HIUS 161: Essay 4

This week’s readings saw Los Angeles as the center of political activism, militaristic, and law enforcement nationally and internationally. While this theme was seen in previous weeks, such as with the Zoot Suit riots during wartime, and the presence of racism that supported redlining and segregation post-war, the era of the 1960s to 1990s clearly defines how the aftermath of wartime and postwar legislation and policy created the oppressive, anti-minority socioeconomic system we see in the city today.

In Order Maintenance and the Genealogy of SWAT, Stuart Schrader discusses the origins of SWAT and other militaristic units and actions from the Los Angeles Police Department, which were created to suppress African Americans in South Los Angeles under the guise of “cracking down on drugs.” As unemployment grew rapidly in minority communities following World War Two, many were unable to earn a living, and were pushed into violence in the form of anti-policing groups like the Black Panther Party, or into drug peddling later in the 1980s. In response to any attempt at activism or pushback to their oppression, LAPD Police Chief William Parker pushed back harder with openly discriminatory policies and tactics, creating a policing model that used “statistics” of crime rates to target segregated communities. Later, Daryl Gates would continue this movement after the Watts Riots by implementing SWAT as a means for the police to put down mass movements in certain communities. Soon after its creation, SWAT was used in almost exclusively segregated areas to target Black and Latino activists. This new wave of militaristic policing was then spread across the nation and the world, as LAPD officers were sent as consultants to nations in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, teaching foreign police units how to mimic their techniques of suppression and targeted violence.

As Schader explains, worsening economic conditions in the city pushed young African Americans into vulnerability, causing them to turn to these violent uprisings and later gangs and drug rings. Ruth Gilmore further details this in The California Political Economy. She discusses how this economic downturn was the result of divestment from major industries in Los Angeles, such as shipyard manufacturing and steel production, by both the federal government and private corporations alike. As money was being redirected away from the city, unemployment rose drastically. Yet, as this occurred within the city, the nation as a whole experienced what we now refer to as a period of “stagflation,” in which unemployment and inflation rose together, creating disastrous conditions for a population already struggling financially. This, Gilmore argues, is why the formation of gangs and the drug trade became so prominent in the city: with no other economic opportunities, people took what was available. Yet, as more and more African American youth turned to criminal activity, the police doubled down on their discriminatory policies from the 1950s and 1960s.

The idea of being “tough on crime” began to take shape at this time. First named by President Nixon and made the forefront of political discussion under the Reagan Administration, a push to end gang violence and curb the trade and sale of drugs happened in Los Angeles. In a model that is more proactive in hunting down suspected criminals rather than protecting the community, the police used SWAT and operations like HAMMER and CRASH to arrest or book hundreds of African American men, creating a registry for suspected gang members whom they would surveil. Mike Davis, in both his book The City of Quartz and the documentary Bastards of the Party, discusses the discriminatory targeting of minority populations, but more specifically, he focuses on the framing that allowed the city to continue its push. At the time, police and city officials like Daryl Gates explained their shift to militaristic methods as a means of being active against the drug trade, and seeing as they were supposedly arresting many drug peddlers and petty criminals, it seemed to be working. Public sentiment outside of the affected parts of Los Angeles was in favor of the police, so much so that the mayor at the time, Tom Bradley, didn’t even speak out against blatant police racism against his own people, fearing political backlash. As Davis explains, the public image and feeling towards the new policing techniques meant that they could continue their approach, leading to a decades-long assault on African American communities.

As tensions in the city rose continuously from the 1960s onward, the city attempted to be a beacon of activism and hope for the nation and abroad in the fight against apartheid South Africa. As Daniel Widener explains in Continent to Continent: Black Los Angeles against Apartheid, activists tried to set an example for the country and the world in ways to end apartheid policy in South Africa. They pushed for the mayor to divest from companies operating in the country, cut off trade, and publicly denounce its actions. Though public sentiment was initially in support of South Africa, or at least not vehemently opposed to it, sentiment shifted against it as activism and boycotts intensified. Soon after, other nations followed the example set by Los Angeles and California, creating ever more pressure on the South African government to comply with their demands. It is fascinating to consider how, as the LAPD was sending its officers as consultants to other cities and even nations to discuss their militaristic tactics in policing, not unlike the methods used by South Africa in events such as the Sharpeville Massacre, the city was also sending representatives of anti-apartheid movements to speak out against their atrocities. This dichotomy of movements and ideas existing in the same time and space within the city is something I hope to further investigate and discuss.