LAPD Widely Saluted for Swiftly Quelling Incident : Police: Officials say Monday's disturbance at Florence and Normandie is an indication of continuing tensions.

By TED ROHRLICH and JOHN L. MITCHELL

Dec. 16, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

The Los Angeles Police Department won widespread applause Tuesday for quickly quelling a rock- and bottle-throwing incident at the South-Central intersection that was a flash point of last spring’s riots.

But congratulations poured in against the backdrop of a city that remained tense and which some police and public officials fear could erupt again. “This city is so fragile right now . . . anything can explode in our face,” said Councilman Richard Alatorre. “Everything is not OK.”

For much of Tuesday, police throughout the city remained on a tactical alert, a state of readiness in which officers handle only high-priority calls and need permission to leave at the end of their shifts. In the department’s South Bureau, police were fully mobilized--working 12 hours a shift.

Some officers were confident that their stronger-than-usual presence near the intersection of Florence and Normandie avenues, combined with cold weather, would discourage more trouble for a while. But they predicted more violent incidents once staffing levels return to normal. “I’ve got a feeling you’re going to see (incidents like) this a lot for months,” said a police lieutenant who spoke on condition that he not be named.

The department as a whole has been preparing for the possibility of widespread unrest next year when four white officers are retried for the beating of Rodney G. King, who is black, and a group of African-American men is tried in connection with the beating of white truck driver Reginald O. Denny. Four of the Denny defendants were arrested May 12, with two others arrested later, giving rise to a defense support group named Free the L.A. 4+.

Preparations have centered on 16 hours of riot training for all officers. The training--which includes lessons in how to maneuver in 10-officer squads and how to intercept convoys of gang cars, as well as tips on rescuing hostages and using tear gas for crowd control--was ordered by Police Chief Willie L. Williams. He acted in the wake of a report by a commission headed by former FBI Director William H. Webster that criticized the department for an ineffectual response to the spring riots.

Monday’s widely perceived police success was seen as a limited test of the additional training. “I think last night was a good test of what we’re doing and what we’re preparing for early next year,” said Deputy Chief Bayan Lewis.

The broad strokes of the department’s response were “standard tactics,” Lewis said, taken from longstanding entries in the department’s tactical manual and urged upon the department by the Webster commission. They involved a quick show of force, a cordoning off of the affected area to keep innocents and troublemakers out, and a street-by-street sweep.

The Webster panel said the failure to quickly apply such basic tactics in the wake of not guilty verdicts in the first King trial “might have cost the department the chance . . . to confine the disorder to a relatively limited area.”

This time, judging from news reports, “what we recommended seems to have been followed,” said Richard J. Stone, the Webster commission’s general counsel.

The City Council, the mayor’s office, Sheriff Sherman Block, State Sen. Diane Watson, the Police Commission and other officials joined Tuesday in praising a department that was much maligned for being all but invisible during the early phases of the widespread disturbances last spring.

“The police did 100% better than they did on April 29,” said Councilman Mike Hernandez.

“The police acted professionally, decisively and effectively,” said Councilman Marvin Braude. “The people should be reassured by this.”

Police Commission President Jesse A. Brewer, himself a retired assistant chief, went further, saying: “I think it went extremely well, beyond our expectations. . . . The LAPD will guarantee that we will not have a recurrence of what occurred on April 29.”

Sheriff Sherman Block, who was critical of the LAPD last spring, said this time, “I think they handled it just right.”

Some residents of the Florence and Normandie area, however, said the police overreacted by arresting or harassing some people who were doing nothing wrong.

Lawrence Montgomery, 30, a barber, was one of the first of 55 people arrested--mainly on misdemeanor charges of disturbing the peace or failing to disperse. Montgomery said he had gone with his two small children to a peaceful demonstration sponsored by the Free the L.A. 4+ group.

Montgomery said that “the LAPD converted a peaceful demonstration into a potential riot.” He said he was arrested for inciting to riot while actually trying to urge others to remain calm in the face of police complaints that the music played by demonstrators was too loud.

The police officer who arrested him, he said, remarked: “‘We want this one. He’s a smartass. He likes to talk a lot.”’

Montgomery’s 9-year-old daughter, Kaleayah, said, “I saw a lot of police chasing my daddy. They were trying to hit him with clubs.”

At his press conference, Williams differentiated between the Free the L.A. 4+ demonstrators who were “handing out leaflets and demonstrating peacefully” and a “large group of passersby and observers, some obviously drinking, not part of the group of demonstrators.” Williams said the observers, whom he described as “an organized group that clearly knew each other and had some unity of action,” began occupying the four corners at the intersection of Florence and Normandie, taunting police and throwing rocks and bottles. “After the third time, we made the decision to close down the intersection,” he said.

He praised the department for “returning some level of confidence to the men and women who live in this city . . . by showing (that) the city government, and in particular the Police Department, can manage these events and keep them from spreading.”

Last spring, officers waited hours after trouble began to call a tactical alert. This time, a tactical alert was declared right away, freeing hundreds of officers from responding to all but the most serious radio calls to help in South-Central if needed. By 8 p.m., 300 officers from all over the city were on the scene.

To avoid a repetition of paralysis at a command center where hundreds of officers converged last time--and sat for hours waiting to be formed into squads--police this time had assembled the teams in advance.

Williams appeared far more engaged than his predecessor, Daryl F. Gates, in coordinating the overall response, including maintaining contact with field commanders and advising political leaders. The Webster panel criticized Gates for leaving police headquarters as the violence spread to attend a political fund-raiser in Brentwood.

Williams also did not hesitate to alert other law enforcement agencies and the governor’s office that outside help might be required. The Webster panel attributed part of the LAPD’s failure last time to a prideful reluctance of LAPD commanders to seek outside help.

Events unfolded this way, according to accounts from police and other witnesses:

Officers initially dispersed a crowd that blocked traffic and threw rocks and bottles at police and vehicles. Police then left. A crowd reassembled and began looting a gas station at the intersection.

A swarm of police cars that had assembled several blocks away appeared in the intersection. Police cleared out the pedestrians and began turning other traffic away.

There were reports that some of those dispersed began throwing rocks and causing havoc elsewhere in the neighborhood.

Police cordoned off several blocks and began a street by street sweep.

With helicopters lighting their way, police black and whites, along with Chevrolet Suburban vans loaded with officers from the department’s elite Metropolitan division, cruised streets. Officers parked, got out of their vehicles and ran down the streets, ordering residents into their homes, sometimes screaming at them, and sometimes physically ushering them inside.

Those who would not cooperate were arrested, witnesses said.

One man, Benny Gibbs, said of the police: “They say they don’t want a riot but they are doing something to create it.”

South-Central Los Angeles council members Mark Ridley-Thomas and Rita Walters said that while initial reports they had received indicated the police did a good job, they wanted a thorough review of police conduct.

County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who visited the area Tuesday, said there “may be people who question whether it was too much response. But this was an attempt to respond at a time when there was a problem.”

Civil liberties attorneys said that courts have given police wide latitude to clear the streets during a civil disturbance. Usually, they are required to declare the presence of an unlawful assembly before they can arrest people for failing to disperse. But in truly riotous situations, they do not have that duty to warn, said John Crew, director of the police practices project for the ACLU of Northern California. What constitutes a riot is a judgment call.

In this case, Williams said, police did not declare an unlawful assembly before trying to clear the streets. It was not known why.

No one was killed or seriously injured as a result of the police response. In fact, in an effort to avoid serious injuries, some Metropolitan Division officers were armed with a new weapon--a .37-millimeter gas gun that fire projectiles made of foam rubber that are designed to stun rather than kill.

In an effort to keep future demonstrations from getting out of hand, Williams proposed Tuesday giving the department’s small labor relations section a broader role. That section is made up of officers whose primary jobs are to socialize with labor and management leaders, keep peace on picket lines and investigate crimes arising from labor strife.

Times staff writers Rich Connell, Sam Enriquez, Marc Lacey, Victor Merina, Dean E. Murphy, James Rainey, Kenneth Reich and Hector Tobar contributed to this story.