Race Relations In Los Angeles: Did The 1991 Beating Of Rodney King Create Change?

March 3, 2011 was the 20-year anniversary of the highly publicized Rodney King beating on a Los Angeles freeway. Ironically, King was again arrested on July 12, 2011 on the same charge of driving under the influence. However, this time he was not beaten, but merely charged with a traffic offense. Does this more equitable treatment of Rodney King indicate a different environment and thought pattern about race relations in the City of Angels? It depends on who you ask.

Dr Brian Grossman, a longtime L.A. resident and active member of the Jewish community believes there has been a total change in race relations over the past two decades. “Relationships between the African-Americans and Jewish communities are significantly better,” Grossman says with complete confidence. “Although tensions have escalated between the two communities recently due to the recession causing heightened economic disparity between the two groups, it is still 10,000 percent better than in the early 1990s.”

Grossman credits the last two police chiefs with fostering enhanced unity between the various segments of the L.A. racial and ethnic populations. “Gang violence is a longstanding issue here that continues to create racial and ethnic divisions, and there are pockets of the city where it is just as bad as it ever was, but thanks to a tremendous job of community policing, middle class neighborhoods enjoy a more congenial environment than in the past. There is always a segment of the population who doesn’t like the police, and there isn’t much you can do about that,” Grossman concluded.

In her article “20 Years after Rodney King; Whose Holding the Cops Accountable,” author Julianne Hing, details the eight-year federally ordered consent decree that was entered into by the L.A. Police Department (LAPD) in 2001. By 2009, Hing notes that the police made appreciable progress in implementing reforms; however, a survey taken by community researchers revealed that Latino and Black residents continued to have low levels of trust for the police. Ten percent of the population reported, “Almost none of the LAPD officers they encounter treat them or their family and friends respectfully.”

Answering the call for a new approach in how Los Angeles addresses public safety, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has conducted sweeping reforms in the City’s delivery of gang reduction and youth services, while confronting problems of homelessness and affordable housing, putting more cops on the street, and prioritizing job creation to “make L.A. work” for all of its citizens. The city’s website, details initiatives designed to foster unity and equality for all Angelenos. The question remains, will all segments of the L.A. community view these reforms as meaningful improvements to their way of life? The positive or negative nature of change appears to reside in the eye of the beholder, and it seems that the jury is still out on this one.