Thirty years ago, Los Angeles was burning.

On April 29, 1992, in this California city where large black, Hispanic and Korean communities live, a court decision set fire to the powder: four white police officers, accused of assault and excessive use of force in the of a young black motorist - Rodney King - are acquitted by a jury of ten whites, an Asian and a Hispanic.

The scene had been filmed.

In a video of nearly ten minutes, the victim, then aged 26, received two shocks from a stun gun, about fifty blows with a stick to the skull, arms, knees, and kicks after being arrested for speeding.

Rodney King has a fractured jaw, sores on his face, bruises on his body, and his ankle is broken.

The video goes around the world, upsets, outrages, and makes the Rodney King case one of the most publicized cases of abuse and violence by law enforcement in the United States.

The police, themselves, plead the fear and the risk of rebellion of the motorist.

At the end of the trial, where no African-American is among the jury, Sergeant Koon, and officers Briseno, Wind and Powell leave free.

Since then, there have been the Trayvon Martin cases - which triggered the Black Lives Matter movement -, but also Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Breonna Taylor, to name a few... In 2020, the George Floyd case in Minneapolis once again highlights racist violence by law enforcement in the United States.

Large-scale demonstrations and riots are taking place across the country (and then the world), reminiscent of those six days of riots which, in Los Angeles in 1992, left President George HW Bush no choice but to do intervene the army.

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"No peace without justice"

When the verdict was announced around 3 p.m. on April 29, 1992, the reaction was immediate.

Barely two hours later, some 100,000 people took to the streets to protest against the judgment, but the demonstrations quickly degenerated into riots, looting, burning of houses and businesses.

In the City of Angels, the black neighborhoods are on fire.

The slogan of the demonstrators?

"No peace without justice": this same rallying cry adopted, in France, by the collective "Truth and Justice for Adama" (Traoré) since 2016.

In Los Angeles, control of the situation escapes the police who sometimes receive the order not to intervene.

Some of their helicopters are hit, and the firefighters themselves cannot put out fires because they are under attack.

From the second day of violence, the mayor of the city, Tom Bradley, decrees a state of emergency and a curfew in several neighborhoods to contain the areas of violence and looting.

In vain.

Shootings break out between traders and looters.

It was not until the fourth day that the army was called in for reinforcements, and the situation began to return to normal.

Result: 53 dead, more than 2,300 injured, 4,000 fires and damage estimated at one billion dollars.

Finally, a year after the riots, the police officers acquitted in the Rodney King case are charged at the federal level for human rights violations.

Two of them (Koon and Powell) were found guilty in April 1993.

>> George Floyd: a matter of racism, "but also of violence and politics"

Beyond the rejection of racial discrimination and police violence against minorities in the United States, the history of the Los Angeles riots is also rooted in tensions between communities, especially between blacks and Koreans.

Community War

"Could we all just get along?"

(“Can we all get along?”), asks, tears in his eyes, Rodney King during a press conference, on May 1, in the offices of his lawyer.

A phrase marked by the tensions between communities in Los Angeles who struggle to live in peace with each other.

Economic competition within the working class is at the root of some racial animosity.

In the 1980s, companies replaced most black employees responsible for building maintenance with Hispanic immigrants, paid half as much as their unionized predecessors.

At the same time, in the historically black south of the city, Koreans are buying groceries where they charge high prices based on their virtual monopoly.

The divide between Korean shops and black residents is therefore also very pronounced, in addition to which the black community complains of mistreatment and rising prices.

At the origin of the riots of 1992, there was certainly the Rodney King affair, but also the Latasha Harlins affair.

The 15-year-old African-American girl was shot in the head by the Korean manager of a South Central grocery store for allegedly trying to steal a bottle of orange juice.

The police investigation later showed that the teenager planned to pay (two dollars were found in her hand) and that she had informed the manager when the latter accused her of stealing.

In this case, the judge considered that the reaction of the manager of the grocery store was justified.

She was only given a five-year suspended sentence and a $500 fine (compared to the jury's request for 16 years for manslaughter).

This judgment was confirmed on appeal on April 21, 1992. Eight days before the verdict in the King case and the outbreak of the riots.

About 45 percent of all properties damaged in the April-May 1992 violence were Korean-owned, according to the Korean American Grassroots Conference.

Also, dozens of Korean American shopkeepers were murdered, robbed and beaten in the years before and after these riots, including 25 who were shot and killed between January 1990 and May 1992, according to the Koreatown Emergency Relief Committee.

Three decades after the 1992 riots, a recent survey by the Center for the Study of Los Angeles (StudyLA), affiliated with Loyola Marymount University, finds that the majority of city residents believe similar riots are "likely" reproduce in the years to come.

Based in Los Angeles, the private university has conducted surveys every five years since 1997 to gauge the city's residents' feelings about the relationship between different communities.

To the American magazine Newsweek, the general manager of StudyLA, Brianne Gilbert, clarified that this latest survey followed a phenomenon observed more widely at the national level.

"We don't think this is something you'll only see in Los Angeles, but across the country."

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