I was 14 years old when the verdict came down that the four cops who had beaten Rodney King on live television had been pronounced not guilty. I wasn’t a news nerd just yet, but that didn’t keep me from being glued to the news footage of rioting in L.A. that night.
Not too many people know that I worked a few months on the cops desk at City News Service, before I became a reporter at the Glendale News-Press. The cops desk was located at Parker Center. It was a grungy room, more like a closet, with a few scanners and a couple of small TV sets that barely had color and a pretty disgusting phone. But it was good experience, and I think about it every time someone tells me to take City News Service stories with a grain of salt because their information is almost always inaccurate.
Well, the City News Service reporters proved those naysayers wrong. It turns out it was a City News Service reporter who broke the story about LAPD officers going undercover inside the Occupy LA camp. From Fishbowl LA:
Duchon’s dispatch was quickly picked up yesterday evening by MyFOXLA and the LA Times, and since then by all manner of local, national and international media.
Well, there you go.
I worked on pretty big news today — former LAPD Chief Daryl Gates died. Gates became most famous — or maybe infamous — for being the chief during the Rodney King beating and 1992 L.A. riots. As I worked on a slideshow about Gates’ career, reading about the riots brought me back. I was about 14 or 15 at the time and I was riveted by the television footage. When my father said that he had to go into L.A. (it was possibly to check on his office, but possibly also to help out his friend), I remember telling them I wanted to go with. They all looked at me as if my nose were upside down and dismissed me as crazy. Later on, my father came home bearing relics of the rioting — charred 40-ounce beer bottles that were once for sale at his friend’s 7-Eleven store in L.A., which had been torched by rioters.
The L.A. riots were the first newspaper pages I ever saved, feeling like I had a piece of history as a keepsake. It was also the first news event that made me aware of the world and made me want to be a journalist.
That’s not really what happened, but there was a story today that had me in giggles for most of the morning. Basically, at a health care reform vigil and counter-protest, in Thousand Oaks of all places, a pro-health care reform guy approached an opponent, the opponent felt threatened and threw a punch, a fight ensued, and a finger was bitten off. The pro-health care reform dude, reportedly from MoveOn.org, bit off a piece of a 65-year-old man’s pinky. How gross is that? And….ironic. And…funny! I couldn’t help making jokes for at least 20 minutes, which I posted on Twitter.