Was there not more to it than that? Surely there were other factors bubbling away under the surface…
Mmmm, interesting point, but I suppose what I am asking is were there more underlying reasons – economy, unrest etc.
Great question actually. Your suspicions are correct. There was much more going on at the time. During that time the cocaine crack trade had made its way to LA and it was big! In the 80’s Miami was torn down hard for the major cocaine trade they had there. So a lot of import and etc moved to LA. Black youths that lived in poor areas saw an opportunity to get rich. Crack sales started once crack was invented. Crack is actually very cheap and easy to make thus enabling you to turn a kilo of cocaine in to an exponentially larger amount of drugs, charge less, yet make tons more.
Kids 12, 13 started selling and getting into gangs in the local area. The Bloods and Crypts (spelling?) started to have major influence in the 80’s after being established in the 70’s. During the 80’s the streets of LA were a war zone. Bloods kill bloods. Crypts kill Bloods, there were no true defined enemies as they begun to all turn on each other.
Once the violence spread to middle America after an innocent bystander was killed in a prominent shopping area of LA middle class and upper class LA became inflamed. They demanded the police department do something about this violence. It was fine when people were being killed on the "poor" side of town, but now it had spread to their area and they had enough.
The police started launching an initiative. Saturating low income black area’s that are famous such as Compton and etc. They started enforcing curfews and taking in thousands of people on whatever they could, keeping people off the street. Picked people up for J-walking and almost anything, if they fit the profile for a drug dealer or abuser the LAPD tried to scoop them up and get them off the streets.
Believe it or not this actually work. People were able to finally walk the streets again, kids begun to play in parks of these low income neighborhoods, without the worries of getting shot.
The downside, even though there was great help by this program it was targeted as a racist program. A majority of the people brought in were black. Because they were trying to clean up the streets and fast they unfortunately wrapped some good people up in it, even though they may have just been with known dealers or users.
So after the outrage of the community for this "racist" plan by the LAPD, the LAPD said pretty much "fine" and they pulled out of these neighborhoods, and stopped the strict enforcement. Well things continued back the way they were before, this time with an even larger divided between black people and the LAPD. So when the Rodney King incident happened it was really the last straw on the camel’s back so to speak.
