The Effect on Injuries of Curfews and Time of Dispatch of Law Enforcement Personnel

EMS personnel identified two factors that may have reduced the number of injuries. The first factor is the number of law enforcement personnel on the street (including California National Guard federal). The second, imposition of curfews by cities and the county. Let's look at curfews first. The Los Angeles basin contains more than eighty-five individual and unincorporated cities. Incorporated cities have their own law enforcement and often, fire service. The area covered by the central Los Angeles civil disturbance, as shown on Map 1, comes under the jurisdictions of nine cities. OES Situation Reports and the Los Angeles County Sheriff identifies when each city declared a curfew (Table 10). Los Angeles City established a curfew prohibiting the sale of gas and ammunition in a limited area of the city early Thursday morning. This was extended to a wider area by 10:15 AM. By 1:45 PM the Mayor had extended the curfew to the entire city. An even more restrictive order establishing a dawn to dusk curfew was put into force at 3:55 PM (Webster, 1992). The County also imposed emergency orders and established a dusk to dawn curfew on Thursday. The emergency orders and curfew covered a large portion of the area where the civil disturbance was taking place. The LA City emergency orders prohibited the dispensing of gasoline except to fill automobile tanks, and the sale of ammunition. The County also issued emergency orders restricting the sale of gasoline in hand held containers, glass bottles, and ammunition. A sunset to sunrise curfew was also imposed by the County over a slightly different area from that defined by the city. Together, these two curfews covered the vast majority of South Central Los Angeles. The City of Santa Monica initiated a curfew later Thursday, followed by the remaining cities on Friday. The number of civil disturbance injuries occurring when the city and county curfews took effect on Thursday actually increased with a substantial number occurring before sunset at 7:30 PM that night (Raw Data Table 2). The data shows that imposition of a curfew by itself was not enough to significantly reduce riot related injuries. Newspaper reports described the effect of the curfew on LA for Friday, May 1. Vehicle traffic on freeways was light, professional sporting events and bus service were halted, schools and libraries and other public buildings were closed and most businesses in the central city area remained shuttered. These closures, while not having a substantial effect on riot related injuries, may have reduced the number of automobile and other trauma injuries that occur on a day to day basis (Sacramento Bee, May 1, 1992). LAPD was unable to effectively organize its field 'response on Wednesday (for a contrasting view see comments by Gates, and by Vernon, Sacramento Bee, January 12, 1993b,c). There were severe problems with establishing a command and control structure in the field, as well as in setting priorities for the assigrunent of officers. These points are discussed below in the field response section. It appears that the LAPD simply failed to organize and respond in force early on (Webster, 1992). The Webster report makes the following observation: Our analysis of events shows... that as late as 7:00 PM, [Wednesday] outbreaks of violence were largely confined to part of the 77th Street and Southwest Areas. As we documented.... it was within thd next hour after 7:00 PM that the fires started and the violence began to spread. Thus, any chance the [LAPD] Command Staff had to contain the disturbance at the onset ended around 7:00 PM the first night. After that, the violence steadily worked its way north and west (Webster, 1992, p. 20). The number of law enforcement personnel on the street increased slowly on Wednesday, climbing to about 1,500 by Thursday morning. A small number of National Guard troops were deployed at 1:30 PM Thursday. The number of law enforcement officers suddenly escalated to about 6,000 later that evening when the National Guard became active. This pattern of delayed law enforcement escalation is similar to that reported by Kerner Commission in their study of 24 disorders in the late 1960s. They found that: In 20 of the 24 disorders, the primary effort to restore order at the beginning of violence was made entirely by local police. ... The police approach to the initial outbreak of disorder in the surveyed cities was generally cautious. ... [In half of these incidents the police withdrew] from the area, generally because they believed they were unable to cope with the disorder (Kerner, 1968, p. 125). Generally the Commission found that: "...sufficient manpower is a prerequisite for controlling potentially dangerous crowds; the speed with which it arrives may well determine whether the situation can be controlled (Kerner, 1968, p. 326)." Petersilia and Abrahamse's arrests data shows a substantial increase in arrests for civil disturbance related activities, such as violating the curfew, starting on Thursday, and peaking sharply on Friday. The escalating rate of arrests combined with the increased number of law enforcement personnel together with the curfew probably contributed to a decline in injuries after midnight on Thursday (Petersilia and Abrahamse, 1993). In the case at hand, a rapid police response may not have halted the violence, but it certainly would have given the public a different perception of the police response. This could have slowed or reduced the spread of violence. On the other hand, some argued that strong police intervention during the most violent stage of the riot could have sparked even more violence (Webster, 1992). Comparing the injury data with that produced on "levels of violence" reported by the Kerner Commission for Tampa Florida, it appears that a critical ratio between rioters and law enforcement personnel had to be reached before the violence decreased. Injury data for Los Angeles shows a substantial drop occurring on Friday after the sudden and substantial increase in law enforcement personnel (Graph 7). While injuries continued to occur on Friday and Saturday, there were far fewer than had occurred on Wednesday and Thursday. Tampa Florida also experienced two peaks in the level of violence before dropping substantially, again after the introduction of Florida's National Guard (Graph 8). Local reports indicate that the South Central Los Angeles curfew was most effective when law enforcement personnel were there to implement it. For example, a Sheriff Department update indicated that: "The curfew established by the County and Cities appears to be about 90% effective [Friday night]" (LA Sheriff, 1992). There were approximately 5,490 Guardsmen on the street then. It may be that once the National Guard took to the streets, residents interpreted the curfew as being "marshall law" and did not venture out. These findings, and the similarities between the incidents reported by the Commission's study and those experienced during this event, all point in the same direction. Fewer injuries might have resulted if as many law enforcement personnel were in position on Thursday morning as were committed that night.

Medical Care for the Injured

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