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

Minikus told Marquette that he was under arrest. Still good-natured, Marquette asked Minikus if his brother or some other family member could take the car home. They were only a block away. Officer Minikus said that he could not. Department procedure called for towing away and impounding the car. At that very moment, an ex-girlfriend of Marquette’s walked by. Seeing that Marquette was about to be arrested, she hurried over to the apartment where he lived to fetch Marquette and Ronald’s mother. When she arrived at the scene to find a second motorcycle patrolman (Minikus’s partner), a transportation car, and the tow truck, Mrs. Frye got upset—at Marquette. She started to scold him for drinking. Up until this point in the arrest, Marquette had been subdued but cooperative. Now, his mood changed. He pushed away his mother and allegedly started shouting, “You motherfucking white cops, you’re not taking me anywhere!” yelling that they would have to kill him before he would go to jail.

It was a sweltering day. Since Monday, temperatures had been in the mid-nineties—fifteen degrees hotter than it had been all summer. A yellow-gray blanket of smog lay heavy across the city. In 1965, air conditioners were still a rarity in this part of Watts, a working-class neighborhood of newly built two-story apartment buildings and bungalows. As a result, residents tried to spend as much time outside as they could. The neighborhood was full of people that evening—people who were naturally curious to know what all the ruckus was about. By the time Marquette got angry, a crowd of roughly a hundred bystanders had gathered. Some of them started to murmur, angrily. Minikus’s partner slipped off and radioed a code 1199—officer needs help. He returned with a baton used for riot control. The officer in the patrol car grabbed his shotgun.

The crowd, now numbering perhaps 150 people, was starting to turn hostile. “Hit those blue-eyed bastards!” a voice yelled. While one highway patrol officer waved his shotgun at the crowd, the two motorcycle patrol officers attempted to grab Marquette. A scuffle broke out as California Highway Patrol reinforcements arrived at the scene. Marquette was struck by a baton and collapsed on the ground. Mrs. Frye jumped onto the back of one of the arresting officers, screaming, “You white Southern bastard!” Little brother Ronald got into the mix too. By 7:23 p.m., all the Fryes were under arrest. The crowd was now screaming.

“Leave the old lady alone!” someone cried.

“Those white motherfuckers got no cause to do that,” yelled someone else.

“We’ve got no rights at all—it’s just like Selma,” shouted someone else.

The number of onlookers swelled to between 250 and 300 persons. The crowd was getting more and more agitated. Who didn’t know about the shootout three years earlier with the Nation of Islam? Who didn’t know that just one year earlier white Californians had voted to maintain housing segregation, to keep black Angelenos confined to the ghetto? Picking up on the mood, one of the highway patrol officers slipped off to radio for more backup. Soon three more highway patrol officers appeared. Minikus and his partner were now struggling with Marquette and his stepbrother—and with Mrs. Frye. Another officer swung his nightstick at Marquette, hitting him on the forehead and opening a nasty cut. As this was going on, the first LAPD units arrived at the scene.

The arresting officers caught the crowd’s mood. They knew things could get violent. The patrol cars and the tow truck pulled away fast. But as the motorcycle patrolmen revved their engines, one of the officers felt a wad of spit hit the back of his neck. He and his partner stopped and plunged back into the crowd, grabbing the woman they thought was responsible, who started screaming that she hadn’t done anything. The patrol cars returned to the scene, where the crowd, enraged by police mistreatment of a pregnant black woman (as the rumor now had it) was screaming for blood.

“Motherfuckers! Blue-eyed devils! Motherfuckers!”

Another man started urging the crowd to respond; the highway patrol arrested him as well. Then they left to take the Fryes to be booked at a local sheriff’s substation. By 7:40 p.m., the police were again pulling away. A youth hurled a bottle at one of the retreating patrol cars, hitting its rear fender with a crash. This time the police did not return, but instead of dispersing, the assembled crowd headed out into the neighborhood, intent on venting their anger. White motorists passing through the area soon found themselves pelted with stones and, in some cases, beaten. One of the people driving through the area was Chief Parker’s protege, Daryl Gates.