5. Watts Riot, 1965

In 1965, three members of a black family in Los Angeles were locked up by police for protesting the arrest of their brother. Fueled by unemployment, poor schools and housing discrimination, discontent in the Watts neighborhood erupted and people began to loot, vandalize, and clash with police and white motorists. The riot lasted for six days. Thirty-four people were killed, 1,032 injured, and 3,952 arrested. Police commissioner, William Parker, fueled the fires by saying that the rioters acted “like monkeys in a zoo”

A California gubernatorial commission found the causes of the riot to be high unemployment, poor schools, and other inferior living conditions.

4. Detroit Riots, 1967

In 1967, police raided a after hours party in Detroit and tried to arrest 82 people who were celebrating the homecoming of two soldiers from Vietnam. This resulted in a neighborhood protest that lead to looting, vandalism and arson. Once again the National Guard was called in after five days of rioting. At the end of the chaos, 43 people were dead, 1189 injured, and over 7000 were arrested.

The Detroit Free Press cited the causes of the riot as racism, economic inequality, and poor housing.

3. Notting Hill Riots England, 1976

Riots with roots in racism and police brutality are not unique to the U.S. In 1976, during the West Indian carnival in Notting Hill, London, West Indian youths revolted against arbitrary mass arrests and began clashing with the police, throwing bottles and other objects at police and their vehicles. The causes for the riot are often cited as an occupational police presence and unemployment among the West Indian youths.

2. Los Angeles Riots, 1992

One of the most prominent riots of the 20th Century was the 1992 civil insurrection sparked by the acquittal of four officers in the videotaped beating of Black motorist Rodney King. After the officers were acquitted, African Americans began to protest at the Los Angeles County courthouse and LAPD headquarters. A large group of Black citizens convened at the corner of Florence and Normandie confronted a group of officers, who then retreated because they were outnumbered. By the evening the crowd on Florence and Normandie began looting and attacking white motorists, including truck driver Reginald Denny.

Looting, arson and violence continued and eventually the National Guard was called in. The riots wound up killing 53 people and causing more the one billion dollars worth of damage.

The Christopher Commission sited the causes of the L.A. Riots as high unemployment, racial profiling and police brutality.

1. French Riots, 2005

In October of 2005, two teenagers in a Paris suburb were chased by police into a power station where the boys were electrocuted. Protests and unrest subsequently ensued. Civil unrest spread to poor housing projects in other parts of France including violence, arson and clashes with police.

Almost 9,000 cars were burned and 3,000 people were arrested and 126 policemen and firefighters were injured. The BBC listed the causes of the riot as unemployment and discrimination against immigrants.

A once power alliance that helped institute dramatic change during the Civil Right Era took an abrupt turn on Aug. 19, 1991 after the motorcade of an influential Rabbi veered onto the sidewalk and killed a young black boy.  The incident sparked a violent response from black residents, who attacked and killed a Hassidic Jewish student.

In the aftermath, leaders from both communities accused the other of racially motivated hate, further inflaming the tenuous ties.

It was a time when the legendary clashes between black community activists and Jewish defense groups received widespread attention, as charges of black anti-Semitism came from the Jewish community, as well as calls to repudiate black leaders. Figures such as Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, Rev. Jesse Jackson and City College professor Leonard Jeffries had faced scrutiny for comments that had offended members of the Jewish community.

The Grio revisit the riots 20 years later with an insightful editorial.

Read more at the Grio.

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I wrote this article in January of 2009, but felt it was relevant again due to the riots in London and other cities in the U.K. As we can see in the article, the riots in the U.K. should be of no surprise, as history shows us that poverty, discrimination, unemployment and police brutality often result in riots and mass uprisings.

The BART shooting and the subsequent violent protest was far from the first time police brutality provoked a riot. What is about police brutality that provokes the inner city poor to react by destroying property and causing chaos?

When police, the government agents who are supposed to protect and serve the community, assault, kill, harass and discriminate members of a disenfranchised community all ideas of law, order and justice are thrown out the window.

Usually police brutality is not the primary cause for a riot but it is often the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Usually poverty, discrimination, disenfranchisement and neglect combined with a symbolic incident of oppression lead to the anger, chaos and lawlessness that provoke riots.

While the USA’s police brutality infused  riots of the 60′s and even the 90′s have been well documented, similar incidents have been occurring all over the world, from Greece to France to Canada. In most of these cases, class, religion or race and discrimination created an atmosphere of anger and resentment against the government that explodes when members of their community are unfairly brutalized or killed.

In 1965 in Los Angeles, three members of a black family were arrested for protesting the arrest of their brother. Animosity in the community, already fueled by racial discrimination, unemployment, poor schools and housing discrimination erupted and people began to loot, vandalize and clash with police and white motorists. The riot lasted for six days and 34 people were killed, 1,032 injured, and 3,952 arrested. Police commissioner, William Parker, helped escalate the situation by saying that the rioters acted “like monkeys in a zoo”

A gubernatorial commission found the causes of the riot to as high unemployment, poor schools, and other inferior living conditions.

In 1967, police raided a after hours party in Detroit and wound up trying to arrest 82 people who were celebrating the homecoming of two soldiers from Vietnam. This resulted in a neighborhood protest that lead to looting, vandalism and arson. Once again the national guard was called in and after five days of rioting. At the end of the riot, 43 people were dead, 1189 injured and over 7000 were arrested.

The Detroit Free Press cited the causes of the Detroit riot as racism, economic inequality, and poor housing.

Riots with roots in racism and police brutality are not unique to the USA. In 1976, during the West Indian carnival in Notting Hill, London, West Indian youths revolted against arbitrary  mass arrests and began clashing with the police, throwing bottles and other objects at police and their vehicles. The causes for the riot are cited as an occupational police presence and unemployment among the West Indian youths.

One of the most prominent riots of the 20th Century was the 1992 riots sparked by the acquittal of four officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King. After the officers were acquitted, African Americans in LA began to protest at the LA County courthouse and LAPD headquarters. A large group convened at the corner of Florence and Normandie confronted a group of officers who retreated because they were outnumbered. By the evening people began on Florence and Normandie began looting and attacking white motorists, including  Reginald Denny.

Looting, arson and violence continued and eventually the National Guard was called in and later so was the Army and the Marines. The Riots wound up killing 53 people and causing more the one billion dollars worth of damage.

The Christopher Commission sited the causes of the LA Riots as high unemployment, racial profiling and police brutality.

The recent riots in France also were caused by police brutality, racism, unemployment and economic inequality. In October of 2005, two teenagers were chased by police into a power station where they were electrocuted. Protests and unrest subsequently ensued. Civil unrest spread to poor housing projects in other parts of France including violence, arson and clashes with police.

Almost 9,000 cars were burned and 3,000 people were arrested and 126 policemen and firefighters were injured. The BBC listed the causes of the riot as unemployment and discrimination against immigrants.

So we see that the causes of riots are often discrimination, poverty, and police brutality. Rather than blaming the poor and disenfranchised who riot, countries should attempt to eliminate the poverty, discrimination and police brutality that cause them. If not the cycle of the poor and discriminated succumbing to violence and chaos will continue and expand.

Check Out A Gallery of Police Brutality Riots

Watch Footage of the Watts Riot

Watch a History Project on The Detroit Riots

Watch a Program on The Notting Hill Riot

Watch Footage From The LA Riots

Watch a Report on the 2005 Riots in France

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So-called copycat violence, looting and arson erupted last night in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Salford, Nottingham and elsewhere.

Reports say the three were on the streets to protect their community from rioting groups.

The police are treating the deaths as murder. Officers arrested one man and recovered a vehicle that possibly may have been involved in the incident.

As in London, vigilante groups have taken over some areas in Birmingham.

A police spokesman said: “They were not in the way or blocking the road. The car swerved towards them. They went flying up in the air”.

Read more at Bhaskar.com

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A black man convicted in the death of a white Jewish scholar during race riots in the 1990s has been stabbed in the head with an ice pick in a possible road rage attack, police say.

Lemrick Nelson was found outside his car on a Manhattan street early Sunday and was taken to a hospital, where he was listed in stable condition. Police had made no arrests.

Nelson was a central figure in the rioting that tore through Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood in 1991, stoked by tensions between the Jewish and black communities living side by side.

The riots began Aug. 19 of that year after a 7-year-old black boy, Gavin Cato, was struck and killed by a driver belonging to the ultra-Orthodox Lubavitch community. Three hours later, a gang of angry blacks shouting “Get the Jew!” descended on and fatally stabbed Yankel Rosenbaum, who was visiting from Australia. For more than two days, blacks looted stores, burned police cars and hurled bottles in the neighborhood.

Text continues after gallery:

Nelson, who was 16 at the time, was acquitted of state murder charges but was convicted of federal civil rights charges after Rosenbaum’s death. An appeals court later overturned the federal conviction, saying the judge had tampered with the racial makeup of the jury.

In 2003, a new jury found Nelson guilty of violating Rosenbaum’s civil rights. Nelson was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released within a year because of time he had already served.

Nelson’s defense lawyers didn’t deny he had stabbed Rosenbaum, who was 29. Instead, they contended the slaying had nothing to do with the fact Rosenbaum was Jewish – a key element needed for a conviction.

Nelson, now 35, was on probation for three years. He has been living in New Jersey.

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LOS ANGELES – Police Chief Charlie Beck pleaded for calm and vowed his department would conduct an exhaustive investigation into a bicycle officer’s fatal shooting of a drunken day laborer with a knife.

But his words did little to dissuade demonstrators, who spilled into the streets for a second straight night Tuesday — some to pray and light candles and others to pelt a police station near downtown Los Angeles with eggs, rocks and bottles.

Police reported 22 arrests on Tuesday night, mainly for failure to disperse and unlawful assembly, Officer Karen Rayner said.

Officers fired at least two rounds of nonlethal foam projectiles at demonstrators, Rayner said.

At least one officer and a Univision reporter were slightly injured by thrown or slingshot-propelled objects, police told City News Service, and a man who fell off his bicycle suffered a head wound.

Some protesters pushed rolling metal trash bins at officers and tossed household items from apartment buildings.

“People were throwing televisions, air conditioning units, miscellaneous furniture and other objects from the windows,” Lt. Cory Palka said.

Guatemalan immigrant Manuel Jamines, 37, was shot twice by a police officer Sunday afternoon near MacArthur Park, a poor neighborhood packed with recent immigrants from Central America.

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Fans celebrating the Lakers’ first championship in 12 years set two police cars on fire and destroyed two other vehicles, including a TV news van.

Businesses were vandalized, and fans threw rocks at baton-wielding lines of police. At least 12 injuries were reported.

Scores of police on horseback and motorcycles, some of them in riot gear, swept thousands of people away from the Staples Center, forcing the rowdy crowd south through downtown. Fire engines raced down streets to put out small bonfires, including three near the Original Pantry, a restaurant owned by Mayor Richard Riordan. Some revelers threw bottles and rocks at police.

City fire spokesman Brian Humphrey said 12 people were injured, most of them with bumps and scrapes.

Rioters also smashed the windows at two car dealerships near the arena. But no incidents of widespread violence were reported elsewhere in the city, and police said they had made no arrests after nearly three hours of violence.

There was glory tonight and there was sadness, Riordan said. I condemn the lawlessness of so-called fans who destroyed property and endangered the safety of fans and families in the vicinity. Even though the unrest did not spread citywide, it was reprehensible nonetheless.

Lakers officials appealed to fans to stay calm.

I urge you with all my heart, please, please calm down, Lakers owner Jerry Buss said. Go home, celebrate and let’s all enjoy this victory without provoking criticism.

Magic Johnson, a Lakers vice president and member of the last championship team, called the violence a shame.

That takes away from what happened here tonight, he said.
Fans burn flags in front of Staples Center after the Lakers win the NBA title.
Fans burn flags in front of Staples Center after the Lakers win the NBA title. (AP)

Nearly 10,000 people had gathered around the arena by the time the basketball game ended in a 116-111 Lakers’ victory over the Indiana Pacers, with nearly 20,000 more still inside. As violence erupted outside, fans were kept inside as a precaution and authorities barred the Pacers’ team bus from leaving for 2½ hours.

On the sidewalks outside, police guarded firefighters dousing one of the two police cars set afire.

Live television captured rioters vandalizing and burning cars for up to 15 minutes before police chased them away. Officer Jason Lee, an LAPD spokesman, defended the response.

Our job is to protect lives and property, he said. We don’t just let things happen. We have to formulate a plan and move in. We on’t just rush in there.

The crowd was mostly peaceful until nearly an hour after the game, when fans began throwing debris at limousines. The crowd smashed the windows on a white sport utility vehicle and a television news van.

Dozens of men used boards and tree limbs to strike the vehicles, while others looted fire extinguishers and other items from the van.

As the crowd was cleared away, smaller groups set small bonfires, including one at an intersection two blocks away that backed up traffic before it was extinguished.

Humphrey said the fires did not pose any threat to people or property and said they were fueled primarily by trash and Pacers’ T-shirts.

Cars trying to maneuver around the blazes crawled slowly. Some people jumped atop the vehicles and punched out car windows.

Figueroa Street, a main downtown thoroughfare newly paved for the Democratic Convention in August, was littered with garbage cans, trash and newspaper racks. Scores of people were stranded in downtown as hundreds of police and mounted officers blocked off the streets.

Many in the crowd insisted they were trying to show their excitement for the team, chanting 12 Years! 12 Years!” as they ran through the streets.

Similar riots occurred recently in Denver and Chicago following championships in professional football and basketball, respectively.

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Police in Memphis have charged at least four people after a fight broke out at a child-themed restaurant there.

The Commercial Appeal reported the ruckus Saturday night began when someone asked a woman how long she planned on being at a vending machine.

Police reports stated that when the woman said she “was going to take her time,” a man punched the woman, she and a companion fought back and the victim’s family got into the brawl.

Police said other customers panicked and fled the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant with their children.

Authorities charged Juaneka Key and Terrence Dickerson with disorderly conduct and inciting a riot.

Steven Henderson and Juanita Hopkins, who police said were shouting and cursing and making threats, are charged with disorderly conduct and marijuana possession.

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From the NY Times:

ROME — More than a thousand African workers were put aboard buses and trains in the southern Italian region of Calabria over the weekend and shipped out to immigrant detention centers, following some of the country’s worst riots in years.

The clashes began Thursday night in Rosarno, a working-class city amid citrus groves in Calabria, the toe of Italy’s boot, after a legal immigrant from Togo was lightly wounded in a pellet-gun attack in a nearby city. It is not clear who pulled the trigger — the authorities said they were investigating whether organized crime had provoked the riots — but the consequences were severe.

Blaming racism for the attack, dozens of immigrants burned cars and smashed shop windows in Rosarno in two days of riots, throwing rocks at local residents and fighting with the police. More than 50 immigrants and police officers were wounded, none seriously, and 10 immigrants and locals were arrested before the authorities began sending the immigrants to detention centers elsewhere in southern Italy on Saturday.

The images emerging from Calabria over the weekend — of torched cars and angry African immigrants hurling rocks — were the most vivid example of the growing racial tensions in Italy, which have been exacerbated by an economic crisis whose depth has only recently been acknowledged in the national dialogue. Both the official and underground economies increasingly rely on immigrants, while Italy remains torn between acceptance and xenophobia.

Click here to read more.

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Two feuding families and their friends lined opposite sides of a small-town Alabama street and hurled rocks, tools and pieces of wood at each other, striking the police chief with a crowbar, in a riot rooted in a disagreement that began years ago with schoolchildren.

Members of the Sawyer and Moore families were in jail Tuesday, a day after the melee that swelled to 150 people, including gang members.

“They came with guns, sticks, bricks, golf clubs. It was a bad situation,” said police chief Tony Bufford, who was OK.

State police and officers from other west Alabama towns were called to keep the peace in Marion, which was under a 10 p.m. curfew.

Bufford said the families have been feuding for at least two years but wasn’t sure exactly what happened to start it all except it was over schoolchildren.

Five adults named either Moore or Sawyer and several juveniles were arrested on assault charges, said District Attorney Michael Jackson, and more charges were likely. In all, at least eight people were arrested in the city of 3,300 about 85 miles west of Montgomery.

“Part of it was families that didn’t get along with each other. It’s big families with a lot of friends,” Jackson said, adding that gang members also were involved.

Tension began Sunday night when a fight fueled by the families’ bad blood erupted after a pickup basketball game, and at least one shot was fired.

“They shot my truck up with my 1-year-old baby inside,” said Littenger Moore, 30.

Problems continued at a high school the next morning, with a fight ending in two arrests.

Relatives of those arrested followed officers to police headquarters, where a crowd gathered. Authorities said six more people were arrested there after an argument turned violent.

In a small office building across the street from City Hall, attorney Jeff Nail and law office employee Debi Foster watched from behind locked doors as the angry crowd gathered between the buildings.

“I saw a lady with a baseball bat,” Foster said. “There’s still a broken mop in the driveway.”

Nail said the families and their supporters lined the streets, facing off.

“There was a lot of loud talk and one person would go up to the other side and then run back and then they started throwing stuff back and forth,” Nail said.

Four people were injured, and Jackson said one person who was hit might need surgery for a fractured eye socket.

Jackson said bond was set at $250,000 for a suspect charged with having a gun at the high school, and he and others remained in custody. Charged with assault, Littenger Moore spent the night in jail but was freed on bond Tuesday.

Signs of the melee were scattered around City Hall a day later. A shirt was in the middle of the street and a belt was on a sidewalk. Shrubbery had been trampled in front of an insurance office.

“Some of these people need to pack their suitcases because they’re going to be in jail for awhile,” Jackson said. “There was no excuse for this.”

Los Angeles police say five officers were hit by debris and had minor injuries in downtown celebrations following the Lakers’ championship victory over the Orlando Magic.

Police Sgt. Andy Mathes says one of the officers was taken to a hospital and the others were treated at the scene during the scattered melees that erupted late Sunday night before the crowd around Staples Center dispersed under orders from police.

What began as a lively but peaceful celebration took on a different tone for those remaining a few hours after the game. Some in the crowd vandalized buses and police cars, set small fires and threw rocks and bottles at police.

Officer Karen Rayner says about 25 people were arrested for disturbing the peace, arson and other infractions.

An angry crowd threw rocks and bottles at police in riot gear in Austin, Texas, hours after an officer shot two men, killing one of them.

Police say eight officers had minor injuries and eight patrol cars were damaged as authorities tried to break up the crowd of about 100 people that gathered after the Monday morning shooting.

Police Chief Art Acevedo said the shooting occurred after police investigating complaints of shots fired over the weekend approached a car with three men inside. He said an officer shot one man who made a movement toward a weapon when the officer tried to wake him up, and shot another who ran toward him.

Acevedo said the unidentified officer who fired will be placed on standard administrative leave.

Watch the News Report

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Riots have long been a prt of American history. Riots represent the collapse of law and order in our society, when people feel the only way to have their voice heard is through vandalism looting and chaos. Here is a gallery of some of the many riots over the past 40 years.

The most impalatable part of the missile attacks on Palestinian civilians on the Gaza strip is the uneven media coverage. Although the Middle East conflict has been a steady presence in international politics for the last forty years (and the last century before that), there is little context to explain to viewers how the dredge of occupation by a military power in a poor community can have lasting effects on a generation of oppressed citizens. When the commentators (including our own President and President-elect) are asked about the relentless missile raids on civilian communities, they take a hands-off approach except to say that “Israel must have the right to defend its territory from random rocket launches.” The point, though true, fails to mention that Israel has one of the largest standing armies in the world, and the support of still more heavy-artillery forces in Britain and the United States. But, as is the case with the propagandist branches of major media, and state-sponsored press releases, mum’s the word about the impact of such a sustained attack on a crippled community. 

Hamas and its extremists have few resources to contend with the might of Israel’s figurative sword. In fact, even as Hamas fighters mount small responses from satellite countries (allegedly Jordan and Pakistan) the tag “terrorist” would be a generous label at best. Palestinian citizens on Gaza strip are, on average, under seventeen years old. Many are poor workers and families living in a virtual serfdom, surrounded by fences and armed guards. This from Al Jazeera:

Bishara said the majority of Gazans are refugees, whose ancestors used to live in what is now Israel.

“Everybody knows that 75 per cent of the people of Gaza are refugees. Everybody knows that Israel disengaged from Gaza militarily, but occupies it economically and politically and also it besieges Gaza militarily.

“Israel would say, “what would any normal country do if they were threatened by rocket fire? They would act”.

“But Israel is not a normal country, it is an occupying country, a colonial country and the people of Gaza are under siege.”

It almost reminds me of the hood.

When I walk through Bushwick, Brooklyn or when my countrymen walk through the depths of East L.A., Detroit or Dade County, I see a similar trap. The doldrums of the ghetto are undeniable, with the strips of cheap stores only broken up by the plentiful liquor stores. Police officers, in fully equipped radio cars, with antsy artillery, cruise the streets with a scowl and the means to protect the Better Half of society at any cost. But, it leads me to wonder: if the situation were reversed, and I had been shot by those patrolling sentinels, would my own media care about how humanly I was portrayed? Apparently not. In the past three months, a few high profile police brutality cases involving black men have been buried among the thousands of like stories. Just as I can find no definite number of Palestinian civilians have been killed by their colonizers, there is a veil over the number of Black men who are unjustly felled by blue bullets. 

If there is a way to address modern colonialism, media has pushed those answers to the far fringe, preferring to decry the tragedy of “women and children” dying unmercifully, rather than questioning the systematic (and silent) endorsement of these grave measures. Police brutality is no different. Billey Joe Johnson, a star high school athlete, died of a mysterious gunshot wound to the chest that Mississippi police claim was self-inflicted. With that news cycle, Billy Joe’s memory faded and justice has not yet been claimed. And in Oakland, where riots have erupted after an innocent Oscar Grant was shot to death on the BART transit system, the only recourse for the occupied citizens is to express physical outrage. A young man from Bellaire, Texas named Robbie Tolan was also shot in his driveway by police, alongside his cousin after no real wrongdoing on his part. Before him it was Amadou Diallo. Before him it was Arthur McDuffie. Countless incidents have reminded Black men that we are unlawful beings roaming in large urban enclaves, subject to the whims of a bigger threat than a single police officer’s gun. Not only are we enveloped by the thick smog of official paranoia, we are also dealing with the real threat of a stray bullet or an irate cop.

The plight of Palestine rings true across the water, where our urban ghettoes double as occupation centers for the poor. Just as on the Gaza strip soldiers shot into crowd of innocents, and regularly assaulted people crossing invisible boundaries and fences, police soldiers make it their point to muzzle Black communities. Instead of removing ourselves from the story of Palestinian oppression, or from the story of Sudanese oppression, we must feel the blows of colonialism by proxy. We must voice the same frustration when Palestine hurts as when Kingston hurts as when Oakland hurts. 

At this point, when we flail our arms and feet about social malaise, it is in vain because there is not a united message. The most outstanding shows of solidarity involved our Garveys and our Kings banding to counter institutional powers. Now is no different.

In the BP news article titled “RIOTS!!!RIOT!!….YEAH I KNEW IT WOULD COME TO THIS!” frustration rages about what is going on in Oakland and the usual aftermath of a riot. Join the debate here.