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Version 2 Version 3
Two Nights After Zimmerman Verdict, Protests Rip Through Los Angeles Call for Calm as Los Angeles Girds for More Unrest
(about 4 hours later)
LOS ANGELES — Protesters angered by the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin ran through the streets of Los Angeles, breaking store windows, and stopping traffic and attacking passing cars and pedestrians late Monday night as passions continued to simmer two nights after the verdict in Florida. At least a dozen people were arrested. LOS ANGELES — The police here were preparing for another night of protests on Tuesday, and community activists were working to maintain the peace after anger over the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin turned violent in South Los Angeles on Monday night.
The protest began at 6 p.m. as a “prayer rally” in Leimert Park that was organized by Project Islamic H.O.P.E., but police officials said about 150 people broke off from that peaceful gathering and began committing vandalism and assaults. The Los Angeles Police Department declared a tactical alert at 9 p.m. as crowds swelled in the streets, and the police later declared an unlawful assembly, allowing them to arrest protesters who did not clear the streets. Fourteen people were arrested. A group of about 150 mostly young people broke away from a peaceful demonstration in the Crenshaw district, long home to many of the city’s black residents. Protesters ran through the streets, blocking traffic, hitting cars, assaulting pedestrians and ransacking businesses, the police reported.
“We are a better city than what we have seen tonight in the hands of a few people, and we will make sure that the community here in South Los Angeles is safe on its streets,” the city’s new mayor, Eric Garcetti, said at a news conference Monday night. He appealed to the protesters to remain peaceful. Hundreds of police officers in riot gear descended on the area to quell the unrest. Fourteen people were arrested, the police said, half of them juveniles.
“The Martin family didn’t ask anybody to break car windows,” he said. “They didn’t ask anybody to take little kids’ scooters. They didn’t ask anyone to attack businesses. And they certainly didn’t say to take over traffic in the streets.” Two decades after the acquittal of white Los Angeles police officers in the beating of Rodney King sparked deadly riots in the same part of the city, residents and public officials agreed that the more muted anger over the Zimmerman verdict — and the much smaller outbreak of violence — showed how much, and how little, has changed.
Farther north, demonstrators in Oakland blocked traffic along Interstate 880 for a brief period during the afternoon rush hour before the authorities were able to clear the road. “Twenty-one years ago we witnessed what could happen when there’s a reaction to a verdict,” Mark Ridley-Thomas, a Los Angeles County supervisor who represents South Los Angeles, said at a news conference on Monday night. “Similar sentiments are being expressed here in this space, but the response of the L.A.P.D. is qualitatively different.”
The unrest in Los Angeles, the site of several nights of deadly rioting after the 1992 acquittal of police officers in the Rodney King beating, came after consecutive nights of largely peaceful protests in cities like New York, Oakland, Chicago, Washington and Atlanta. Many in the neighborhood, while remaining wary of law enforcement officials, agreed that relations between black residents and the Police Department had vastly improved. The police allowed the demonstration to continue until the violence began.
The Los Angeles protests grew in intensity as the night wore on and were centered in the city’s Crenshaw District, a core of the city’s black community. Mr. Garcetti cut short a planned trip because of the unrest, after protesters blocked an on-ramp to Interstate 10 in South Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon. “The police did a top-notch job,” said Trebien Bellows, 46, a lifelong neighborhood resident. “I have to give it up for the new police chief. Before things got crazy, they jumped right on it.” Charlie Beck was appointed police chief in 2009.
On Sunday, those protests remained largely peaceful. Despite his praise for the police, Mr. Bellows said he understood the frustration expressed by the group that broke away from the protest in outrage. Young black people continue to be perceived as threats and targeted by the police, he said, and the Zimmerman case showed how they often paid with their lives.
“This is much bigger than just this one trial,” said Oriana Sly, a 20-year-old Los Angeles resident. She carried a sign that read “Justice for Trayvon” as she marched up Crenshaw Boulevard on Sunday night. “We people of color have always been at the bottom of the totem pole. People of color have not received our fair share with the American justice system.” “What happened after the peaceful protest was basically just kids lashing out,” he said. “Young African-American and Latino kids, they’re the ones being targeted.”
On Monday, anger once again boiled over. Protesters broke windows at Wal-Mart and several other stores. They ran through the streets, blocking traffic and repeatedly jumping on stopped cars, kicking them, dancing on the hoods. A local television news crew was attacked. Darnell M. Hunt, a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studied the 1992 riots, said that five years after the election of the country’s first black president, race relations are at a critical point.
“Twenty-one years ago we witnessed what could happen when there’s a reaction to a verdict,” said Mark Ridley-Thomas, a Los Angeles County supervisor who represents South Los Angeles. “Similar sentiments are being expressed here in this space, but the response of the LAPD is qualitatively different. It has taken a posture of respecting the constitutional rights of those who choose to peacefully express their point of view, even at the point of protest.” When Barack Obama was elected, he said, crowds gathered in Leimert Park to celebrate. “They really did see it as a new day in terms of race, and most importantly for black youth, who for generations never seriously thought they could become president,” Dr. Hunt said.
He urged protesters to remain nonviolent, which he called “the most effective way to communicate how to address injustice.” Now, the same community is protesting instead of celebrating. “People were hoping their view of justice would be served, and it wasn’t,” Dr. Hunt said. “They’re having a hard time believing in the American dream and the idea that African-Americans had finally become full-fledged citizens.”
In Sanford, Fla., where the killing took place, things remained largely quiet on Monday, a marked contrast to the situation a year ago when tens of thousands of protesters demanded Mr. Zimmerman’s arrest. Extra police officers went on patrol and grocery stores hired more security guards. Convenience store clerks asked to be allowed to leave early when a verdict was near. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., in a speech Tuesday at the N.A.A.C.P. convention in Orlando, Fla., condemned Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. “It’s time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods,” he said. “These laws try to fix something that was never broken.”
After Saturday night’s verdict, in which the jurors accepted Mr. Zimmerman’s claim that he shot Mr. Martin in self-defense, the teenager’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, were “heartbroken and devastated,” their lead lawyer said. Mr. Zimmerman’s whereabouts remained unknown to the public, and as of late Monday, according to his defense team, he had not collected the gun used in the episode, which the court had ordered released. The unrest in Los Angeles followed consecutive nights of largely peaceful protests in cities like Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Washington. In Oakland, Calif., demonstrators blocked traffic along Interstate 880 for a brief period during the afternoon rush Monday before authorities were able to clear the road.
As protests over the verdict unfolded across the country, it became clear in Sanford that the widely forecast unrest was unlikely to come to pass. The protesters made varied demands. Some wanted the federal government to prosecute Mr. Zimmerman. Others hoped for an overhaul of the entire American justice system.
“We might be angry about the verdict,” said Larry Williams, 55, as he sat in the air-conditioned chill of a friend’s barbershop in Goldsboro on Monday. “But why go out and do anything you would not want to do?” “This is much bigger than just this one trial,” said Oriana Sly, 20, of Los Angeles. She carried a sign that read “Justice for Trayvon” as she marched up Crenshaw Boulevard here on Sunday night. “People of color have not received our fair share with the American justice system.”

Cara Buckley contributed reporting from Sanford, Fla.

On Monday night, however, some protesters’ frustration boiled over. They stormed a Walmart and several other stores. They ran through the streets, blocking traffic and repeatedly jumping on stopped cars, kicking them and dancing on the hoods. A local television news crew was attacked.
“This is a different moment in time; we can see how much change for the better the city has enjoyed since 1992,” the city’s new mayor, Eric Garcetti, said on Tuesday. “For somebody born after 1992, they just see the world the way it is before them. I think the importance of seeing this through the youth’s eyes is to see what’s left undone.”
“Our work isn’t finished here,” he added. “It wasn’t finished in 1965. It wasn’t finished in 1992. It is not finished in 2013.”