough about this topic we all have, we don't need more. We need some cold, doesn't care about your feelings reason. Frankly, in general, I'm getting pretty sick of knee jerk, emotional opinions being shouted by those who seem to have no fucking interest in taking a second to self-reflect

and to analyze their loudly shouted opinions. Why do you believe what you believe? Because you've dug and done some homework, and it seems to be the truth, or because your friends, or your family, or your neighbors, or colleagues believe it, and you've caved into social pressure. Okay, let's now truly dig into the info.

Let's first look at the racial perception and reality, excuse me, that existed in Los Angeles in 1992, the year in the place, the main meat of our story takes place. Although many Los Angeles' and the late 80s and early 90s prided themselves on racial diversity within their city, there was also a strong feeling among many and LA's minority communities that the city's predominantly white police force practiced racial profiling and engaged in racially motivated brutality against African Americans.

Look at NWA's critically and commercially acclaimed album Straight Out of Compton, with tracks like Fuck the Police, or ICT and Body Counts 1992 track Cop Killer. Both bands were operating out of that Los Angeles area, both of these tracks, popular tracks at the time, based specifically

on LA area cops being perceived as brutal racists. Here are some lyrics from that iced tea track. I'm a cop killer, better you than me, cop killer, fuck police brutality, cop killer, I know your family's grieving, fuck them, cop killer, tonight we get even, ha ha. And here are some lyrics from the NWA track. Got it bad because I'm brown and not the other color. So police think that they have no authority to kill a minority. Fuck that shit because I ain't the one for a punk motherfucker

with a badge and a gun to be beaten on and thrown in jail. We can go toe to toe in the middle of the cell. Now on the one hand, these are just two examples out of a sea of songs released in the late 80s and early 90s in the LA area. You could say they represent isolated opinions, the artistic opinions of a few, but they were very popular songs. The body count album went gold entirely off the notoriety of the cop killer track. The NWA album, Multiplatinum. Five stars and numerous music reviews including Rolling Stone, written up as one of hip-hop's crucial albums, a bombastic,

cacophonous car ride through Los Angeles burnt out in ignored hoods. These lyrics did not just represent the opinions of a few. They represented the anger, the rage, according to many articles I've found from the early 90s about this subject of many minorities living in LA at the time. Many people strongly felt and still feel that the LAPD predominantly white at the time just did not give a fuck about them, especially in predominantly South Central historically black neighborhoods like Compton and Englewood. And the LAPD cops were mostly white at that time, almost 62% white, less than 14% black. And yet the population

of Compton was 54% black in 1990, less than 2% white. I had a hard time finding 1990 demographic stats for Inglewood, but in 2000, the city was 46% black and only 5% white. The Hyde Park neighborhood of South Central had an even greater racial disparity, 66% black versus 5% white. Sadly, for many black versus 5% white. Sadly for many black residents in these neighborhoods, the majority of white people they encountered were probably cops. And sadly for many of these white cops, the majority of black residents they had actual encounters with were either black criminals or black residents they suspected of being criminals.

That is not a good recipe for racial harmony. Not a good recipe for a positive relationship between the town's law enforcement and the rest of its citizenry. It's a recipe that can lead to all kinds of racism. Can. Doesn't have to, but it certainly can. Black citizens versus white cops wasn't the only source of racial tension in South Central neighborhoods in LA where the overwhelming majority of riding took place. There were other racial tensions that seemed to get overlooked in most modern narratives regarding American racism. LA was an is diverse city and cultural differences between Koreans and Koreatown and Hispanics and Black Americans also led to increased animosity in racial tensions. It's not like every other race was having problems with white people,

but all got along great with each other. And these additional tensions would make clear through racial violence in the riots. To think that all black Americans unified with all other minorities in opposition to white Americans would be a gross oversimplification of how racism tends to work. Rarely a one race versus everyone else type of situation. There was all kinds of tribalism going on in Los Angeles 1992, just like there is today, all over the country, just like there has been across the globe for the entire history of humanity and tribalism in its worst forms, whether it's based in race or politics or sexual persuasion, et cetera, can lead to a real fucking ugly us versus

them mentality. And that leads to increased humanization of whoever them or they are. And with increased humanization comes the ability to perceive them or they is somehow being less than human and therefore much easier to victimize. It becomes much easier to commit terrible acts of violence against your fellow meat sack. Violence quickly went from fantasy to reality in the extreme emotional circumstances of, of say, a riot. So why am I pointing all this out? Because it seems like the story of the 92 LA riots has been oversimplified by many historical revisionists.

Did the riots happen because white racists, cops, beat on black citizens who grew sick of them getting away with it? Yeah, kind of in part, but that's not the whole story. The riots were kicked off by this perception, they'll fucking doubt about it. And did that perception have a basis in reality? I have to think it did somewhat. How much reality it was based on on that I'm not sure of. I'll try and find out later in this suck, but once the riots began, additional racial tensions

were exposed, had nothing to do with the LAPD. And it's important to note that if we continue to view the problem of racism in America, as a white versus minority issue only, it'll never be fixed. We'll never get past it. Everyone of every color needs to continually re-examine any us versus them tendencies they have. It's a condition of being human in order to effectively conquer racism in any real and meaningful society wide way. Okay, let's put a pin in South Central in the early 90s for a bit now. Before we really get into the 92 riots, let's take a look at writing from

a psychological and sociological perspective. Why do humans ever write for any reason? Well, mainly because studies have shown that it's a lot of fun. Social scientists have found out that the only thing more fun than having an ideal sexual experience or finding yourself an ideal, financial situation is rioting. More endorphins are kicked off when you're rioting

during any other activity. Have you ever burned down a building? It's fucking awesome. I can't recommend it enough, especially if it's a building you don't own. Then you don't down a building? It's fucking awesome. I can't recommend it enough, especially if it's a building you don't own. Then you don't even have to deal with the consequences of having your business destroyed as long as you're smart enough not to get caught. So push pause right now, stop listening to this podcast, go out there and burn some shit to the motherfucking ground. Kidding! That would be insanity. If that's what social

scientists stop. That would also be terrifying. If the most fun thing you could do is write. No, here's the truth. Most psychologists and social scientists agree that social movements like riots are caused by extreme structural strains. Structural weaknesses in society that put individuals under a certain subjective psychological pressure, like widespread unemployment, rapid industrialization,

rapid urbanization. When the collective psychological disturbance of a community reaches a certain threshold, the tension will produce a disposition to participate in an unconventional means of political participation, such as rioting. Essentially, this is a very academic way of saying, desperate times call for desperate measures. A riot is what happens when a population feels like they don't have anything to lose by not rioting when they feel hopeless, you know, confused when they feel unjustly and chronically victimized when they feel like a peaceful expression of frustration just will not be heard or won't create any real change.

Does that mean the riots are a good thing? Sometimes generally no. They tend to hurt the people doing the righting the most actually. But they make sense emotionally. Think about it this way. If you think there's never a good excuse or reason to write, you might be, for example, staunchly opposed to stealing. You might think that thieves should be prosecuted to the utmost extent of the law.

They're being a thief, illustrates a tremendous lack of moral fiber. The thieves are lazy, morally bankrupt, fucking dirt bags, whatever. And if you feel all of that, that's strongly, I bet you've never been really, really hungry with no idea of where your next meal was going to come from. It's easy not to consider taking what's not rightfully yours when what's rightfully yours gives you everything you need. But what if you didn't have what you needed, what if your kids didn't have what they needed, and you didn't know how to give it to them. Would you steal then? I would.

I'm not gonna pretend for a second I wouldn't. If I had to choose between not feeding a hungry Kyler and Monroe or stealing some bread, well, I'm gonna be a bread-stealing motherfucker real quick. And in another extreme situation, I would also riot. If I felt that me and my family had been consistently denied opportunities, consistently offered to fellow citizens of a different skin color time and time again generation after generation I would riot my fucking ass off. I'm a white dude who has for sure benefited from some white privilege from time to time

and I'm still full of a fair amount of anger. Always happened. Not sure. Not totally sure why, to be honest. So maybe I'm predisposed towards understanding, writing psychologically. I've always been real sensitive to any action I've perceived to be unjust. I'm a pretty laid back dude, but if you and yours were consistently unjustly holding me and mind back, keeping me in mind from achieving the same quality of life afforded to you and

yours, then I would have no problem trying to burn your fucking part of the town of the ground. At the very least, I would want to, whether or not I have the balls, to risk a risk and do it, who knows? At the very least, I want to, whether or not I have the balls, Tarriscares can do it, who knows? The very least I would root for those doing it. Sociologists during the early and middle 1900s thought that movements like riots were random occurrences of individuals who were trying to emotionally react to situations outside their control. That's important.

It's just something that you just feel like, there's something going on that you can't control, that's not working out in your benefits and the emotions associated with that can lead to a right. An important writer in this area of research was Gustav LeBon. In his book The Crowd, he studied the collective behavior of crowds. What he concluded was that once an individual submerges in a crowd, his behavior becomes primitive, irrational, and he's therefore capable of spontaneous violence. Once individuals submerge themselves in a crowd, they gain a sense of anonymity and invisibility, and this causes them to believe that they cannot be held accountable for their behavior within the crowd. This also makes so much sense to me.

Say you really, really want a new TV, and you live next door to Best Buy, and you can't afford one. And you've never considered stealing one, but then one day, anarchy hits your neighborhood. Cars are burning in the street, buildings are getting broken into, the cops are nowhere to be found. And you've never considered stealing one. But then one day, anarchy hits your neighborhood. Cars are burning in the street, buildings are getting broken into, the cops are nowhere to be found. Then you see some people, your neighbors, pouring into Best Buy, coming back out with TV's and other shit.

Would you take one then? Would you join in the group mentality? Maybe, maybe not. But if you were ever going to take one, I think this is when you do it. Studies show this is when you are most likely to do it. It's when it feels the most okay because others are doing it. You know, it's when it feels like you have the best chance of getting away with it. The risk versus reward is the most tilted in your favor in this scenario.

Ordinary people, normal citizens, you and me, whether we like to admit it to ourselves or not, most of us could easily write. We could easily get swept up and do things. We would be unlikely to do do under other circumstances. Shouting, shoving, throwing rocks, smashing windows. Yes, even looting, perhaps more. More than anonymity, writes, offers, it kind of an intense belonging, not dissimilar to what spectators feel

at a sports event or fans at a rock concert. So that's how we can write it. But it still doesn't fully explain why we write. Writing is a way of making oneself for one's group heard. It's a form of violent protest. Protest has been around since the dawn of organized society. It's generally split into violent protests and nonviolent protest. We know a lot about violent protesting in America.

Our nation was founded via violent protests. The Boston Tea Party of 1773 that led to the Revolutionary War was essentially a violent protest. American citizens throwing chess to British tea into the harbor, taking property that wasn't theirs, right? Right, looting. Nonviolent protest, peaceful protest, also very American.

It can involve sit-ins, strikes, marches, boycotts, been a lot of those two over the years, especially in the 60s and 70s. If nonviolent protesters behave illegally, it's generally because they have deemed that the law they are breaking is unjust, like the laws that segregated black and white Americans during Jim Crow. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King said, a just law is a man-made code that squares with moral law or the law of God.

An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with moral law. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with the willingness to accept the penalty. MLK, Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau, Nelson Mandela, Colin Kaepernick, just a few examples of famous non-violent protesters. But for many, rage can lead to thinking that a non-violent protest is just not going to fucking cut it. Violent protests involves looting arson, wounding, or murdering individuals, taking hostages, otherwise behaving in illegal ways. It's not because violent protestors believe there shouldn't be laws against murder, but because they believe that extreme violence is how best to get their point

across. Historic examples of violent protesters or Nat Turner who'd led Nat Turner's slave rebellion and the abolition is John Brown rating Harper's fairy. Sometimes violence is the only way to create change. I've always believed that violence should be a last resort, but I've always also believed that in some cases violence is the only resort. Think about all of history's revolutions. Think about America's revolution. The US wouldn't be a nation if it had politely asked Britain for change,

and then that change, you know, this wasn't given, and they're like, okay, never mind that. Change wasn't given, then there were a sense of rights, then troops were sent into squastles rights, and then a war broke out. A riot is the language of the unheard. So, familiar with that quote,

I've heard it used to law this year, comes from an MLK speech. And when taken out of context, it sounds like Dr. King was very pro-right. He actually wasn't. He was pro-protest. He was anti-right. He just understood why African-Americans

rioted so very well. And he communicated why a hell of a lot better than this white podcaster, Liv and Niteho, could ever do. Check out this famous, a riot, is a language of the unheard quote when it's surrounded by more of one of Dr. King's 1967 speeches called the other America. It's beautiful. Delivered over 50 years ago and damn if it is not relevant

and timely and I think just as accurate today. So I will continue to condemn riots. We continue to say to my brothers and sisters that this is not the way, and continue to affirm that there is another way. But at the same time, it is as necessary for me to be as vigorous in condemning the conditions which calls persons to feel that they must engage in riot as activities as it is for me to condemn riots. I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is

the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear. It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility in the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so on a real sense, our nation, summers, and riots are caused by our nation's winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand stand into position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention."

Wow, still so relevant. I love it when he says, I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Exactly. Being dismissive of writing, just thinking like how dare they or fuck them or lock them up, what does that accomplish? What does not listen to people who are furious, who are really hurting? What does that ever accomplish? And I'm not saying writers who destroy private or public property or who loot shouldn't be arrested, they should. To think they shouldn't is to subscribe to some level of lawless anarchy. But also we should really think, really truly think as a society, why is the writing taking

place? Is it legitimate? Is it at least emotionally legitimate? It probably is. And we should probably listen if we don't want it just to keep happening over and over. What could we do as a society to prevent future riding? And if you think, I don't know, just fucking send in more officers, more sending more troops to squash that shit.

And that's where you're thinking stops, then you should probably move to North Korea or to some other nation, ran with a firm authoritarian hand. Freedomless nations ran by totalitarian tyrants. Those governments fucking love the squash rights. America's better than that. At least I think we can be better than that. A major reason for rioting is inequality, just like Dr. King said. And there is still massive racial wealth inequality in America, especially between white and

black citizens. Check out these stats compiled in 2020 by the DC based thing tank, the Brookings Institute, maybe the most important stats I'll throw out today. In 2016, the net worth of a typical white family, 171,000. That's not annual income, that's overall worth. That amount is nearly 10 times greater than that of the average black family at just 17,150. The median weekly income for a white man is 1036. The median weekly income for a white man is 1036. The median weekly income for a black man is 769. Multiply that by 52 weeks. That comes out to 53,872 a year versus 39,988.

Which means that the average white man makes over 25% more than the average black man that is a lot. And that same disparity exists between white women and black women. Why is that? I think education inequality explains some of it. A 2017 report from the US Department of Education found 39.5% of African Americans who entered a United States four year higher education institution in 2009, seeking a bachelor's degree, earned their degree within six years. For white seeking a bachelor's degree, the graduation rate 59.4%. 20% difference. Again, statistically very significant. And not that long ago, this gap was far wider because black men and women weren't even allowed into many or even any colleges. If you're white, the odds that your grandparents graduated from college, way fucking higher than

if you're black. They had less hurdles to jump. If your grandparents were denied access to higher education, I would think the odds are higher education is not going to be made as much of a priority as it would be if your grandparents had. Now a lack of education, a lack of prioritizing it becomes multi-generational. It also might not feel as possible for you to attain because others in your family, others in your neighborhood, due to denied access, due to poverty preventing them from affording it, they also never attained it.

Speculating further, if violent crime rates are higher in your neighborhood, if the rate of narcotics abuse is higher in your neighborhood, it makes sense that it might be, you know, a little fucking harder for you to focus on college, because you're focusing on basic survival. And I can go on and on pointing out other disparity examples I don't think I need to. Have things gotten better with racial equality in America over the last century. Yes, definitely.

But clearly there is still a ways to go. Having a black president having had one, excuse me, did not magically eradicate, you know, the plight of African American communities. That's an overly simplistic and frankly childish perspective. I'm sick of fucking hearing. Why are there still race rights? I think it's about a lot more than the occasional video of police brutality. I think those videos are the spark that lights the fire, but I think the gasoline was already there. The gasoline was continued socio-economic inequality. And I strongly feel that if we fix that problem, there'll be a lot less writing. This thought actually led me to recently ordering a

t-shirt. I came across online that has the words, we all rise together, printed across the front, with solidarity fists of various colors. We all rise together. I think that phrase represents a great way to look at racial tension in America, at riots, at the Black Lives Matters movement, etc. If we reach down and help those who are less fortunate than ourselves, we're not just helping them, we're also helping ourselves. We're helping everyone in society.

Let's say you're a white downtown business owner and your business is in a black neighborhood. Race rides are not your fucking friend. Having your business burned down even if you do get your insurance money eventually you can still lose your ass. So isn't it in your best interest to see what you can do to listen to your neighbors? Encourage others in society to listen to your community so that no destruction happens, so that the collective anger does not pass an emotional boiling point and lead to violent chaos. It sure is. Okay, done pontificating again for now. For now. Let's get into some right history before jumping into the 92 right timeline. This will be by no means a complete list of U.S. rights,

but it'll provide some nice context to put the 92 rights into proper historical perspective. Some riots have been carefully planned in advance to protest government policies, some have begun spontaneously. While riots for, you know, they start for a variety of reasons, they usually end the same way with mass arrests, loss of life, end damage to public and private property. One early notable American riot happened in New York in the midst of the Civil War. In 1863, facing a dire shortage of manpower, Lincoln's government passed a strict new conscription law, which made all male citizens between 20 and 35 and all unmarried men between 35 and 45 subject to military duty.

But there was a loo-phole, a super fucked up loophole. Anyone with $300 could pay a commutation fee and avoid conscription. And today's dollars that fee would be equal to a little over $9,365. But as often as the case, an inflation calculator doesn't do that number justice. In 1863, a little over $9,000 was the yearly salary for the average American worker. So only the wealthiest citizens could use this loophole. Clearly a loophole designed for the wealthiest citizens so they didn't have to fight in the war.

And for obvious reasons, it's pissed off a lot of people. Pist off almost all the people. And rioting began early on the morning of Monday, July 13th. Most of the rioters were white. Thousands of white workers, mainly Irish and Irish Americans, started attacking military and government buildings, and soldiers were sent in to stop them, and the rioters fought back at first. But they didn't farewell because they were unarmed blue collar workers fighting against soldiers. So they started attacking other non-military citizens, citizens

who would have a harder time fighting back. That afternoon, the mob started targeting black citizens, homes homes and businesses. A mob of several thousand people, some armed with clubs and bats, stormed the colored orphan asylum on Fifth Avenue near 42nd Street, a four-story building housing more than 200 children. Way to go, fuckfaces. Way to let that hatefully your heart so fully that you decide to tack fucking orphans. These angry assholes, probably an ancestor or three of mine amongst them, they took betting, fooding, clothing and other goods and set fire to the orphanage. By far the worst violence was reserved for African-American men, a number of whom were

lynched or beaten to death with shocking brutality. In all the published death toll of the New York City draft riots was 119 people. Though estimates of the actual number of people killed reaches highs twelve hundred how many of these casualties were black cannot find racial data for lives lost these rights strongly assuming the majority of the victims were black why were they attacked well probably for a few different reasons i think one of the main reasons is

probably that african americans not considered citizens were exempt from being drafted so irish immigrants probably pissed off that they didn't have to fight. You know, they didn't have to fight an award. They may have felt as being fought for them. They probably didn't feel that the draft was fair and it wasn't fair. They were outraged by, they were outraged by a sense of inequality and they took out their anger as writers unfortunately often do on people not directly responsible for the outrage. The black community did not pass the conscription loophole off. The uprising was crushed on its fourth day July 17th.

The estimated damage between a million, five million, and 1863 money, or between eight and a half and forty two million dollars today. Another Civil War air amasquer happened just after the war ended down in New Orleans, Louisiana. This right took place outside the Mechanics Institute in New Orleans, as black and white delegates attended the Louisiana Constitutional Convention in July of 1866. The convention had reconvened because of Louisiana State Legislature, and recently passed the black codes and refused to extend voting rights to black men. Rights that were extended to other black men in most of America following the Civil War's

conclusion. Only two months before, Mayor John, team. Monroe was reinstated after four years of Union Army occupation. Monroe had been an active supporter of the Confederacy, and while he'd been on the losing side of the war, he wasn't about to adopt Northern policies favoring enhanced racial equality. As a delegation of 130 black New Orleans residents marched behind the US flag towards the Mechanics Institute, Mayor Monroe organized and led a mob of ex-Confederates, white supremacists and police to the institute to block their way. Nobody knows who shot first, but when

both sides ran out of bullets, according to the official report, a total of 38 were killed and 146 wounded. 34 of the dead, 119 of the wounded were black. Almost 90% of those who died were black. Over 80% of those wounded were black. Almost 90% of those who died were black. Over 80% of those wounded were black. All harmed or killed in a riot, caused by nothing more than senseless racism. Federal troops were called in. Well after things got bloody and it was obviously too late.

People lay limp, heads bashed in with bricks, broken bodies thrown from windows, landing on top of empty bullet casings and abandoned knives. Another riot born out of inequality. Black citizens recently made free nationwide unfairly denied the right to vote, and they were fucking pissed rightfully so, and they marched down to demand the right to vote. It was not given to them, and shit got physical.

And if they did fire the first shots, who could blame them? Whole bunch of riots occurred just after World War I. So many, they became known collectively as the Red Summer of 1919. During the summer of 1919, racial tensions and dozens of American cities boiled over and hundreds of people, mostly black, died as a result. The years during and immediately after World War I saw many black Americans seeking opportunities in the North, driven away by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and the harsh segregation laws in the South, they saw opportunity and the increased need for industrial workers during the war. Unfortunately, Northerners could be an often were every bit as racist as

otherers. Many of them may not have agreed with slavery, but that didn't mean they were in favor of racial equality either, not at all. In one incident on July 27, 1919, Eugene Williams, a 17 year old black man, was just swimming with some friends in Lake Michigan and entered a quote unquote white only area of the water. And a group of white men who didn't care for this started throwing rocks at Williams. And one of those rocks hit Williams in the head knocked him out and he drowned. And then the police refused to arrest the man who threw the rock. And not surprisingly fighting between whites and blacks erupted in Chicago, Southside.

In the days following William's death, one group of black veterans broke into an armory and stole weapons. They then used to beat back a white mob. The violence escalated to the point that the state militia was deployed. Fighting continued until August 3rd and by the end, 15 white people and 23 blacks were killed and about 1,000 black people lost lost their homes lost their fucking homes to arson And all this happened because to go back again to dr. King speech no equality and then there was no justice The promise of justice was not met

There was no equality when it came to those you know who could swim and where they could swim And then there was no justice when it came to a murderer getting away with the hate crime the ultimate hate crime murder That non-arrest was a big fuck you to the black community of not just Chicago, but America in general. It was a statement. A white man can kill you for swimming in a segregated part of the lake in broad daylight

in front of multiple eyewitnesses, and we won't do fuck all about it. It was a statement of, if your black, your life does not matter. We do not care about you. Queue the fucking riot. I get it. How could you not be infuriated at that kind of injustice?

Between April and November of 1919, there would be approximately 25 riots in cities across the country, 97 recorded lynchings, and a three day long massacre in Elaine Arkansas during which over 200 black men, women, and children were killed after black sharecroppers tried to organize and demand better working conditions for themselves.

More unjust bullshit for future generations of African Americans to legitimately point back to how dare they want equality. And all these riots were lumped under the nickname of the red summer when NAACP field secretary James Weldon Johnson coined the moniker to acknowledge all the blood that have been shed. Another right just two years later would go down as one of the worst and bloodiest in US history. Let's head to Oklahoma. On the morning of May 30th, 1921, a young black man named Dick Roland, a shoe-shiner, was riding in the elevator in the Drexel building at 3rd and main in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with

the white woman named Sarah Page. The details of what followed vary from person to person. Accounts of an incident circulated among the city's white community during the day and became more exaggerated with each telling the old telephone game getting played. And some accounts, Dick or perhaps Johnny, his name, changed with various tellings, hit on Sarah aggressively and other tellings he put his hands on her and other tellings he raped her. And the Tulsa Tribune ended up printing a story about how he tried to rape her in the elevator in the middle of the day with a lot of other people in the vicinity.

Without learning any other details of this story, does that seem like what probably happened to you? Now get the fuck out of here. No way. If you know anything about violent crime statistics, this is not how aggressive violent rapes generally occur and non-private, well lit areas, the middle of the day, places like an elevator when the doors are constantly opening, where they can open in any second to a room full of eyewitnesses,

where the doors and all likelihood will for sure open, in a few seconds to a room full of eyewitnesses. The story of attempted rape was absolute and total bullshit, according to most accepted accounts, 19-year-old Dick tripped leaving the elevator, and then trying to save himself from falling, he instinctively reached out and grabbed the first thing he could, which happened to be the arm of the 17 year old elevator operator, Sarah Page, her arm.

Not her breast, not her ass, not her pussy, her arm. Startled, she screamed, and then a white clerk in a first floor store, who didn't see shit called the police to report scene rolling flee from the elevator. And then the white alarmist and obviously super racist clerk on the first floor store who didn't see shit called the police to report scene Roland flee from the elevator. And then the white alarmist and obviously super racist clerk on the first floor reported the incident as an attempted assault. Sarah Page never filed anything. She never claimed that Dick did shit to her. Sarah filed no charges against Dick because nothing happened.

But the following day the Tulsa police arrested the completely innocent Roland, cannot stress enough that he didn't do anything. And they began an investigation. And then an inflammatory report in the May 31st edition of the Tulsa Tribune spurred a confrontation between black and white arm mobs around the courthouse where the sheriff and his men had barricaded the top floor to protect Roland. Nice. Be sure and protect him after unjustly arresting him.

Interesting. Shots were fired and then outnumbered African Americans began retreating to the Greenwood District. The most prosperous African neighborhood, excuse me, African American neighborhood in all of America at that time. The Black Wall Street, it was known as Greenwood in 1898, had the 55 room strat for luxury hotel built, the largest black owned hotel in the country, it had the Tulsa star, a black own newspaper, a newspaper that regularly informed African Americans about their legal rights, court rulings, a legislation

that was beneficial or harmful to their community. Greenwood had luxury shops, restaurants, grocery stores, jewelry and clothing stores, movie theaters, barbershops and salons, saloons, a library, pool halls, nightclubs, offices for doctors, lawyers, dentists. Greenwood had resident and business developer O.W. Gurley, quite possibly the richest African American man in the nation at the time worth around 20 million in today's dollars. And in the early mornings of June 1st, 1921, this gem of a neighborhood, this shining example of how black Americans could prosper in post-World War One America was looted and

burned to the fucking ground by white riders. Less than a hundred years ago, America's black community had its fucking heart punched out of its collective chest and stomped on. I cannot imagine how incredibly demoralizing this must have been to the hopes and dreams of every single black citizen in America. More injustice added to America's dark legacy of racial intolerance. The white mob deliberately burned or otherwise destroyed homes, credibly estimated to have numbered over $0.50, along with virtually every other structure, including churches, schools, businesses, even a hospital, even the fucking library.

Oklahoma governor James B.A. Robertson declared martial law, National Guard troops arrived in Tulsa. The guardsmen assisted firemen and putting out fires. They took African Americans out of the hands of vigilantes and that's awesome. But they also imprisoned virtually all black Tulsons, not already imprisoned. Over 6,000 people held at the convention hall in the fairgrounds, some for as long as eight days. And that's not awesome. They said they did this for their own safety. You know what have been safer? Jailing their white attackers, but that didn't happen. 24 hours after the violence erupted, it ceased. In the wake of the violence, 35 city blocks lay in charred ruins. Over 800

people treated for injuries and contemporary reports of deaths began at 36, but historians now believe probably more likely around 300 died. And not one of these criminal acts was prosecuted or punished by the government at any level, municipal county, state, or federal. Not one motherfucker went to jail for destroying the finest black neighborhood in America. Can you imagine how much resentment and mistrust and lingering anger and rage and hurt this one riot created for black Americans? Imagine if someone destroyed your neighborhood, burnt it to the ground.

Lesson 60 years after the end of slavery, after decades of incredibly harsh discrimination and lynchings, your community finally builds up one neighborhood, one, and there's something to be really proud of, a neighborhood that is flourishing, a community that could have, if not for the rides, turned into something monumental and it's destroyed. See in the pattern here, the legacy of destruction, we didn't cherry pick these rides and exclude others to force a false narrative that American rights have hurt black communities more than any other. That's just the goddamn truth. Rights have consistently hurt the black community more than they've hurt anyone else in America time and time again. Now let's jump to the sixties. The Watts Rides. Watts like Englewood and Compton, another South Central Los Angeles

predominantly black community, less than 10 miles east to Inglewood, about three miles north of Compton. I couldn't find racial demographic information for Watts in 1965, but a 1965 US Census Bureau report did describe the entire South Central area of LA to be predominantly African American. Today, the neighborhood is almost 62 percent of Hispanic, just over 37 percent black and half a percent white. According to another source in 1965, Watts was a predominantly low-income community with a large African-American population, many of whom who felt that in addition to high unemployment, poverty and racial discrimination, they were also the regular recipients of brutal treatment at the hands and clubs, sometimes guns, of the LAPD.

This right, this Watts riot is a riot that would lead directly to the 1992 LA rights. As the first massive American race riot truly focused specifically on a perception of police brutality. Important to understand this right, to understand the roots of many of 2020's race rights, focusing on acts of police brutality. On August 11, 1965, Mark Hett Fry, a 21-year-old black motorist, was pulled over and arrested by officer Lee W. Minicus. I believe he's how he says name, Minicus. I'll say Minicus. Minicus. I'll say Minicus. White California highway patrolman on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. And interestingly, what started this ride seems to be an opposite type of story

than the one that led to the Tulsa right. Markette and his brother were driving along Avalon Boulevard in South Central LA, that August 11th day. As Markette near to 116th Street, officer Minicus, Minicus, man, these names, who was white said he saw the car weave and pulled it over, which Frye seems to have corroborated. Shout out to Frye for having an easy last name. Frye and a jovial moodated. Shout out to Frye for having an easy last name. Frye and a jovial mood admitted to having a few drinks, but told the officer that he was only swarving because he was trying to dodge potholes in the road.

And the officer laughed. Multiple witnesses later recounted that officer Minicus and Frye were getting along great, or actually joking and laughing with each other, but then mom showed up. Officer Minicus later acknowledged that everything was doing just fine until his mother got there. He said, I told him he was under arrest, and he was real nice about it.

He was joking around, putting on a show for the crowd that it started to gather. I was even laughing. What followed is still subject to debate, but most accounts reflected, Rena Fry started screaming at her son, angry with him for driving trunk, and that Fry then spurred on by his mom's anger began to resist arrest. And then in the melee that followed, somebody shoved his mom. Officer Minicus later recalled that when he tried to arrest fry, he'd jump back and verbally snap at the officer for the first time.

Then Minicus's brother, Bob Lewis, who had shown up at the crowd grew, called for backup officers. Sorry, Minicus is a partner. I think it's his brother, not his brother, his partner. Minicus said it might, I think I said brother, not his brother, it's partner. Minicus said it might have been easier to have dropped it right there, but it's hard to back away at that point. I had already told the guy he was under arrest.

Minicus said that when backup officers started a rive a minutes later, one of them tried to stop fry from disappearing into the crowd. A backup officer tried to hit Marquette on the arm of the baton. Minicus said, but Marquette bent over and was hit just above the eye. Now, did he really mean to hit him in the arm?

Or was he trying to hit him in the head? Who knows? Little impossible to know that. Fry backed into Minnickahs, who grabbed him to place him in one of the patrol cars, then Fry's brother punched Minnickahs in the kidney, the officer recalled, and the mom jumped on his back and tore his shirt, right?

It's like pandemonium now. We put them all in the same car, and then the officers began leaving the scene, Minnick has said, but the crowd had gotten really angry by this time. I didn't stay around as he would happen. After an officer tried to arrest a woman he believed had spit on him during the fri arrests, the crowd grew even more enraged, but what they believed was his abuse of that woman. They started tossing bottles of the patrol car as the backup officers sped away with this additional woman in the backseat. Then the old telephone game was played once again. The rumor mill got revved the fuck up,

cranked the emotional volume to 11, and the story of what actually happened got bigger and more extreme with each telling. People started hearing that Marquette had been pulled over for no good reason. And that after his arrest, he and his brother and his mom were just randomly brutalized by the LAPD and then rioting and sued. Interestingly, Marquette Fry later admitted to driving drunk. The arrest was warranted. He did in fact struggle with drinking for the rest of his life, dying young of health problems

at only the age of 42. So interesting, right? America's largest race ride of the 60s, one of the most infamous race rides in American history, sprung from an incident that did not in fact appear to have actually been racist. It sprung from the perception of police brutality, not the act. Now I had other very real incidents of police brutality occurred prior to this incident that

led to a significant amount of tension between the South Central Black community and the large white LAPD. I can't find stats. Even if I did, it would be fair to wonder how accurate they were with potentially many beatings going on unreported, but anecdotally, it was very much believed to have been a significant problem. We're police beating black citizens more than white citizens in the 60s. Don't have those stats either. The LA Times did report though that from 1964 to 1969, assaults on LA patrolman Quinn tumbled.

So the police were for sure getting beat on more, which I have to think spring at least partially from a fair amount of racial tension, which probably also meant a fair amount of beatings were being dished out the other way. But that's more speculation from me back to what we know now. The Watts Wright grew, continued for six days as riders overturned and burned automobiles, looted and damaged grocery stores, liquor stores, department stores, pawn shops, over six days, 14,000 California National Guard troops were mobilized in South LA and a curfew zone encompassing over 45 miles was established in an attempt to restore public order.

34 died. The riders caused an estimated $40 million in damages. The unrest would stand as the worst such case in LA history until the 92 riots 27 years later. With many Angelinos in 1992 having memories of the chaos that happened just 27 years earlier. Now for two more pre-1992 rights, two years after Watts, another race riot started this time in Newark, New Jersey, and again, a starter from a rumor. On July 12, 1967, two white police officers stopped a 40-year-old African-American cab driver, John Williams Smith, who also worked as a trumpet playing musician for improperly passing them. Somehow a story got out to the officers had killed him while in custody. The story was not true.

John was not killed. He died on April 5, 2002 with the age of 75. But like Watts, the story alone was enough to inflame a population filled with years of pent-up grievances, not only abuse at the hands of the police, but entrenched, unaddressed poverty, urban renewal policies that bypass black residents and a white political power structure that had long ignored their needs. The writing, which ended after five days on July 17, took on a life at zone, persisted for six long days, resulting in 26 fatalities and $10 million worth of property damage. Two huge rights, roughly $50 million in damages total,

damages to mainly black owned businesses and homes, 60 lives lost, both started by angry residents reacting to a story about a terrible incident that actually wasn't true. In the Newark riot, while John wasn't killed, he was beaten by police, by white officers. And similarly, to Rodney King years later, the beating was witnessed.

So in this instance, while the story was exaggerated, it was at least based in truth. And one more, the next riot happened in response to something that was definitely true and not exaggerated. Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4th, 1968, by James Earl Ray, a white career criminal, a vowed racist, or killed by the

FBI. I know that's considered a crazy conspiracy by many. I know, but I'm not the only one who believes it. King's wife, Coretta Scott King, believed that her husband died due to a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband and King's children believed that and head of the FBI, Jay Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI at the time. He had a huge heart on for taking King down.

And the FBI did for sure go out of their way, way out of their way to discredit him. They illegally tapped his phones, they sent harassing and threatening letters to his wife, accusing King of cheating on her and doing other shady shit. They did all kinds of nefarious shit. It never happened, bullshit that has been proven. And while I'm generally real skeptical of conspiracies, which you know if you're a long time listener, I'm real open to this one being true, just like I'm open to the CIA being behind JFK's assassination. Now I've lost credibility. I won't talk about that stuff

anymore today, because I don't want to further discredit myself and many of your eyes. And none of that matters when it comes to the discussion of today's topic. Whether Dr. King was killed by a lone wolf white racist or killed by a government agent for racist reasons, at the end of the day, he was still killed by white racism. And that's all that mattered to many writers. A brilliant and charismatic community leader was dead, racist ideology more than any other factor had killed him. The murderer King led to riots in every American city.

Some of the biggest and most destructive riots occurred in Baltimore, Louisville, Kentucky, New York City, Washington, DC, Chicago. Chicago seems to be where the worst of the rioting occurred. Of Chicago, King himself had said, I've been to many demonstrations all across the South. But I can say that I have never seen even a Mississippi in Alabama, mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as in Chicago. Initially in Chicago, the day after King's murder or political assassination on April 5th things seem peaceful and police hope they were in the clear. Call them at first convinced police they might escape today without

major incident but by mid-morning small bands of a few dozen young people mainly of high school age marched on the civic center now known as the daily center and downstate and Madison streets in the loop. Within an hour windows were being broken in six stores on Madison between state and Madison streets in the loop. Within an hour, windows were being broken in six stores on Madison between state and LaSalle streets. Extra police were called into disperse the crowds. By 2 p.m., the police superintendent requested the assistance of the National Guard. 30 minutes later, the first fire had broken out

at a furniture store near West Madison and Oakley Boulevard in the near West Side. As Chicago police patrolman Frederick Pirjeveck started his 3 p.m. shift, fires were raging along Madison Street. Pirjeveck, 32 3 p.m. shift, fires were raging along Madison Street. Pirjeveck, 32, a product of war-torn Slovenia, was largely unfazed as the billowing smoke signal destruction in the radio buzz with shootings. He said, what can you think, you know, you just do your job.

They tell you there was a shooting, there was a shooting, this and that. Well, can you do nothing? You just drive around. At the end of his ship, Pirjeveck was shot in the elbow and injury he downplayed as just a scratch. Who the fuck was this guy? He sounds like a character in an 80s action movie. Hospitals for shots, back in Slovenia, it'd be shot two or three times a day before breakfast. This is nothing. This is just a little extra mineral in diet. That night Chicago burned a full 28 blocks inundated with looting in arson, prompting Mayor

Richard daily to mobilize more than 10,000 police officers and impose a curfew on anyone under the age of 21. In addition to police, about 6,700 members of the National Guard, 5,000 federal troops also deployed. On April 6, according to the Chicago Tribune, then mayor Richard daily allowed police to shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with the Molotov cocktail in his hand and to shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting any stores in our city. Imagine the heat a mayor would face if they gave that directive as quoted today. Arson was so extensive that the fires exceeded the capabilities of the city's fire department.

So many buildings did burn to the ground. Many that didn't were so badly damaged they had to be torn down later. Because of this hundreds of people were instantly rendered homeless, families homeless, families of small children. The fires caused an estimated 10 million in damages during more than 48 hours of riding. 11 people killed in the violence and over 2,150 arrests were made. Okay. Now we've gone over the main details of some of the nation's biggest riots prior to 1992. There were, of course, other riots leading up to 92's, LA riots, the 80's, soft, few minor riots at Miami and 82 and 84, also in 91. There were two of the riots, 91, one in New York City's Crown Heights Rides, our Crown Heights area of the

Burle of Brooklyn and also a riot in Washington, DC Now these were bad, lives were lost, a lot of damage done, but neither of them would compare to the 92 riots in LA. So now after a brief sponsor break, let's move into the LA riots. Thanks for listening to our sponsors. Time to head to 1992. 1992. On March 3, 1991, I said I was heading to 92. I meant 91. Highway Patrol clocks in 1987, Han Dai, Excel, driving west on the foot hill freeway. Not exactly the kind of car you want to be driving if you're gonna end up trying to outrun the police That car could do 0 to 16 about 10 days

I'm exaggerating of course, but the old little Hyundai excel not a model known for winning a lot of street races And actually took just under 14 seconds for it to go from 0 to 60 While the 1991 Ford Crown Victoria Popper car model of the California Highway Patrol, it could go from 0 to 69.5 seconds. And that's the commercial model. The souped up police interceptor model, according to some gear heads in an online forum,

they think the police version could go from 0 to 16, about seven and a half seconds. Just a wee bit faster than that Excel. I always think about this kind of shit when it comes to car chases. Unless you're driving like a V8 with custom wheels that you're used to driving real fast. Who are you fucking kidding?

You're not getting away. The driver of the Excel, not in a rational frame of mind, decides to gun it. The California highway patrol attempts to pull over the car, but the driver refuses. That driver was of course one Rodney Glen King, known to Glen, the friends and family. The 25 year old was born April 2, 1965 in Sacramento, California. He'd moved with his parents, Ronald and Odessa to Altadena, Pasadena suburb, when he was two. King's parents cleaned offices and homes put food on the table. His dad, Roland King, died at the age of 42 from pneumonia. Odessa took care of Rodney and his four siblings and Rodney

graduated from John Mwearer High School in Pasadena. Following high school, King drifted between small jobs and petty crime before his fateful encounter that would lead to riots. King had worked as a taxi driver, also as a construction worker. When he was 24, he robbed a store that belonged to a Korean in Monterey Park, California, stole $200 in cash, hit the owner, and was convicted and put behind bars for a year. He was released on December 27th, 1990. On the night of March 3rd, barely two months after his release, Rodney was driving with two friends, Brian Allen, and Freddie Helms.

The three of them having some fun, drinking some drinks, early that evening, watching a basketball game in a friend's house. Then when King saw the lights flashing in his rear-view mirror, he decided to try and outrun the police because the DUI would violate the terms of his recent parole. The high-speed chase would reach speeds of up to 115 miles per hour, which must have meant that pedal was pushed to the floor of that Excel.

I'm pretty sure they don't go any faster than that before King exited the freeway at foot hill Boulevard. Once off the freeway, he doesn't stop, which I get. Now you're risking additional charges for not pulling over. I'm saying to advocate this, but I do understand it. If you didn't want to stop earlier, now you really don't want to stop. Additional police officers with the Ada Police helicopters are now pursuing King through residential streets at 55 to 80 miles an hour.

This goes on for eight miles. Finally, the police managed to corner him. King stops his car in front of a San Fernando Valley apartment building where LAPD and CHP officers surround his car. The LAPD officers are Stacey Kuhn, Lawrence Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore Preseno, and Rolando Salano, and the first CHP officers on the scene are a married couple, Timothy and Melanie Singer. And if all these officers weren't white, they sure is shit-look-white.

And every photo I can find. Important to note, because racial optics go a long way towards the start of the rights. Basically, one of the main cause of the rights. Let's learn a little bit more about one of the men who would be at the center of the story before moving forward. Sergeant Stacy Cun. Stacy Cornell Cun was born on November 23rd, 1950 as a sergeant with the LAPD in 1991. Cun 41 at the time, a well-respected 14-year veteran of the LAPD.

In his years on the force, he'd earned over 90 recommendations, just three reprimands. He had a great record actually. His courage was legendary while working out of the tough South Central District, cooned once witness a prostitute who'd been brought in for a booking fall over from an apparent heart attack. Even though the AIDS epidemic was rampant amongst the city's sex workers at the time, and the prostitute had symptomatic open mouth sores, cooned dropped to the floor and administered mouth to mouth resuscitation. The prostitute who would die in the hospital did in fact have AIDS, and she was also black, important also to note in this story.

Fellow black officers considered cooned to be committed to racial equality. One black officer on the four set of him stacey is a guy you can walk up to and he'll give you the shirt off his back. Koon once even investigated a police brutality charge brought against a white officer by two black transients. He even angered many officers by ordering the accused officer to stand in a lineup for identification by the transients. And the officer was found guilty of using excessive force.

Why am I including these details? Because the 92 riots happened not just because of the perception that LAPD officers got away with beating the shit out of some dude, they happened because many felt that racist white officers got away with beating a black man. So important to look into the previous actions of Sergeant Kuhn. Do they paint a picture of a racist man or not? Back to the arrest of King? California Highway Patrol officer Tim Singer, Shouts for King and his accomplices to get out,

lie on the face, lie face down on the ground. Kings, friends, obey. They're arrested. King defies the command, remains in the car. When he finally gets out, police see that he's acting strangely. He's giggling. He's waving to the police helicopter above him, which the officer is interpret rightfully as a sign of disrespect and a sign that, you know, he's probably drunk, which he was. King then grabs his backside, making officer Melanie Singer think he's trying to draw a weapon. So she draws her gun orders him to lie down on the ground, then Sergeant Kuhn orders Singer to stop and let his officers take charge of the situation. He would later say he thought the CHP officers use of a drawn weapon was a lousy tactic. Instead, he orders the remaining four LAPD officers, Roseno, Powell, Solano,

and Wind, to handcuff King by, quote, swarming him or surrounding him and grabbing him at the same time. King resists LAPD officers use a taser on him twice, trying to subdue the 6 foot 3, 225 pound King who rushes towards Powell, either to attack or escape crashes into him escalating the fight. Something clicks and Sergeant Cunes head, the weird behavior, right, the waving to the helicopter, the fact that the tasers didn't seem to slow him down. He thinks the king is, quote, dusted, a nickname for being under the influence of PCP. After the second attempt to use the taser fails, Cun looks around and sees a bunch of rookies

arriving on the scene. Eventually 17 officers would be there for the arrest. More people, swarming them, making things more chaotic, not good. At the same time, George holiday, a resident of the area starts to videotape the incident on his camcorder from his apartment near the intersection of Foothill Boulevard in Osborne Street in Lakeview, Terrace. As King collides with him, officer Powell smacks King with his baton. King falls to the ground, Powell continues to beat King with his baton. So officer Brasano comes forward to stop him. King manages to get to his knees, but then has hit again several times by Powell and wind

with their batons. At this point, Koon shouts for his officers to hit King again and again with quote, power strokes. King tries to stand up again, but is continually struck at his joints, elbows, wrist, knees, ankles. The officers strike him at least 30, three times and kick him in additional six times before handcuffing him and hogtying his legs. When I read this report, I thought, this sounds bad.

This sounds really bad. Then I watched the video of the arrest, a video I hadn't seen in years, and I thought, fuck, this is worse than I remembered. This is so bad. It is hard not to have an extreme emotional reaction to this arrest. It is brutal. That said, have I ever arrested anyone?

No. Do I really truly know what it takes to subdue someone? I don't. I don't know what it's like to be in the law for law officer side of this equation. Do you ever think about shit like that when you watch these videos if not, you should. It's a logical thing to do.

Not having been in an officer's shoes. I have a hard time understanding how the assaults dished out during this arrest could be justified in any way. King is down on the ground directly surrounded by five officers, two of them beating him with clubs, kicking him. There's three others, you know, nearby based on court documents, over 10 additional officers just out of frame. And I just think how much fucking force did they need? By the time they were hitting him, they could see he was unarmed, right? And some of these officers would later go to jail. And other officers would speak out against their actions.

So I do think because of what I see and what a jury decided. And the fact that other officers spoke out against it, including one officer who was there, it was really bad. But this is important, was it racist? Was it racially motivated? The video can't tell me anything about that. King would later claim that some of the officers called him the N word, but when questioned about this in court under oath, he changed his mind and said that he didn't hear that. He went back and forth and that's a lot actually. He said that maybe they were saying killer or something. no one else heard anything, whether

he was called that or not does matter when it comes to whether or not this was an active racist police brutality. After his beating King is dragged inside of the road as they wait for medical services to a ride. He's taken to a Pacifica hospital. Diagnosed with fractured facial bones and a broken ankle as well as many bruises and lacerations. King's blood and urine samples showed that he'd ingested alcohol and marijuana but no other

drugs, not PCP, as Cunet thought. And this PCP detail, I think, is important. PCP aka Angel Dust, aka Fence Clydeine, Fence Cycladine, Fence Fag. God damn it. Fence Cycladine, I think it's how you say the actual pharmaceutical chemical term there. It's an animal tranquilizer that doubles as a hallucinogen for humans. And one of the many side effects of PCB

can be, quote, feelings of strength, power, and invulnerability as well as a numbing effect on the mind. It doesn't actually make you stronger. That's an urban legend. But it can seriously limit your ability to feel pain. It can block your pain receptors, which can allow you to unleash more of your strength than you normally could to it, in a way it does.

It can also make you really paranoid. And you're fucking hallucinating. In some cases, you're hallucinating. You don't trust anyone, and you can't feel pain. And that makes you real hard to subdue and arrest. I remember once having a conversation with an ER nurse from Seattle who talked about how scary patients coming in high on PCP were.

How it was really hard to restrain them. How the risk of being assaulted, very real. How she'd been hit before. The video of King's beating, again, it looks brutal. It is brutal. But I don't know how fucking hard it is to arrest someone on PCP while minimizing the risk of injury to yourself. These officers, they did know.

Have you ever wrestled someone and it seems random right now? This is important. Or fought someone? I'm roughly Rodney King sized, not quite as tall, but a little heavier. Not the strongest guy, not the weakest. I used to be able to bench over 300 pounds, squat and deadlift over 400.

I used to wrestle some of my buddies who were usually a little bit smaller and weaker than I was. And it is, if you don't have any MMA training, really hard to pin a grown-ass man, even when you have a size and strength advantage. I only bring this up to refute this notion. I've heard a lot recently about, you know, why can't the police basically just be a lot

more gentle when they arrest someone who doesn't want to be arrested? Literally every person I've heard make this argument is someone who I would bet has never wrestled anyone to the ground and pinned them before in their life, at least not as an adult. I've literally never heard this argument come from someone in law enforcement. Does this mean that what happened to King was okay? No, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is maybe a lot of videos

of police arresting someone who is resisting arrest appear brutal because it is inherently at least someone brutal to take down a grownup who does not want to be taken down. And we should be cognizant of that fact when we watch any of these videos. A lot of armchair quarterback can go on about how the police should do their job in 2020 by people who seem to have at least to my eyes no fucking clue how to engage in a violent struggle with someone. I feel like a lot of people just can't handle the sight of violence. It inherently repulses them. They're predisposed

to think it's unnecessary. It's not. Sometimes you need to fucking hit someone and over and over if you want to keep yourself safe. It's not pretty with that life. To think otherwise, it's denied the reality of, you know, sometimes violent animal existence. Bringing this all back to King, did officers hit him over and over again because he was black and they were racist and they were corrupt violent officers. Or did they do it because they thought he was dangerous due to a drug and a system that absolutely could give you a temporary burst of adrenaline that could equate to near superhuman strength and make you very dangerous or some combination of the two.

I don't know. I do know when it comes to the historical narrative of racism and law enforcement, these are important distinctions to consider. On March 4, footage of the beating airs on national television, George Halliday sold the camcorder footage, which was quickly picked up by multiple news programs, including CNN, people across the country see Rodney King take a savage beating, and the same day in an incredibly tone deaf interview, police chief Darryl Gates, who was white, says, quote, if it wasn't for our helicopters, the lighting would have been horrible.

This guy's a fucking idiot. Incredibly tone deaf audience at the public forum where he spoke laughed, not good, really poor choices here. Police chief Darrell Gates and the interesting figure in all of this, not going to say the riots were his fault, but if he'd handled it with a little more tact, LA might have been spared a lot of violence. Gates joined the Los Angeles Police Department as a patrolman in 1949, moving to the ranks until he reached chief in 1978.

During his long tenure as chief, longer than any other chief in LA history, Gates was known for advocating a very strong police presence, increasing the number of police officers on the streets and known for taking an arrest approach, somewhat akin to by any means necessary. And this hard line stance he had against crime failed miserably.

He became police chief in 1978, and during the 80s, he was the chief that entire decade, violent crime in LA grew at more than twice the national average. In 1986, LA had the highest number of reported violent crimes per 100,000 residents in the nation and the highest number of property crimes. Gates once said, we are the butchers of society. Everybody wants to eat meat,

but nobody wants to know how it's made, which is exactly the same thing in law enforcement. Everybody wants safe streets, but nobody wants to know how it'll be done. And I get what he's saying here, I actually do, but man, dude. Why would you fucking word it that? We're a fuck, we're fucking butchers. We're fucking cut you down. If you fucking try and do we're buck, we're fucking butchers, we'll fucking cut you down.

If you fucking try and do anything wrong, it's like, that, that, that, that, that, that. Don't talk like that, please, ever. LA's mayor at that time, and former long time, LAPD officer himself, Tom Bradley, who was black, not a fan of gates. Had been complaining for years before the King beating, the gates needed to reign in his officers

and make more of an effort on the community outreach front be less brutal right be more communicative after the Darrell gates interview with the video still making the rounds in the media the country becomes outraged at the brutality of the beating the racial injustice and what seemed to be a fucked up attitude on behalf of the LAPD. I said a little while back that sometimes violence is necessary and I do think that but only as a last resort it seems like that but only as a last resort. It seems like gates liked it as a first resort. It seems like he was the kind of dude who liked to show force first, maybe talk about shit later.

And that's a terrible approach for a police commissioner, I think. Prioritize befriending the community, not declaring war on them, not being a quote unquote butcher. On March 5th, just two days after the beating, Sergeant Stacy Kuhn, Officer Lawrence Powell, Officer Lawrence Powell, Officer Timothy Wind, and Officer Theodore Brazeno are arrested. They're charged with assault and with using excessive force. On March 8th, Stephen Lerman, attorney for Rodney King displays a photo of his client

during a press conference at his office in Beverly Hills, King's doctor outlined the extent of the man's injuries for reporters during the meeting, King alleged he had suffered 11 skull fractures, permanent brain damage, broken bones and teeth, kidney failure, and emotional and physical trauma. On March 15, an LA County grand jury indictment is unsealed, charging the foreoffers, seen in the video with felony assault, and use of excessive force. Six days later, the foreoffers plead not guilty. On November 26, the officer's trial has moved to semi-valley.

Receime Valley, excuse me, after the court determines that the case's massive publicity and the highly charged LA political environment might not allow for the officers to receive a fair trial. But the place they move it to, semi-valley, was a nearly all white suburb, 30 miles north of downtown LA, and home to a large number of LAPD officers,

many are outraged and rightfully so. It seems like it's going to be a kangaroo court. March 5th, 1992, the trial begins. The jury has no members who are entirely black. It's composed of nine white Americans, three women, six men, one by racial man, one Latina woman, one Asian American woman. Interestingly, the by racial man, Henry King, half white king half white half black raised by white mother and black father uh... looked white enough to have the media initially port him is being white

and two thousand seventeen henry was interviewed by abc about the verdict he and the other jurors came to and he said the beating tape didn't look good it looked bad but it was as far as i was concerned it wasn't against the law

and then i couldn't can victim because me, they were doing what they were supposed to do. And well, the majority of us felt the same way at the trial. Henry, interesting figure, turned down interviews for years and years. Then took this one with ABC because after years of reflection, he wanted to share some long held thoughts. He also said, I just wanted people to know, you know, that we weren't just white racists and wanted to find all those police officers innocent because if they, if I felt that they broke the law, I would have found them guilty in a second.

So I just wanted, I really wanted people to know that the people that are on that, the jurors that were on the trial were human beings and we weren't, and we were just doing the best that we could. As I grew older, I kept wanting, I just wanted this all, as Rodney King said, let's all get along, and that's what I wanted. Everybody just to not have this prejudice and get along with no matter what race you are, what background you are. That's why I wanted to, I wanted to do this interview. I wanted to let people know that we're all human beings, and that we're all trying to do the right thing.

So interesting perspective. I thought it was important to share it. According to the only man in the jury, who at least was partially African American, that he's saying that they didn't let officers off because they were racist and just didn't care that a black man had been beaten. Moving on from the jury, the prosecutor, Terry White

is also black. He had a tough job ahead of him. He felt that all of the potential jurors seemed to be very pro law enforcement. During his opening statement for the prosecution on March 5th, Deputy District Attorney White played the entire holiday videotape of King's Beating. This March 5th, 1992, jurors would see this same tape

over and over before the trial was finished. The prosecution used CHP officer Melanie Singer for its star witness. King would not testify. He was too drunk to remember much about the beating and put him on the stand would open him up to cross examination about his prior criminal offenses. More over prosecutors feared King would lose his temper during cross examination and antagonize jurors.

CHP officer Melanie Singer testified officer Powell came up to the right of King and in a matter of seconds he took out his baton. He had it in a power swing, and he struck the driver across the top of his cheekbone, splitting the face from the top of his ear to his chin. As by white, whether there are, is there any reason for the strike to the head by Officer Powell at the time he struck him? Singer answered, in my opinion, no sir, there was no reason for it. Pretty damning. When a fellow officer testifies that what you did was fucked up and unnecessary, that there

was no reason for you to be that violent. Other prosecution witnesses focused their testimony on statements by Powell that suggested his callousness or worse to emergency room nurses testified concerning a conversation at the hospital between Powell and King. Lawrence Davis said that Powell compared the beating to a good hardball game and boasted that he had quite a few home runs. He are nurse Carol Edwards claimed also to have heard Powell's hardball remark and added that he said we want a new loss or something to that effect. So this guy seems like a fucking asshole to very least. Just like the wrong guy to be a police officer. Seems

like a piece of shit, but not necessarily racist. You might have been an equal opportunity, fucking abuser of his authority. On March 17th, the prosecution rests just two weeks into the trial. The defense keeps going. Midway through testimony of the defendants prosecutors began to realize they might lose the case as they relied too much on video evidence didn't take into account other factors like the testimony of the officers. The verdict is announced on April 29, 92 at 315 PM, Sergeant Stacey C. Cune and officers

Lawrence M. Powell, Theodore J. Brasano and Timothy E. Wind are acquitted of the assault and acquitted of excessive force on Rodney King. Jurors were not convinced that the 82nd videotape of the incident represented the entire story. They debated the officers fate for seven days. They easily acquitted wind in percent Oh, debated about coons responsibility. Most of the discussion focused on Powell's actions. Eight jurors wanted to acquit Powell of all charges, but in the end, they were unable to persuade the others on one of the assault charges. Soon after the verdict is read, an angry Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley denounces it as senseless declaring the jury's verdict will never blind the world to what we saw on the

videotape. And just over two hours later, LA would be in flames. 62 minutes after the King verdict, five black male use entered a Korean owned payless liquor and deli at Florence and Dalton Avenue. They use each the youths, each grab bottles of malt liquor and head out the door where they're blocked by the son of the stores owner, David Lee. One young man knocks Lee on the head with the bottle while two others throw their bottles shattering the front window. One of the use shouts, this is for Rodney King. Clearly another kind of racism going on here.

I spoke about this at the beginning of the episode. The not guilty verdicts were the match, but the gasoline had been poured long before the trial. This is the shop owner didn't have shit to do with any of this. The deadly Los Angeles rights of 1992 are now underway. At 5.25 pm, police respond to a call at the intersection of Florence and Normandy avenues. Beer cans are being thrown at passing motorists. They leave quickly and don't return for another three hours.

The violence escalates and spreads to areas throughout the city. At 6.30, angry demonstrators began gathering outside police headquarters and TV stations. The intersection of Florence and Normandy has grown more violent, with people looting and lighting fires and TV stations airing clips of the chaos. The reaction to the acquittal in South Central LA

particularly violent. At the time more than half the population of the entire area is black. Tension had already been mounted in the neighborhood and the years leading up to the riots. The unemployment rate was about 50% 50% a drug epidemic was ravaging the area. Gang act activity and violent crimes have been rising for years. All of that shit had poured quite a bit of extra emotional gasoline on the area as well. Bystander Terry Barnett was at Florence in Normandy that first night and remembers watching the cops drive by riders without stopping.

Bystanders to the violence were equally scared of the riders and hoped police would help, but they didn't. Barnett told NPR in 1992, there were four cops in each car that passed by. They saw us. They looked right through us. And I got to say, can you blame them? Not saying they should have fled, but shit. Riders are riding in this neighborhood specifically because they hate the police.

And now people are complaining that the police are not helping them. Of course many officers are not going to help in a situation like that. They're keenly aware that their very presence could easily incite a lot more violence. What a no-win situation. And again, not saying it was right for them to pass by, but I get the motivation. It's a police do go into quell the riding. They will have to use force, which could lead to more beatings or even deaths, which will then probably lead to much more riding. What the fuck are they supposed to do? Go in and ask everyone to calm down pretty plays with sugar on top. Meanwhile, police chief Darrell tone deaf gates, the cleric's

officers are dealing with the situation calmly, maturely and professionally, and then drives to a Brentwood reception and fundraiser for the campaign against charter, charter amendment F, a police reform ballot measure. Fucking gates. Going to a fundraiser in Brentwood, super white, super wealthy neighborhood. This motherfucker was about as tone-defin arrogant as they came. At least pretend to prioritize the riots. You silly asshole. Meanwhile, one of the biggest incidents to riot was going down on Normandy Avenue. Taking a shortcut off the Santa Monica Freeway down Normandy Avenue was nothing out of the

ordinary for 39-year-old construction driver, a construction truck driver, Reginald Denney. In the late afternoon of April 29, 1992, he'd loaded up his 18-wheeler with 27 short tons of sand headed towards a plant in Inglewood to make a delivery. He drove for a company called Transit Mixed Concrete. He would listen to the radio, making his route like normal. Little did he know that he would drive smack into the middle

of an angry mob looking for vengeance. This poor bastard talked about wrong place at the wrong time. At 6.46 pm after entering the intersection at Normandy, in Florence, rioters start throwing rocks at his windows. You can hear people shouting for him to stop. It isn't as if he can do anything else. There's a sea of people in the street. Antoine Miller climbs up, opens the truck door, given an unidentified man the chance to pull

Denny out and throw him to the ground. A man named Henry Watson stands on Denny's neck to hold him down as a group of black men surround him. And then these men start to tickle regional Denny. At first, it's kind of fun. He's laughing. I mean, he's, you know, he's saying like, stop, stop it guys, it's that stop.

But then one of the men, Henry Watson starts to tickle too hard. It's more like he's trying to slam his fingers in between Denny's ribs and into his chest cavity than he's trying to tickle him. And Denny is like, stop it. Quit it. Quit it. Quit it. Stop. And then Antoine is like, come on dude, we're just tickling you.

It's fun. Tickling is fun. And Denny is like, it's not fun for me. Not for me, it's not. And then the guys let him go. But not before wedging him so hard, they tear all the elastic off his undies, give him handaroids and a hernia and a dislocated butthole.

Then Denny drove home with some sore ribs and a bruiseko and a dislocated butthole and you know, he never got over it. And of course that's not what happened. Sorry, it's fucking hard. It's fine comedy angles in this topic. That felt like one of the very few opportunities to lighten shit up at least for a second.

Now let's go back into seriousness. What really happened sadly was that Danny got the shit beat out of him. Anthony Brown kicked him in the stomach as Watson walks away to other unidentified men joining the attack. One hurls a five pound oxygenator, stolen from a truck at Denny's head, another kicks him and hits him with a claw hammer, a claw hammer, then Damien Monroe Williams,

just 19 years old, takes a cinder block and bashes Denny's skull with it, fracturing it in 91 places, including his jaw, cheekbone, eye socket, and nose. Super lucky this hit didn't kill him. The attack did cause severe brain damage. A video also captured this incident and it showed Williams doing a football style victory dance in the road, flashing gang signs at the Los Angeles news service helicopter. I watched that video too. Holy shit. So brutal. The beating apparently over some enthralled beer bottles at the unconscious body of Denny, a man searches Denny's back pockets, taken his wallet. The only reason

Denny didn't die that day was because of four cell central residents, Bobby Green, Lee Yule, Titus Murphy, and Terry Barnett, who stopped him to help. Thank God these guys stood up against mob mentality. If they hadn't, I have to think Denny would have died. Despite the risk to their own lives, they grabbed Denny, put him back into his cab, driving to a nearby hospital,

where doctors are barely able to save his life. Soon after Bobby Green takes him to the hospital, Danny has a seizure. His left eye is so badly dislocated, it would have fallen into his sinus cavity had the surgeon not replaced the crushed bone with a piece of plastic. Even after recovering a permanent crater would remain in his forehead. Four of the people responsible for Danny's beating would end up being nicknamed the LA-4 and they would all be arrested. Remarkably, Denny wanted to use his media exposure to soothe racial tensions, reminding

the media that the four people who rescued him were also black, as were the doctors who treated him. He became friends with his rescuers, even help Bobby Green get hired by Denny's employer, Transit Mixed. What a moment of beauty and a sea of all this anguish. Denny later appeared on the Phil Donahue show forgot about Donahue to shake hands with one of his assailants Henry Keith Watson and the two made their peace Denny ended up having a great sense of humor about the entire incident. I could not have been easy in an interview with the Baltimore Son he spoke of his daughter Ashley and said with the laugh my daughter calls me regional denty

Which is pretty funny. Today, Denty has left Los Angeles behind rarely speaking to the media about his ordeal, hasn't given an interview that I'm aware of in years. He moved to Lake Havasu, Arizona, found work as a boat mechanic, 67, and I hope he's enjoying a nice retirement, maybe catching a shit ton of fish or something.

Reginald Denty became the face of those beaten by an angry mob during the riots, but there were others like Fidel Lopez. Just minutes after Dendi was rescued, Fidel was pulled from his truck, robbed, and beaten. Lopez was a self-employed construction worker. He was driving home from work at around 7 pm. He made his way down Normandy. He heard shouts and saw several businesses on fire.

And again, this poor son of a bitch, wrong place, wrong time. When he gets to the intersection of Florence and Normandy, a mob starts throwing rocks and bottles at his truck. He tries to escape, but his path is blocked. One writer opens the door, tries to drag him out of the truck, shouting, white motherfucker. Lopez yells back, I'm not white, I'm Hispanic, and the guy grabbing him yells, same shit.

And he yanks him to fuck out of the truck. Riders including Damien Williams, then beat the shit out of Lopez, set his truck on fire. One rider smashes a big speaker into Lopez's forehead, then after he loses consciousness some people from the crowd spray paint his bleeding body black and then douse him with gasoline. What the fuck? Just violent opportunists full of bloodlust at this point. Luckily, before being burned alive, he's rescued by Benny Newton, a black minister. Newton,

a brave bastard, if there ever was one, ran straight into the melee, carrying his Bible. He told the men beating Lopez, kill him, and you have to kill me too. At about this time, Lopez stopped breathing. Newton began to pray. It was three to five minutes almost and he began to groan and then his eyes came back into focus. He began to breathe. Newton recalled later. The two managed to get out of the crowd. They found others to help him. And then when it was all over Lopez and Newton became friends during Lopez's recovery,

sadly, Reverend Newton would die in 1993, just a year after the LA riots from leukemia. Before he died, LA Mayor Tom Bradley had given Newton a commendation for his courage, and it was the second time the two had met. 35 years earlier, Mayor Bradley had been a police officer, as I mentioned earlier, a member of the LAPD, and he'd arrested Newton himself for pimping and drug dealing. Newton spent considerable time in prison in his younger years, then turned his life around, dedicated his life to helping instead of hurting and die to hero. Nice little inspirational story tucked inside all this madness back to the timeline now,

April 29, 1992, the first day of the riots, 830 PM, LAPD chief gates, returns to the city's emergency response center where Mayor Tom Bradley is as well. Gates and Mayor Bradley have not spoken to one another directly for more than a year before the unrest. At 845, mayor Bradley calls a local state of emergency, moments later, LA governor Pete Wilson at Bradley's request orders the National Guard to activate 2000 reserve soldiers. At 11 Bradley in a grim televised address says the city will take whatever resources needed to quell the violence. He says the city is receiving assistance from the county sheriff's department, the California Highway Patrol, and police and fire departments from

neighboring cities. We believe that the situation is now simmering down pretty much under control, Bradley says. Stay off the streets. It's anticipated that a curfew will be put into effect tomorrow night. Well, the situation was not under control. The following day, April 30th brought more chaos. At 12.15 a.m., Bradley declared a sunset to sunrise curfew in the area where most of the rioting was taken place. The directive also prohibited the sale of ammunition and the sale of gasoline except for automobiles. By sunrise around 6 a.m., it is clear the riots have disrupted life across a wide path, not just in South Central, but from downtown to the west side, from South Los Angeles further South down into Pasadena.

Bus service is canceled across the city. Many employers tell their workers to stay home. Mail delivery is halted throughout South Los Angeles. Professional baseball, professional basketball games are canceled. Schools are closed throughout LA. By 8 a.m. the National Guard, actually, I'm sorry. I spoke I turned there.

Professional baseball and basketball games are canceled is what I have in my notes. I don't know that the games were professional if I had the season run. It might have been college. Not that that's important, but I don't want the email of, hey, that's actually, there was nothing to get. So yeah, schools are closed throughout L.A.

by 8 a.m. the National Guard's 2000 troops are in place at Armories, but not deployed until later that afternoon. Governor Pete Wilson would later say that the LAPD couldn't make up its mind about how to best use the guard. Beginning around noon, the National Guard is officially deployed by late afternoon.

Hundreds of troops take up positions and hotspots around the city. At 12.45 pm, Bradley expands the curfew to the entire city shortly before midnight due to increased chaos and destruction. Bradley and Wilson announced they have requested more National Guard troops to bring LA County the total to 6,000.

They also asked the US military to be placed on alert. By 1 a.m. on May 1st, scores of merchants from South LA to Midwilsher to Koreatown have armed themselves with shotguns and automatic weapons to protect their businesses from looters and fire bombs. Also more than 1,000 peaceful protesters gather at a rally in Western Avenue in

Wilshire Boulevard. At 245 outside the office of his Beverly Hills attorney, hundreds of reporters gathered to hear Rodney King make a public statement about the riots. Wearing a blue sweater, blue shirt, blue tie and blue slacks, he steps out into a swarm of reporters. Nervous, barely audible, his voice lost at times to the blasting sounds of helicopter rotors overhead. King said, people, I just want to say, barely audible, his voice lost at times to the blasting sounds of helicopter rotors overhead. King said, people, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?

Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids? It's just not right. It's not right. It's not going to change anything. We'll get our justice. Please, we can get along here. We can all get along. I mean,

we're all stuck here for a while. Let's try to work it out. Let's try to beat it. Let's try to work it out. He went on to say, I don't see how you can grow as a world without being able to get along with people. So many people is hating out there and it's not making a difference. And this speech makes me think of that cliche. The more things change, the more things stay the same. Think about how polarized America is right now. How much hate is being spread? King was and is right. How can we grow as a world without being able

to get along with people? In order for the world to get better, we all have to continue to try and work shit out. At least most of us do, screaming at each other is not going to move things forward. You can't change people's minds by yelling at them, telling them they're fucking stupid, right? We have to be able to communicate.

To listen, not just yell, less knee jerk, cancel culture bullshit, less echo chambers, more hard conversations with people, we disagree with, need to be had. 15 minutes later, 3pm, about 4,000 federal troops, Marines and soldiers begin arriving at Marine Corps airstations and Tussed in El Toro. By 6pm, most of the National Guard troops have been deployed.

In addition, 1,700 federal officers from various agencies arrive in LA. Governor Pete Wilson makes provisions for another 2,000 guardsmen to be called if needed, with Mayor Bradley's and Chief Gates' support. The next day may 2nd at 8am, the first of 6,000 alleged looters and arsonists are scheduled to begin appearing in court, but due to the staggering volume of cases, arrangements do not begin until mid-afternoon. At 11 a.m., an estimated 30,000 people marched for racial healing in support of beleaguered business owners in Koreatown.

At 11,30, Bradley announces that the citywide curfew will be in effect indefinitely. At 4 p.m., the first Marine Corps units arrive in Compton. Around 4,000 soldiers and Marines order crowds to disperse and the riots seemed for the first time like they might be quieting down. On May 3rd, around 10.30 a.m. the Reverend Jesse Jackson meets with leaders in Koreatown to urge an end to animosity between African American and Korean American communities.

Jackson who arrived in LA on Thursday, traversed the city from dawn to midnight, pleading for an end of the violence and a renewal of hope. He met with a weary crowd at a post office at 43rd Street, Central Avenue. He prayed with victims of the riots at an Englewood hospital. He preached it on predominantly white church and Pasadena

and he visited many black church communities. At 1 p.m., Mayor Bradley announces the crisis is over. The Harbor Freeway offerings from Martin Luther King Boulevard to Imperial Highway are reopened. At 1 p.m., Mayor Bradley announces the crisis is over. The Harbor Freeway offerings from Martin Luther King Boulevard to Imperial Highway are reopened. On the first night of the riots, the California Highway Patrol had closed the exit ramps off the Harbor Freeway from the Santa Monica Freeway to Century Boulevard, the closure was later moved south. The RTD rapid transit district resumes some service in areas of South Los Angeles during

the day. The lines that ran into this area had been canceled since April 30th. On the night of the fourth, but their street corner still guarded by soldiers, school banks, and businesses reopen. Violence and crime still breaks out sporadically, but things continue to settle.

Thousands queue up at state employment offices. Economists estimate that 20,000 to 40,000 people were put out of work when their places of business were either looted or burned. An unemployment was already hovering at roughly 50% in some of these neighborhoods before the loss of all of these thousands of jobs. Lasting five days, the riots would leave 50 people dead, more than 2,000 injured, the rioting destroyed or damaged over 1,000 buildings in the LA area, and the estimated cost of damage was over a billion dollars.

On May 9th, federal troops stand down. Two days later on May 11th, former FBI director William H. Webster is appointed to direct an investigation of the Los Angeles police department's response to the rioting. Many claim the LAPD's response was slow and they didn't do their best to protect business owners and private property. On June 28th, police chief gates retire retires from the LAPD after 43 years of service. The last 14 is chief. The game was real sad to see him go. On August 5th, 1992, three months after their acquittals and criminal court, Sergeant Stacy Cune, officers,

Lawrence Powell, Theodore Brzeno and Timothy Wind are indicted on federal charges of violating King civil rights. On August 25th, 92 and toon Miller, Henry Watson and Damien Williams, Stanisepiria, court and Los Angeles for a reigning and charges in connection with the riot related beating of truck original Denny. On December 7th, Damien Monroe Williams ascends to 10 years in jail, the maximum term for the Denny, for the attack on Denny and for assault on four other people on Florence and Normandy, avenues. On February 25th, 1993, the civil rights trials begins for the same officers involved in King's Beating. Unlike the Simee Valley trial or Simee Valley trial, the federal jury was racially mixed.

In addition to a more favorable jury, the prosecution had other advantages in their second trial. Climber noted later that the government had the advantage of seeing everything that had gone wrong in the first trial. On April 10th, the case was submitted to the jury. On April 17th, the jury found two of the officers, Kuhn and Powell, guilty. They acquitted officers' wind in Brazil. Prosecutors declared a victory, and this time, the streets of LA remained quiet. On August 4th, the federal judge ordered Officer Lawrence Powell and Sergeant Stacey Kuhn to spend 30 months in prison for violating Rodney King's civil rights.

Powell and Kuhn would never work in law enforcement again. Also, it would never be proven that either one of them were racist. They did what they did because Rodney King or that they did what they did because Rodney King was black. I do feel that's important to point out again. The beating of Rodney King was brutal, a true tragedy, right? They went to prison because of it, but was it racially motivated? I don't know. King went back and forth before he died. Sometimes saying the beating was not racial,

sometimes saying it was, even he didn't seem to believe. Consistently, he was beaten because he was black. On April 19th, 1994, Rodney King is awarded damages from a civil trial in which King sued the city of LA. A jury awarded him a 3.8 million for medical bills, pain and suffering sustained as a result of the beating. He'd asked for 56 million, one for every strike he received. On June, you know, the numbers a little different than earlier, one for every strike that he claimed to receive. On June 17, 2012, just weeks after the 20th anniversary of the riots, soon after releasing

this memoir, The Riot Within, by journey from a billion to redemption, King died. King's fiance called police to report that she found him at the bottom of the swimming pool of their home in Realtto, California. His autopsy report states that he drowned because he was under the effect of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and PCP, which probably caused cardiac arrhythmia and made him unable to save himself from drowning.

Now let's get out of this timeline. Good job soldier, you've made it back barely. After the LA riots in 92, the next 20 odd years were pretty quiet in America as far as riots go. 96, there was a riot in St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Florida over the police fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old and totaled rioters responsible for an approximate 5 million of property damage, at least 11 people were injured and approximately 20 people were arrested. The 21st century has had a resurgence of these kinds of riots brought

up by conflicting stories about interactions between white police officers and black citizens. One of the more recent ones, one of the more recent of these riots, occurred in 2014. This is the Ferguson right. On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, Jr., 18-year-old black man was fatally shot by 28-year-old white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the city of Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. The shooting was highly controversial, but Forensics and eyewitness accounts showed that Brown did try to take Wilson's gun from him while he was in the police cruiser and that he later charged at Officer Wilson.

Other witnesses report that Brown used the phrase, hands up, don't shoot and didn't need to be shot. That slogan quickly became one of the slogans for a growing movement against police brutality. And I got to say it infuriates me that Michael Brown was turning to a martyr. The more I looked into his story, the less deserving of that title, it seems he was. Was his shooting unnecessary or was justified? I'll break down my thoughts a few moments. In the writing that followed his death three hundred and twenty one people arrested there were ten injuries to the public six injuries to police officers uh... i watched the security camera footage of michael brown stealing a box of uh...

cigarettes like little cigar type things pushing a mini martin ploy out of his way when the guy tried to stop him from leaving with stolen merchandise uh... department of justice in the shooting determined witnesses who corroborated Officer Wilson's account were credible while those who contradicted his account were not, their stories were all over the place. Investigation determined that Michael Brown was walking

towards Officer Wilson when he was shot, that Officer Wilson was back and up when he was shot or when he did the shooting. Also Officer Wilson's face was bruised allegedly from a physical altercation with Brown. Also, and Wilson's face was bruised allegedly from a physical altercation with Brown. Also, and this is important, Michael Brown was gigantic and aggressive. He was six foot four in an athletic 292 pounds.

That's a big fucking dude. So did Officer Wilson shoot him because he was a white racist asshole who just couldn't wait to kill a young black man or did a 300 pound powerful dude try to take a cop's gun and create a life or death situation where Wilson felt that his life was threatened and he defended himself. In the security camera, I spoke of earlier, taking moments before the shooting, he doesn't just push the store employee. He also walks back into the store after a blatantly

stealing shit and broad daylight to obviously intimidate the man again. It looks like he's about to hit him. It doesn't pay any picture of an innocent young man who doesn't want problems. He comes across as someone who is definitely a troublemaker. Wilson gave his account of the incident in an interview with the detective and in testimony before a grand jury of what happened to him and Brown moments after this theft. He said he had just left a call involving a sick person when he heard on his radio that there was a theft in progress at a local convenience store.

Wilson heard the description of the suspects. Soon after observed two black males walking down the middle of the street, Wilson pulled up to them and told the two to walk on the sidewalk and Johnson replied, we're almost to our destination. As they passed his window, Brown said, fuck what you have to say. Wilson then backed up about 10 feet to where they were and attempted to open his door. After backing up, Wilson told the two to come here and Brown told him in reply,

what the fuck are you gonna do? Wilson shut the door and Brown approached him and he opened the door again trying to push him back while telling him to get back. Brown then, quote, started swinging and punching at me from outside the vehicle. Wilson said, and Brown had his body against the door. Wilson said the first strike from Brown was a glancing blow, and then at that point, he was trying to get Brown's arms out of his face. This is when Brown turned to his left

and handed Johnson several packs of stolen cigarette loads he'd been holding. Wilson then grabbed Brown's right arm, trying to get control, but Brown hit him in the face. Wilson said he felt like a five year old holding on to Hulk Hogan while he attempted to restrain Brown when he reached through his police car window. He said he thought about using his mace and his baton when he was unable to access either of them. He then drew his weapon pointed it at Brown told him to stop or he would shoot order

him to the ground. According to Wilson Brown then said you're too much of a fucking pussy to shoot me and grab for his gun and twisted it, pointed it at him into his hip area. Wilson placed his left hand against Brown's hand and his other hand on the gun, push for with both his arms, the gun was somewhat lined up with Brown. Wilson pulled the trigger twice, but the weapon failed to discharge. On the next try, the gun fired, Brown then attempted to hit him multiple times inside his vehicle.

Wilson shot at Brown again, but missed. Brown took off running east, while Wilson exited his vehicle and radioed for backup. Wilson then followed Brown, yelling for him to stop and get on the ground, but he kept running. Brown eventually stopped, turned, made a gruntie noise, and then started running back at the officer with his right hand under his shirt in his waistband. Brown ignored Wilson's commands to his stop and his waistband. Brown ignored Wilson's commands to stop and get on the ground so Wilson fired multiple shots at him, paused, yelled at him to get on the ground again. Brown was still charging at him, had not slowed down. Wilson fired another set of shots. Brown was still running at him. When Brown was about eight to ten

feet away, Wilson fired more shots with one of those hitting Brown on the head, which brought him down with his hand still in his waistband. Wilson said two patrol cars showed up at approximately 15 to 20 seconds after the final shots. When his supervisor arrived, he was sent to the police station. Wilson told detectives Brown had reached his right hand into his waistband. The hand still appeared to be in the waistband after Brown was shot. The medical investigator, the scene of the shooting did not take any photographs, testified

to the grand jury that Brown's left hand was under his dead body near the waistband and that the right hand was extended outwards. And numerous accounts, numerous witness accounts were consistent with Wilson's account, also agreed with the physical evidence at hand. Many witnesses corroborated that Wilson acted in self-defense during the event, a number of these witnesses who corroborated the account of the events expressed fear and apprehension in testifying for the police saying they had been harassed or threatened by individuals from the Ferguson community.

So nothing rational I can find seems to point to Michael Brown being unjustly killed. But the riot that followed his death, you know, just didn't care about reason. Rides can happen due to nothing but optics, nothing but perception. And the perception was it was a racially motivated killing. An example of racist police brutality. Now, let's jump ahead. There's too many examples of possible police brutality from you to explore in one suck. Let's jump to the primary source of recent rioting, to the death and very possibly, if not

probable, murder of George Floyd. Protests and subsequent violence began on May 26, 2020, the day after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. I have watched this disturbing video so many times. And again, we'll have no experience restraining anyone. No part of me understands why officer Derek Chauvin felt that he had to keep his fucking knee on George Floyd's neck like he did. As George repeatedly stated, he could not breathe.

For was initially reported, it's eight minutes and 46 seconds. What was actually seven minutes and 46 seconds still nearly eight fucking minutes. Why? He was handcuffed. He was on the ground. He was begging to be given the chance to breathe. He does not appear to be resisting arrest. He appears to be struggling to fucking breathe. There is surveillance footage of various early moments of George Floyd's arrest. And unlike the story of Michael Brown Floyd does not appear to be aggressive, violent. He does not appear to resist arrest at all. Three other officers look on as Eric, as officer Shovon, Nelt on Floyd's neck, not as Upper Beck, his neck. Local protests began in the Minneapolis St. Paul metropolitan area of Minnesota before

quickly spreading nationwide in over 2,000 cities and towns in over 60 countries. They were protests, mostly peaceful, and support of the Black Lives Matter movement that became connected to Floyd's death. Protests continued throughout June and July with polls of the time estimating that between 15 million and 26 million people had participated at some point in the demonstrations in the US, making the protests perhaps the largest overall in US history. And while the majority of protests have been peaceful, demonstrations and many cities did escalate into riots, looting and streets cremishes with police. And by the end of June, upwards of 14,000 people had been arrested.

The city of Minneapolis Community Planning and Economic Development Department gave an early estimate of at least 220 buildings damaged and 55 million in property damage in the city from fires and vandalism, centered on the Lake Street area, city and state officials have requested state and federal aid to rebuild and repair, later estimates projected damages to be upwards of 500 million.

Several other cities have claimed millions of dollars in damages including Atlanta and Chicago. The death count during the 2020 riots is difficult to determine. So far, claims range from 15 to 30, maybe even more. Some reports state that 26 people have died just from gunshot wounds alone. And we can do a whole suck on George Floyd's death and maybe we will someday and the subsequent riots. We can do several too much for one suck. So let's refocus on the questions I asked at the beginning of this suck. Is American law enforcement infested with systemic racism

and does that racism lead to a disproportionate amount of police brutality directed towards African Americans. Clearly based on a lot of the information I presented this week, police in the US do have a long history of clashing with African American communities. Clearly, sometimes the police do for sure kill the wrong people. Brianna Taylor did not deserve to die. But again, that does not mean she was killed because of racism, because racist cops just love to shoot black people. Obviously during the years of slavery and Jim Crow laws, things were deplorable, but has America improved since the Civil Rights era, or is racism the same as some blame, perhaps even worse today than it was in the 1960s, on a widespread level?

I'm never arguing that some cops aren't racist or assholes or overly aggressive, or even killers. Of course, some are. There are some of those kinds of people in all different kinds of professions, and it's especially important to weed them out of law enforcement. I do understand that. And quite a few have been fired this year for being racist, which is fucking fantastic. But again, a systemic racism, a real problem in today's law enforcement community.

Let's look at this from two different perspectives. First, let's examine the public perception of what's going on between African Americans and the police. Then we'll look at studies that have been done regarding crime and victimization rates. What do the stats say? According to a recent Pew Research Survey, the majorities of both black and white Americans say black people are treated less fairly than whites in dealing with a police and by the criminal justice system as a whole.

84% of black adults said that in dealing with a police, blacks are generally treated less fairly than whites. 63% of whites said the same. Similarly, 87% of blacks and 61% of whites said that the US criminal justice system treats black people less fairly. While white Democrats and white Republicans have vastly different views of how black people

are treated by police and the white or justice system, large numbers of both groups do believe African Americans are not treated fairly. And overwhelming majority of white Democrats say black people are treated less fairly than whites by the police, 88% and in the criminal justice system, 86% according to the 2019 poll, about 4 and 10 white Republicans agree, 43%, 39% respectively. What does the law community think? In a 2016 survey of nearly 8,000 police officers from departments with at least 100 officers, 2 thirds believe that most incidents of police brutality with African Americans were isolated

incidents and not signs of broader problems between police and the black community, the general public does not seem to agree. In a companion survey of more than 45 hundred US adults, 60% of the public called such incident signs of broader problems between police and African Americans. I would guess that number is even higher now. Interestingly, or maybe obviously, the views given by police themselves sharply differed by race. A majority of black officers, 57% said that brutality and stints were evidence of a broader problem, but only 27% of white officers and 26% of his spannics, of his spannic officers agreed. So the majority of black officers and the majority of the public believe that the police

are unfairly violent with African Americans. That is hard to ignore, but do stats back up this perception. Let's look into some arrest stats and start by examining a 2020 Harvard study. Black people were found to be two to three times more likely on average than white people to be killed during police contact, with that rate varying widely by geographic location. The Chicago metro area had the largest racial inequality in police killings, with black people being 6.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white people. These ratios were also high in the metropolitan areas of San Francisco, New York, St. Louis,

Columbus, Ohio, Milwaukee, Trenton, New Jersey, Asheville, North Carolina, Dayton, Ohio, Reno, Nevada, ranging from 4.3 to 5.9 times more likely. That stats from the study do seem to back up the public's perception that black men have a much higher chance of being killed by police and other demographics that they are the victims of police brutality more often than their white counterparts is troubling for sure is systemic racism to blame or are certain media outlets purposefully excluding the context for these interactions between black Americans and the police. How often do criminals within the black community often gang members, for, resist arrest, and attack police compared to members of other races?

Did you think of that? I did not initially. I think it's an important question. If one race of people for any reason are more consistently combative with the police, and then members of that same race die more often in police custody, whose fault is that? Is it law enforcement or the fault of the victims who are not really victims in that scenario, but aggressors. The FBI has compiled crime data from many of the 17,000 police precincts across the country.

Different police agencies do have different ways of reporting. Let me preface this with this. Somewhere near 70% of crimes committed are never reported and many precincts also don't report as noted. So these stats not complete, but they're the best we've got. And important to look at for context. Black Americans make up roughly 13 to 14% of the US population, whites make up a little over 60%. However, in many large cities, Black Americans make up a larger percentage of the population, sometimes over half. With Black Americans making up only 13% of the

overall population, it's interesting to learn that depending on the year, black Americans have committed as high as 52% of the homicides in the nation. That was the average between 1980 and 2008. And the same data set, 45% of the offenders were white. Breaking these stats down further, we can look at the fact that it's mostly men-committee murder regardless of race. So it's not 13% of the population representing 52%

of the homicides, it's around 6.5%. And if you factor in age, which the FBI stats have, you see that older black men are rarely perpetrators cutting the number in half again, roughly. So now we're talking about 2% to 3% of the US population committing near half of the homicides. Obviously, the people who do the killing are a very small percentage within that 2% to 3% of young black males. And the overwhelming majority of young black men are not criminals, let alone murderers, but still, it's a fucking crazy number.

Who are they killing, mainly other black Americans? That stats show that black on black crime is a much more significant national problem than white law officer on black citizen violent crime, also interesting. Nationally black Americans between the ages of ten and thirty four died from homicide at thirteen times the rate of white americans according to the uh... cdc and the justice department another crazy set of numbers these numbers mean depending on the city and even the neighborhood we're talking about there are some areas where black

americans are being absolutely fucking terrorized by violence in some neighborhoods the violent crime rates look comparable to like the crime rates of violence rates of literal war zones. Now let's look at some more disturbing data. If you were a white person in 2013, based on FBI data, your chance of being killed by anyone were roughly 13 and a million.

But if you were a black person in 2013, your chance of being killed by anyone, 62 and a million, five times what the odds are for a black person in 2013, your chance of being killed by anyone 62 in a million, five times what the odds are for a white person. If you're a white person in 2013, your chance to be murdered by another white person, approximately 11 in a million, your chance to be murdered by a black person just two in a million. Think about that.

White person in 2013, just two in a million chance of being murdered by a black person. Meanwhile, if you're a black person in 2013, your chances of being murdered by another black person are 56 and a million. And your chance of being murdered by a white person, five and a million. It's fucking terrible. Two and a million for white victims, 56 and a million for black victims. Also, researchers have found that the proportion of black suspects arrested by the police tends to match the proportion of offenders identified as black victims of brutality in the National Crime Victimization Survey.

What does that mean? It means that just because the police arrest mostly black men, it doesn't mean that the police are unfairly discriminated against them and being more violent towards them. It means that more black Americans are victimized by police because more black Americans are arrested by police. Deep stats don't reveal that based on a percentage of arrests, black citizens are brutalized more than white citizens. But what about actual killings at the hands of the police?

After all, that's what many of the writers claim to be reacting to. Well, about one in a thousand black men and boys in America can expect to die at the hands of police. That is terrible. That is a risk that is 2.5 times higher than it is for white men, really not good. And although black people represent roughly 13% of the population, they make up 25% of the deaths and police shootings, not good. And while white people represented roughly 60% of the population, they count for just 54%

of the deaths and encounters with police. And these stats make it seem again like the police are racist. But these stats don't take into account how often members of each race are being arrested like I said earlier. And even though stats can't answer the question, are more black Americans being arrested because cops are racist or because more black Americans are committing crimes than their white counterparts? A 2016 Harvard researcher study found that black people are no more likely to be killed by police officers than our white people. A 2019 study published in Proceedings of the National

Academy of Sciences found, quote, no evidence of anti-black disparities across fatal shootings by police. So, do I think that racism in Americans, the American law enforcement community is a real problem? And then it's a, it's leading to a disproportionate amount of deaths. I don't actually. At the very least, I don't think it's the main problem our society should be focusing on right now. I don't think it should be one of the leading sources of outrage. The stats just do not back it up for me.

I do think racism is alive and well in the criminal justice system, like overall, according to a 2017 report from the U.S US Sentencing Commission, Black male offenders received sentences on average 19.1% longer than similarly situated white male offenders from 2012 to 2016. That is fucking bullshit. That is blatant racist injustice. That to me is a much better reason to riot than isolated examples of officers getting away with murder. But the police massively targeting black people in the way many media allos would have us believe I do not believe it, especially when you look at the number of

arrests made each year. It's estimated to be roughly 10 million, 10 million, arrest minimum. That doesn't, you know, there's, there's God knows how many near arrests are not counted in that. God knows how many interactions with the public that don't lead to arrests are not counted in that. How many times are officers themselves attacked in these interactions? The number of deadly weapons attacks on officers works out to be an average of 27 a day and just two thirds of the nation's police departments, according to 2014 analysis, almost 10,000. If the other third of precincts not reporting, or to show similar stats, it's roughly 15,000. If the other third of precincts not reporting were to show similar stats, it's roughly 15,000. And if officers are attacked 15,000 times a year by someone with the deadly weapon, does roughly a thousand civilian shooting deaths really suggest that law enforcement is

violently out of control. As a result of Fallonia's acts, 48 officers were killed in the US in 2019, not as big as the number is roughly a thousand but how many of those thousand civilian deaths were people resisting arrest or pulling a gun on an officer? Okay, enough with stats. To some things up, do the police kill more black people than white people sometimes for sure unjustly? Yes, they do, but not at a higher rate when you compare the stats against arrests. Does this mean we should ignore the killings of George Floyd or Breonna Taylor and others many others?

Of course not. It just means we should be real carefulings of George Floyd or Breonna Taylor and others, many others, of course not? It just means we should be real careful not to take what could be relatively speaking isolated incidents of abuse, murder, and use those incidents to form a collective opinion about an entire profession. There are over 800,000 active law enforcement officers in the U.S. right now. I want to say that number again over 800 thousand and they make over 10 million arrests each year. They have who the fuck knows how many hundreds of millions of interactions with civilians in total every year. If they were truly out of control

and preposterously racist and violent, there would be another George Floyd type story every couple of minutes, but there's not. Should reforms be made? Yes, reforms should always be made in every industry. We should always be trying to improve law enforcement, just like we should always be trying to improve our educational institutions and our medical establishments. We should always be working on being less racist as a society overall. Just like that T-shirt I'm waiting on, you know, this says we all rise together.

We should all be improving all of the time and together includes African Americans and includes law enforcement. What if we all worked on putting ourselves in other shoes more? That would be nice. What if more cops thought about how scary you could be to be have a cop point of gun at you?

Right? What if cops were trained more in how to de-escalate and how to make suspects feel less in danger, less threatened? What if we thought more about how hard of a job it is to be a cop? Do you ever think about how hard that job is? I do. Approaching car after car going over up to door after door having no idea if today's the day someone's gonna try and blow your fucking head off.

And if you're someone who thinks society be much better off without cops or with far less cops think about this Cops killed roughly a thousand suspects in 2019 Citizens killed roughly 16,000 in the same year. I don't have racial data breakdowns for murder victims in 2019 But in 2018 over half of all murder victims are black apply that to night 2019 That's over 8,000 black murder victims. Your rid of cops, that number has to go up. How could it not? So defund too much of America's police force, who suffers the most?

Black Americans, mainly living in impoverished neighborhoods, by far. How ironic would it be if because of a few instances of racist police brutality, because of a few murders of Black citizens, we get rid of a whole instances of racist police brutality because of a few murders of black citizens we get rid of a whole bunch of officers and the result is way more black people getting murdered what if instead of focusing so much on the police's response to crimes committed or or crimes suspected of being committed by black americans we we focus on why more crimes

seem to be being uh... be committed by black americans what if we thought more about dr king King's words, you know, inequality, injustice, socioeconomic disadvantages? What if along with folks in unimproved training techniques for law enforcement to help reduce incidents of brutality? We also work on improving our fucking society for the least fortunate, the most vulnerable among us so that there are less crimes being committed, which will inevitably lead to less killings at the hands of officers, will lead to less people trying to kill officers? Wouldn't that be nice?

Wouldn't it be nice if better social programs, if it improved educational system, if more affordable healthcare, for all could lead to more wealth accumulation and higher wages for more African Americans, therefore diminishing the incentive for crime, decreasing interactions with law enforcement? How do we accomplish that? I have no fucking idea. It just feels like we should really focus on that. You know, let's protest healthcare costs.

Let's ride over the cost of higher education. Let's protest for an economy concerned less with making sure that the Dow fucking Jones is hitting some new all time high and more on making sure that your basic blue collar worker could make enough money work in one job, not three to buy a home and put good food on the table and not ever need to consider robbing someone to get by.

To not want to turn to drugs to forget how hopeless his or her life fucking feels. I would just love to see a focus shift. I think it's a shame that because so many media outlets constantly push a statistically untrue narrative that cops are by and large racist pigs who love nothing more to the than to unjustly arrest and beaten kill young black men black communities end up suffering even more than they already have

Right good cop suffer right along with them cops who have to worry about you know being attacked Unfortunately do largely to several generations of socioeconomic distress due to a lack of educational and job opportunities. A lot of crime does occur in predominantly black communities. And if residents of these communities are led to believe that the police are out to hurting, that the police are these racist, violent pieces of shit who want to fucking kill them, then logically, they're going to be more likely to resist arrests and therefore more likely to be hurt in the future by law enforcement. What a terrible self-fulfilling prophecy, what a terrible cycle we're perpetuating right now. If the police are defunded in some radical illogical way in these communities, who will be there to protect these vulnerable residents?

Finally, you know what stats I didn't share today on the show? How many citizens lives are saved because cops put someone behind bars? Who had they not been arrested would have been killed or killed again. Those stats don't exist. You ever think about that though? You ever think about how you might legitimately owe your life to an arrest made by a cop you'll never meet? I do.

I've donated to pro law enforcement charities in the past and I will continue to donate going forward. I've donated to social justice organizations in the past. One's like the Equal Justice Initiative that largely benefit African Americans and I will continue to do that going forward. Black lives have and will continue to matter to me. And good law enforcement lives have and will continue to matter to me as well.

I refuse to participate in the unnewwanced bullshit us versus them tribalists. You know, I see far too many, or tribalism, I see far too many mainstream media sites, Panda 2 literally every day. I hope you refuse as well. A fuck. I could keep talking about this shit around and around for hours. I think I've said enough time now for today's top five takeaways. Number one, the LA riots are just one of a series of civil unrest events that have painted American history.

It wasn't the worst ride or the longest or the one that had the most deaths, but it was the one most televised and one of the most polarizing events of its era. It was also one of the most destructive, doing over a billion dollars in damage and killing 63, though many have estimated those numbers to be even higher. Number two, Sergeant Stacy Kuhn, who many would come to associate with LAPD's cruelty and incompetence, was relentless in the pursuit of justice for marginalized communities. Excuse me. Kuhn had been in charge for 14 years, and during that time, he'd investigated a police

brutality charge brought against a white officer, even though it was very unpopular move among his fellow officers. He also gave mouth to mouth to an African American woman with AIDS putting his own life at risk to save someone else's in more ways than just one. Number three, Rodney Keane became a symbol for unjust treatment and police brutality, though he did resist arrests and was under the influence of alcohol and marijuana when he led officers on a high-speed chase across LA. He was not the innocent victim, many made him out to be. Nor was he someone who deserved the beating he received.

Number four, are US police systemically racist? Studies show that they are not. Victimization and crime rates show that police arrest blacks at higher rates because of the higher rates of crimes committed in black communities. This is correlated by the much higher level of victimization rates and calls for police assistance in black communities. This doesn't mean there isn't racism in the system or the racism individuals doesn't happen and you know amongst law enforcement agents, but as far as the over 800,000 police officers

in 17,000 jurisdictions in the US, it seems as if they are mostly busy trying to help put away criminals, keep neighborhood safe as opposed to following some white supremacist ideology. Number five, new info. Though we focus on rights in American history, there have obviously been rights across the world and throughout all of recorded human history. In 2006, some Hungarian anti-government protesters took their right farther than almost anyone has in America. They hot-wired a 50-year-old Soviet T-34 tank. It was part of an outdoor memorial. They actually got it to run.

They drove it against the police who were trying to stop the right. Protesters managed to start the tank, which had been parked in the capital as part of the commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the anti-Soviet Hungarian uprisings. They drove at some 100 meters towards a wall of riot police near Deak Square in the heart of the city. Officers fired of all the tear gas which allowed riot police to charge the vehicle and bring it under control. The rioters were arrested, they didn't win, but man, hot wire and a tank, that must have felt felt pretty fucking great. Time, shock, tough, right takeaway. Woo, LA Rites 92, racial writing in America in general has been sucked.

Man, you know, it was a fun run having this show. Is it over now? Oh, that was a draining episode to do. A Hopper was not one to listen to. A Hopper was mentally stimulating and challenging and interesting. We need some stimulation from time to time. And as always team meets Zach forever. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team

for all the help and making time. So Queen of Bad Magic Lindsey Cummins, Reverend Dr. Joe Paisley, the script keeper, Zach Flannery, Sophie the fact source for sevens, Biddle Xer, Logan and Kate Keith, the Keith, the art warlock and Baroness of Bad Magic, running BadMagicMarch.com and the socials. Thanks to all those who joined the Cult of the Curious, private Facebook group, over 22,000 members who continue to make Timesuck more than a podcast.

They make it a community, they'll name it not to you. Thanks to Liz Hernandez and our all-seeing eyes running the Cult of the Curious Facebook page and to the wonderful Weirdos having fun over on Discord. And shout out to Gary Howard sergeant awesome It's his space is her name for winning round two of the time suck trivia game enjoy the cowboy pigeon trophy Gary Next week on time suck we journey back into ancient Greece to answer the question. What made Alexander the great so great This meets the story is unbelievable He lived a short life only 32 years

But in that time he would rule over millions conquer whole whole nations. When every battle he fought in, despite often being outnumbered and survived countless injuries, Alexander reigned during a time of constant warfare in his military campaigns and warfare tactics still being taught at military academies over 2000 years later. A to the motherfucking G was very ambitious and confident. He and his mom both thought he was the son of Zeus. He was well educated by the philosophical giant Aristotle himself, and he was loved by his men and history records say that even his skin smelled good. Probably had a giant dick too.

When he wasn't slain his enemies, he had a soft side. He had many friends, and he wept uncontrollably for days over the loss of his best friend and lover. He even named a city he'd conquered after his legendary horse, another after his favorite dog when they passed, and Alexander the Great was also a brutal paranoid maniac and a favorite of some of the more despicable tyrants in history from Hitler to Napoleon.

He was a complicated dude. The life of a complex and complicated ancient meat sack dissected next week. And now let's head to this week's Time Sucker updates. First things first, uh, why don't I fuck up with the Titanic last week? Or a mispronunciation? What? Me? No way. Uh, discerning meat sacks Steve did not leave his last name. Has some words for me. He writes, oh boy, or should I say, oh boy and see, come on, Dan, Jesus. Sometimes I seriously think you mispronounce words on purpose, LOL. I wish you simply must have come across the word boy and see in your life at some

point, right? I understand there's a tricky word to spell. Had to Google it myself to be sure, but man, it's boy and see, not buoyancy. And is not up for debate. There are not multiple pronunciations. I promise Give me it's buoyancy. You do call Bois buis, but the word buoyancy is buoyancy to add insult to injury you've encrypt I know how to pronounce that one, but it always trips me up. Love you Dan. Keep it up. Oh, thank you You know when did you spell it out without the you now it's sticking to my head? So stupid word Why can't I can't we get rid of silent letters? I was talking about some of the secret suck. Let's see. Why? It's we can we can we can re change it. Let's change some stuff. Let's

get rid of silent letters. Always fucking with me. Pink Pong fan and and hailed Nimrod to you, Steve. Pink Pong fan and kick ass sack. Terrell Swanson also thinks I blew it in the Titanic with my dismissal of one of the theories of how to raise the ship from the ocean floor. Terrell wrote, or Terrell wrote, dear Mr. Big Suck, in the Titanic Suck, you pointed out that a theory to raise the Titanic by using ping pong balls seems stupid and impossible. But unfortunately for your giant head, the Mythbusters actually tested this method of raising the sunken ship and were able to raise the sunken boat. There was admittedly much smaller in the Titanic, but it goes to show that the idea is not

as unfounded as you thought. Thanks for listening. Hail Nimrod. Well, you know what, Troll, agree to disagree. Yes, the myth busters raise a small boat, but maybe what I should have made more clear was that the Titanic's hull was damaged, right? That was what made the ping pong idea. So down to me, there's even a small escape hole.

All the ping pong balls are just going to keep floating out of it. And the Titanic was super heavy. So I don't even know if an entire hole full of ping pong balls would be able to raise it. But maybe I'm wrong. Charles Overstreet, musical meat sack has another Titanic correction for me. I definitely messed this one up as Charles points out. He writes, dammit, it's be flat. Not be sharp. Bless your heart.

You try. I'm sure not the only musician who points this out, but you randomly picked one of the only two notes that has no sharp. I just had to point it out because the musician and me laugh so hard I can barely breathe. This is elementary school music talent. Love the show and all you do. I doubt I'd ever get a second message right on the air, but if it were possible, it'd be amazing to get a shout out to my amazing wife, Dominique.

Today, September 9th is our four-year wedding anniversary making it our 12-year anniversary of when we first met and started dating. She's my best friend, confidant, and partner in crime since a day I met her. 12 years deep, you still have not had our first argument. We just share one mind. Even miles apart, we randomly find we have the same train of thought at the same time. It's a bond I never could have dreamed was real. She supported me through my business ventures

for several years. Now as I try to build my dream job, run in the sawmill, and is my driving force inspiring me to make reality out of my many pipe dreams. Even when it meant working seven days a week for two solid years, 12 years down a lifetime to go, I love her beyond words. Thanks, loyal listener Charles. Well,

thank you, Charles. Yes, dammit. I haven't played the guitar in a few years and it shows. There's no B sharp. Ah, good catch. I should have won with C sharp. Ah, dammit. And happy anniversary. Sounds like you and Dominique have an amazing relationship. Congrats. Nimrod and Lucifer to both please. Keep loving that lady of yours. And good luck with that sawmill. Watch the blades. Careful with the fingers. Super sucker Chad Chao Mont. Chao Mont, I'll say Chao Mont. Chao Mont got Cummins Lawd.

Let's hear about it. This is a good one. He writes, hey Dan, this email is gonna be long as fuck, JK. I always thought these Cummins updates, or these updates about Cummins Law were somewhat full of shit and the people were just trying to get a shout out on the podcast. I now know there is some sort of Bluetooth voodoo magic going on.

I'm a truck driver. I had to check into a shop and have a check engine like diagnosed. The truck was off, but when I stopped, I'd been listening to the dick chase vampire of Sacramento episode. So the mechanic hooks this computer to the truck, turns the key to the on position and the truck wakes up and wouldn't you know it? It wakes up to the part of the episode about how Richard used a baby's dick to suck blood. That started playing.

When the mechanic turns and looks at me, he gives me a, what the fuck are you listening to look? I couldn't believe it. Cummins Law got me. I told him it's a podcast about different topics, including serial killers, and I quickly paused the episode on my phone. I told him the name is Tossucky.

Shrugged, went back to trying to figure out my mechanical issue. Never again, while I doubt Cummins Law, been a fan of the podcast since the beginning. It's awesome. Three out of five stars. Keep on suckin' man, Chad. My God, Chad, that was a bad one. Real bad.

Hard to explain a way listing to a description of drinking blood through a baby's penis. I doubt you just got us a new listener. Or if you did, we now have a fucking psychopath in the cult. A drive safe and hail Nimrod. Two more. Sweet sucker Brendan Sullivan has a time suck family connection to us. He shares, he writes, hi, Dan, love the show.

I want to share a weird personal family connection to the recent petty her suck. Back in October of 1973, one month before the murder of school superintendent Marcus Foster, my dad was walking up to his Berkeley apartment building when Joe Ramiro, founding member of the SLA, robbed him at gunpoint and stole his van. It wasn't the same van that would be used to kidnap patty, but it was later found near the SLA safe house stripped for parts. My dad ended up having to talk with federal authorities, and I think he and my sister, who was pretty young at the time, were even followed by agents for protection during the investigation. It's one of those stories that makes you pause and think, holy shit, if that one interaction

had gone poorly, if one decision was made differently, I wouldn't be here today. It's weird. But here's the funny part. If that had happened to me, I would be telling everybody. It's a crazy story, but I'm 37. I didn't even know about it until a few years ago when he dropped a casual reference to it one day

while visiting. It was the first time he heard about it and I was gobsmacked. It's not because he was upset about it or a few years ago, when he dropped a casual reference to it one day while visiting. It was the first time he heard about it and I was gobsmacked. Not because he was upset about it or ashamed or anything, I think it comes down to the fact that he's lived a very interesting life full of a lot of great stories and he simply didn't realize he'd never told me about his brush with patty, herst kidnappers.

Thanks for always giving me interesting stuff to think about, Brendan. Bow, Brendan. What a life. Your dad must live so far. I'd be telling that story all the time too. I love hearing connections like this. They make the story so much more real to me.

Hope he continue to find the suck industry. Last one, let's end on some inspiration. Send our way from magnificent meat sack, Megan Kramer, Megan writes, hello Dan, the great worshiper of Lucifina. I've listened to your podcast for almost a year. I'm almost caught up with your episodes. I recently became a space wizard,

and now working on catching up on the secret sucks. I also enjoy your other two podcasts. Thanks for all your hard work, and the hard work of your crew, do to keep our ear holes entertained. Anyways, I had to tell you, yeah, you thank you. Thank you. I had to tell you that I finally converted my husband

to your sucking ways. We were on a road trip to the Tetons. Tetons, I can't say anything. And Yellowstone a couple of weeks ago, for our 10th anniversary, Hale Lucifina, about an hour into the drive, my husband decided to try a nap. Since he no longer cared what was on the radio, I put on one of the many times the episodes

that I had downloaded to my phone. He never fell asleep. He was captivated and laughing right along with me. He was much more susceptible to your lies. He believed that there really had been a mother and son, lingerie store. That there was an illegal underground magic the gathering club and that the Roanoke recluse was a real nightmare and Rome the earth looking for eyeballs to crawl into. He now understands why I'm

concy listening to you and now we talk about your weekly episodes. Thanks for giving us a new thing to bond over and laugh at. I also had to share that since I started listening to you, you've reignited my love for learning. I recently applied to and got accepted into Weber State University. I will be starting their environmental science program. I wanna help preserve our public lands for generations to come.

Thanks for putting that thirst to learn back into the gray pile of mush between my ear holes. Not gonna apologize for the long email because honestly, wasn't that long. Love your podcast, wouldn't change a thing. Three out of five stars. My husband gives you four out of five, but what the hell does he know? Keep on stuckin'.

Thank you, Megan, and congratulations. I love hearing about people inspired to chase the dreams, follow their passions. You're getting into environmental science for all the right reasons. Happy anniversary, I'm glad your husband falls for my stupid shit. I hope you do get many laughs out of that nonsense.

I hope you had fun in Yellowstone, and you know, and visiting the teetons, man, I hit both parks recently with the famine. God, so fucking beautiful. So sunny the whole weekend, it was great. I hope you end up preserving more of that beautiful land for many generations to come,

for many generations to admire. Hail Nimrod. And that's all for this week, MadeSax. We'll probably get to some craziness and silliness again next week. Thanks for continuing to rate and review this show. Be kind to everyone of any race who's not an asshole. Do that always. Also, if you get arrested, forget to say, don't risk your life and resist arrest.

And as always, keep on sucking. Man, a lot of information, not a lot of jokes I know, but this topic got my mind revving and going and just working like maybe no topic has either, ever or at least in a long while. And I hope you liked it. I know, I know you don't always agree with me, but I hope that at least gave you some, uh, some good, good things to think about and discuss and we can, we can keep moving,

shit forward. We all rise together. We all rise together.