At 3:15 pm on April 29, 1992, a jury in Los Angeles, considering the case against the police officers charged with the beating of Rodney King, came to a verdict. They acquitted three white police officers and failed to reach a verdict on the fourth officer. Less than two hours after the verdict was announced, the city erupted into riots over such a broad geographical area and so sustained in their violence that the police were unable to maintain control.  The riots continued for 121 hours or 6 days before they were brought under control. Fifty three people were know to have died in those days, but there were many who were unaccounted for in the aftermath of the riots. This much is completely factual and was widely reported at the time.

Gattis takes this factual incident and weaves a compulsive, gritty tale of revenge and  double dealing into a corner of Los Angeles that was not covered by the media and where the police, who were stretched so thin, they were told to retreat and let the looting and rioting run its course. Told from the perspective of seventeen different interconnected narratives; we hear from Latino gang members, Asian store owners, police officers, fire fighters, nurses, drug dealers, and even a graffiti artist. Gattis knows these characters intimately-from the way gang members think and retaliate for the slightest of slights, or how Asian store owners naturally band together to save their bushiness or how firefighters and police struggling to maintain order in the chaos are constantly afraid for their lives-each detail of these characters feels true and real. The story initially is propelled by the chaos and violence of the riots in downtown LA, but soon the the individual story lines of gang revenge, double dealing, police and fire fighters response and the bewildered victims of the rioting begin to assert themselves in a complex but compulsive narrative.  Like The Wire, there is moral ambiguity in all these characters, and yet they all have something to teach us. This was one of the most powerful, vivid, compulsive books I have read this year!

With the current Justice Department reviewing consent decrees made with various cities like Baltimore or Ferguson where police brutality and racism played a role in the deaths of young black men, this book is a prescient warning of the cost to our society when prejudice, racism and violence towards those who feel they have little or no access to justice or the ability to redress their grievances are ignored. The riots in Los Angeles are a vivid warning of what happens when justice is denied and we will be doomed to repeat this history until we learn a better way.

Brenda’s Rating: *****(5 out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Keith, Ken, Sharon and Marian.

Book Study Worthy: Yes

Read in ebook format.