TALES FROM THE RIOT
FPK 1992
By
What luck..
I couldn't believe my fortune... going back to my sacred training grounds...
Firestone.... in a riot... what pure joy
Driving down the
101/11/Florence Ave from our nice, safe, clean, sandy station we
encountered a city burning... police absent... looters everywhere...
When we arrived at FPK the
platoon had already been mobilized and we were given the job as "roving
patrol"..... I couldn't contain my delight.... while the rest of the
deputies were doing the "hurry up and wait" routine we were out
driving around the station area....
After realizing there weren't
going to be any normal calls for service we began aggressive/preventive patrol
SOOOOO....
One minute out we see a guy pushing a shopping cart down FPK Blvd with
a safe and ten new tires piled high in it.... well he got his tires
thrown into the junkyard on Alameda... we recycle you know... and the safe was
put in one of our trunks, later opened and returned to its owners ...cash and
jewelry intact... and the suspect,,, well he received a "stern"
counseling and hobbled home... the riot was over for him
G.I. Liquor at 94 and
We did some time in Huntington
Park... by that time the new BMW dealer had already lost all his front lot
inventory... the looters hot wiring cars and driving them out the showroom
windows... what a sight... anyway we saw a car full of looters back into a
store window... jump out and begin looting the contents right in front of us...
WTF... this isn't the city. We aren't going to let this happen... so we stop
the suspects (driving a new MBZ, full of stolen property).... twelve of us do a
tactical approach and detain the suspects.... the driver alleges we stole her
money as we order her to drive to the station with us...(yes
suspects did drive themselves to jail!) right there in the middle of the riot the two deputies (Jake
Kuredjian and Jerome Clark) began to strip so i could
see they hadn't taken any money... it was amazing... anyway a careful interview
by Sid Heal, the W/c, and a polygraph cleared up the
"misunderstanding".... Were any of the suspects we booked that night
ever charged... heck I don’t know... but even the ones we arrested for good
211's... and one of 664/187 we never got subpoenas for....
(Jake Kuredjian was later KIA
in S.C.... I was lucky to know him)
I felt sorry for the National
Guard guys with no ammo.... a couple of times I doled out the silver bullet....
by the end of the night there were prisoners flex cuffed to many of the phone
poles on Florence.... the next morning some of them lay asleep in weird
positions waiting for dayshift to free them....occasionally there would be only
the remains of the flex ties and blood was on the pole where the suspect had
freed himself.... or maybe even become a victim... a riot is a tough place to
be:)
We didn’t sit in the station...
we didn’t have report to anybody... we didn’t get any calls... we were twelve
deputies who in the middle of the riot on PM and E M shifts were what the
citizens saw of FPK station... by the time the Platoon deployed the
knuckleheads had gone to ground..... I will never forget the privilege I was
given.... kudos to Dave Furmanski... thanks Dave
Our Department made a
mistake.... they should have let us ALL be on patrol... from second one...
riot... what riot
It wouldn’t have been any
noisier than a Mexican gangbanger party on Saturday night...
My only regrets.... I couldn't
be there for ALL the shifts.... the other sergeants wouldn’t trade with
me....even for three days swaps...oh well
Cam Mooney- fpk 81-85