Rife with systemic abuses of power, the Los Angeles Police Department’s brutalization of Black and Latinx communities came to a head when four cops charged with assaulting Rodney King were found not guilty in April 1992, sparking off the LA Riots.
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That June, Willie Williams became the first Black Chief of the LAPD after Daryl Gates was forced to resign. Recognizing the power of publicity, Williams gave the New York Times Magazine unprecedented access to the LAPD in an effort to sell the public “A Kinder Gentler Cop.”
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In September 1994, the Times commissioned photographer Joseph Rodriguez to ride along with members of the LAPD across the city and around the clock over a period of two weeks. A native New Yorker, Rodriguez had been in Los Angeles for two years working on a project that would become East Side Stories: Gang Life in East LA (powerHouse Books, 1998).
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“It was an eye-opener,” Rodriguez says of his time with law enforcement, which has been compiled in the forthcoming book, LAPD 1994 (The Artist Edition), a photographic expose of his time with members of the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) unit, the subject of the 1988 film Colors, the Rampart Division, and the 77th Street Division in South Central and Watts.
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