L.A.'s Open Wounds

By John Greenwald

At Tom's liquor store, one of the first businesses looted in the Los Angeles riots, the Asian-American owner keeps a watchful eye on the angry and jobless men loitering outside. The same surly crowd frightens Goldie Bell, 65, a beautician who is black and lives nearby. The vagrants' noisy carousing causes Bell sleepless nights, and every morning she must run a gauntlet past them to get to her car. "I'm just afraid all the time," she says.

What Bell and the rest of Los Angeles fear most is how these idle and restless men will react if the verdicts in two explosive new trials are not to their liking. Only nine months after suffering the worst urban violence in the U.S. in this century, Los Angeles is bracing for trouble again. Already some youths are dusting off the NO JUSTICE! NO PEACE! placards that protesters waved last April when L.A. burst into flames after the acquittal of four white police officers in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King.

The four officers will return to court this week on federal charges that they violated King's civil rights. And March brings the prosecution of three black men accused of savagely beating white trucker Reginald Denny as the riot broke out. "I hate to think of what could happen if the police officers get off and the young black men are convicted," says Odell Holly, 71, the black owner of an apartment building in South Central Los Angeles, the riot's epicenter.

The latest cases will test a city that today has a new police chief, a new district attorney and at least 52 candidates for mayor. Yet in the streets the frustration and despair that helped trigger last year's violence show little change. "People are anxious about these trials," says Karen Bass, director of a substance-abuse center with headquarters in South Central. "There is sentiment that the lid could blow off again because people don't feel that their concerns are being addressed. No one wants to see the same thing happen again, but it is a real possibility. People don't know what to expect." In a recent poll by CBS News, 2 out of 3 Los Angeles residents in the survey said that things are going badly in the city.

In South Central and other L.A. neighborhoods, residents perceive that civic leaders have failed to deliver on publicized promises to restore riot-torn parts of Los Angeles. Few of the 1,100 buildings that were severely damaged or destroyed in the violence have been reconstructed. "There is a strong feeling that L.A. is not being rebuilt," says Norma Cook, assistant director of Project Rebound, a coalition of mental-health organizations. "People's real concerns center on jobs and housing. It's an economic issue. That's at the bottom of the feeling of hopelessness." Concurs Holly: "We are frustrated. We are not really pleased with what's going on."

In fact, the supposed silver lining in the smoky cloud that covered Los Angeles last spring was the promise that the entire city would pull together to rebuild the burned and looted landscape. People looked forward to healing the strife between warring black, white, Hispanic and Asian groups, and between the community and the police. Hope soared all the higher when former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth, who had run the dazzlingly successful 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, took the helm of Rebuild L.A., the city's formal rebuilding effort. Angelenos also warmly greeted new police chief Willie Williams, who arrived from Philadelphia in July after the forced resignation of the combative Daryl Gates. The era of good feeling even produced a truce between street gangs and a summer-long drop in black-gang-related homicides.

But much of the hype and hope that surrounded Rebuild L.A. has seemed to vanish into the air. Instead of moving quickly forward with its plans to generate $5 billion worth of investment in the city over the next five years, the group bogged down in squabbles between community organizations over adequate representation on Rebuild L.A.'s 80-member board of directors. "Rebuild L.A. has left a lot to be desired," says Kaffie Powell, a retired postal worker and president of a South Central neighborhood advisory board. "There's not been as much effort as there should be."

Corporate giants ranging from Atlantic Richfield to Xerox have pledged $300 million to Rebuild L.A. Yet residents of burned-out neighborhoods have kept asking themselves when the organization would really do something tangible with the money. While much of the money was earmarked for job training, few people in the most devastated parts of town could actually see any prospect of landing a job.

Many Angelenos now pin their hopes for improved community and race relations on police chief Williams, a hulking six-footer who is the first black to lead the L.A. force. Williams speaks softly, venturing into black, Hispanic and Korean-American neighborhoods with words of conciliation in an effort to dispel the notion that his 7,600-member department is an army of occupation. And he carries a big stick. Even though the city is strapped for cash, Williams recently got about $1 million for new riot gear that includes rubber bullets, tear-gas bombs, face shields and 10 crisis vans. "I don't think we are going to have widespread violence," Williams says. But he notes that all police officers have received 16 hours of riot training since he arrived.

+ "The mood of the city is one of anxiousness, for both the federal trial and the trial of the men charged in beating Reginald Denny," Williams said. "There is anxiousness in terms of what the outcomes will be, and what that will mean in the community. These are the two big pillars we have to get beyond, and we can't get around them."

Williams staged what amounted to a dress rehearsal for full-scale riot control in December when 300 officers quelled a random looting and rock- throwing melee at the corner of Florence and Normandie, where last spring's violence broke out. Moving swiftly, the cops cordoned off the area and made 60 arrests. To assert control without using clubs, some officers carried newly acquired 37-mm gas guns that shoot foam-rubber bullets.

While he's not afraid to use force, Williams has a greater passion for community-based policing, which he hopes will generate goodwill between citizens and cops. For months, Williams has initiated hundreds of meetings with church, business and ethnic groups to explain his policies and garner support. At the same time, Williams has begun shifting 100 officers from desk jobs to street patrol.

So far, such tactics seem to be paying off. A Los Angeles Times poll last fall found that 52% of the residents in the survey approved of the way Williams was handling his job. Among black respondents, 6 out of 10 said they approved of the new chief and expected the department to become better and more effective during the next six months.

Not everyone is impressed. "They haven't really changed a lot," declares Enrique Lopez, 23, who is suing the police following an incident last Christmas in which, he says, officers grabbed him and smashed his face with a flashlight while checking out reports of gunshots in the neighborhood. Williams' own officers acknowledge the obstacles he is up against. "He is a very nice person and easy to talk to," says William Violante, president of the league representing rank-and-file officers. "But I don't think he is able to accomplish anything because there is no money for him to do what is necessary."

For the time being, however, the prospects for racial peace in Los Angeles appear to rest more heavily on Williams than on anyone else. On the days of the verdicts, Williams will have police on every corner in troubled neighborhoods, along with street patrols. "We will have a high uniform presence to say, 'Hey, if you are thinking about doing something, this is not & the town to do it in,' " Williams says. On the eve of the new trials, a calm and forceful police presence is the best insurance that L.A. can avoid another explosion.

With reporting by Jeanne McDowell and Sylvester Monroe/Los Angeles