L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City

The LAPD had a policy. Every weekend on a rotating basis, one of the deputy chiefs took over as the duty chief, with primary responsibility for running the department. That weekend, duty chief responsibility fell to deputy chief Harold Sullivan, who commanded the traffic division. With uncontained rioting threatening the central city, this might have seemed like a bad weekend to shift responsibility for running the department to one of the deputy chiefs. But Bill Parker was by then a sick man. The job had aged him—ravaged him really. And on the afternoon of Friday, August 13, as a large swath of his city was going up in flames, Chief Parker felt bad. When Sullivan went to Parker and asked the chief what he wanted to do about the weekend, he replied, “You take care of things.” Then Bill Parker went home.

The LAPD was now Harold Sullivan’s to command.

Sullivan was a traffic guy. He thought in terms of freeways, and he understood how they bifurcated the city in terms of race and class. Two were particularly important. The first was the Harbor Freeway. Built during the 1950s to connect downtown Los Angeles to the port at San Pedro, the Harbor Freeway sliced through the westernmost edge of the African American neighborhoods of Watts. To the west of the Harbor Freeway was the more affluent (and whiter) neighborhood of Crenshaw, as well as (farther north) the cynosure of Los Angeles’s gilded youth, the exclusive University of Southern California. To the east was the ghetto. As a result, living west of the 110 soon became a highly desirable goal—and a sign of success—for African American Angelenos.

The other important freeway was the Santa Monica Freeway (then an unnamed spur of interstate 110), which ran west from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica. As a socioeconomic barrrier, “the 10” was even more significant. To the north lay Los Angeles’s most affluent neighborhoods and municipalities—Hancock Park, Beverly Hills, Brentwood. These were the homes of the white elite. South of the 10 was the city of the working class. Sullivan recognized that the freeway was not just a class or racial barrier. It was also a massive concrete wall. The Harbor Freeway was indefensible, punctuated as it was by dozens of over-and underpasses. The Santa Monica Freeway was different. Sullivan quickly calculated that between downtown and Beverly Hills, only a small number of underpasses connected south Los Angeles to the affluent neighborhoods to the north. He dispatched a contingent of reserve traffic officers to those critical underpasses, with firm instructions to seal them off and let no one through. California Highway Patrol officers soon arrived, to reinforce the blockades. The rich northern part of the city was now safe. As for Watts and Central Avenue, until the National Guard arrived, there was nothing authorities felt they could do. They were left to burn.

Soon after arriving in Los Angeles, Lieutenant Governor Anderson spoke to Hale Champion, the state finance director back in Sacramento. Champion was aghast at what was unfolding. Moreover, he had gotten through to Governor Brown in Athens. Brown felt the Guard should be called out at once and that the possibility of a citywide curfew should be seriously considered. He also told Champion that he was flying back to California immediately. Spurred by this piece of news, Anderson finally decided to call out the Guard. At four o’clock, he announced the decision to the press. An hour later, he finally signed the proclamation. By six, 1,300 guardsmen had assembled in the local armories. By seven, they were en route to two local staging areas. Yet not until 10 p.m. would the first Guardsmen actually be deployed.

Remarkably, no one had died during the first two days of rioting in Watts. That changed Friday night. Sometime between six and seven, the first resident of Watts died, an African American caught in the crossfire between police and looters. He would not be the last.

Friday night brought something no American city had ever seen before: a full-scale urban war, one in which firemen and ambulances were fair game. Snipers repeatedly opened fire on the hundred-odd engine companies that were fighting fires in the area. That night, a fireman was crushed and killed by a falling wall. As the shooting intensified, the dying began. At six thirty, twenty-one-year-old Leon Watson was gunned down, standing outside a barbershop. Two hours later, a deputy sheriff was fatally shot with his own gun while struggling with three suspects. The killing came quickly now. One hour later an unarmed Watts resident was killed by police outside a liquor store. Three unarmed companions were wounded. The next civilian died three minutes later. The next, two minutes after that. And so it went. The streets of Watts were washed with blood.