By the 1980s an escalating crime rate and mounting racial tensions were tarnishing the quality of life and image of California. The assassination of two top San Francisco officials by a vengeful office-seeker drew national headlines. As levels of inner city crowding and poverty rose, well-armed street gangs organized along ethnic lines, some with strong Pacific Basin ties, posed an increasing problem to law-abiding citizens and police. Tensions between South Central Los Angeles’ black population and white law enforcement officers erupted in a massive riot when policemen, who had been videotaped beating a motorist, were found not guilty of using excessive force. International attention was riveted on Los Angeles by a double murder in upscale Brentwood that implicated a former USC Heisman Trophy winner and television celebrity. Such happenings strengthened the conservatives’ case for getting tough on crime and criminals.
In broad daylight on November 27, 1978, former San Francisco Supervisor Daniel White entered City Hall and shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. White was a “law and order” advocate, strongly supported by conservatives, who had been angered by the mayor’s refusal to rescind his (White’s) earlier resignation and Milk’s cham-
Figure 13.3 California's crime rate, 1952-99. The crime rate peaked in 1980, declined for several years, increased slightly in the late 1980s, and dropped significantly each year from 1991. Source: Cal Facts (Sacramento, CA: Legislative Analyst's Office, 2000), p. 75.
Pioning of gay and lesbian rights. He readily admitted to the killings. White’s attorney offered the “Twinkie Defense,” claiming that his client had committed the killings while in a condition of “diminished capacity” caused by sugary substances that skewed his judgment. Swayed by this argument, the jury convicted White of voluntary manslaughter rather than murder. This outraged the city’s homosexuals, who saw Milk - one of America’s first openly gay municipal officials - as a martyr to their cause.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles remained a simmering cauldron of racial ferment in the wake of the 1965 Watts riots. Rising expectations among middle-class blacks in Los Angeles and statewide provide a backdrop to their unrest. In the 1970s and 1980s, African Americans Maxine Waters, Mervyn Dymally, and Yvonne Braithwaite Burke - all Angelinos - won seats in the House of Representatives, as did Ronald Dellums of Berkeley, who joined Augustus Hawkins who had been representing his Los Angeles district since the 1960s. Wilson Riles in 1970 had become the first African American to be elected superintendent of public instruction. Blacks also had swelled their ranks in the state legislature, where San Francisco’s Willie Brown presided as assembly speaker in the 1980s, afterward becoming that city’s first African American mayor. The election of Tom Bradley as the first black mayor of the City of Angels in 1973 doubtlessly helped keep conflicts from escalating out of control. With these successes in mind, South Central Los Angeles residents were torn between trusting the police for protection while fearing law enforcement officers’ reputed brutality.
Such was the situation on the eve of the April 30-May 5, 1992, Los Angeles riots, one of the worst eruptions of racial discord in American history. On March 3 of the previous year Rodney King, a black man, had been arrested after a high-speed chase and beaten severely by baton-wielding Los Angeles policemen. The pummeling of a prostrate King had been recorded on camera with repeated showings on national television network news. Four police officers were brought to trial in 1992 and acquitted the following year of the charge of using excessive force by a San Fernando Valley jury consisting of 10 whites, one Latino, and a Filipino American. The verdict sparked five days of what came to be called the Rodney King riots, an uprising far worse than its Watts counterpart of 1965. More than 50 people were killed and property damage reached an estimated $1 billion. In the wake of the 1992 riots the widely reported words of Rodney King remain etched in many minds: “People, I just want to say. . . can we all get along? Can we get along?”
Racial relations in Los Angeles were again strained in 1994 with the headline-grabbing murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman. Ms. Simpson had been the attractive Caucasian wife of African American football star and television sports commentator Orenthal James (known as O. J.) Simpson, and Goldman, a waiter at a nearby restaurant. On June 12, Ms. Simpson and Goldman had been stabbed and slashed to death outside her Brentwood residence. A trial monitored worldwide ended in October 1995 when a predominantly African American jury acquitted the defendant, Mr. Simpson, of both killings. Many African Americans believed that the verdict had been just; a number of whites were convinced that the defendant had literally gotten away with murder. In a civil trial ending in 1997 the victims’ families won damages from Mr. Simpson amounting to $33.5 million. The racial aspects of the killings and the criminal trial became fodder for public discourse for years afterward.
Gang violence constituted another major category of ethnic-related crime in late twentieth-century California. In police terminology, gangs are groups of three or more persons joining together to engage in criminal activity. Tom Hayden, author of Street Wars: Gangs and the Future of Violence (2004), has concluded that about 25,000 people, mainly gang members themselves, have died in Los Angeles’ street wars since the 1970s.
Many of the state’s street gangs drew members from immigrant families with roots in Pacific Basin countries and dependencies. These included Mexico, El Salvador, American Samoa, Vietnam, and Cambodia. La Eme (Spanish for the letter “M”), a Mexican American gang, was founded in California prisons in 1956. Known as the Mexican mafia, La Eme aimed at protecting fellow Hispanic prisoners from other inmates, especially the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood, but soon engaged in extortion, drug trafficking, and contract killings. From Folsom and San Quentin prisons, La Eme members directed drug dealing in the Southland, Baja California, and on Mexico’s mainland. Mara Salvatrucha (known as MS), translated as “Salvadoran neighborhood,” grew out of El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s, which led to an exodus of Salvadorans to California. Discriminated against in Los Angeles, these impoverished immigrants formed MS, one of the most violent gangs on the entire West Coast. It has since spread to San Francisco, Reno, New York City, Long Island, and Texas - all the while retaining drug ties to El Salvador and competing with La Eme for control of that country’s narcotics market. After suffering the ravages of the Vietnam War, some of the younger immigrants from that nation and Cambodia formed Asian gangs to protect themselves in central Orange County, where Santa Ana’s Mexican American gangs dominated. Meanwhile, on the East side of Long Beach the Sons of Samoa (SOS) formed in 1980. Its members banded together for protection against black and Mexican American gangs. Soon SOS spread throughout parts of the Southland, San Jose, Hawai’i, and Utah. To all of these gangs must be added the African American rivals - the Crips and the Bloods. Both were formed in Los Angeles in the mid - to late 1960s. They dealt mainly in cocaine trafficking. By 1991 investigative reports held that Crips or Bloods had spread to 32 states and more than 100 cities nationwide. All of these gangs remain active in California and beyond. Thus gang activity, like so many other aspects of the state, reflected the geographical reach of Greater California.
World History
