Los Angeles Webster Commission records, 1931-1992

Karen Bass, interview, 1992-09-28

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Karen Bass, interview, 1992-09-28

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Content TO:
FROM:
DATE:
RE:
CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION
ATTORNEY/CLIENT COMMUNICATION
ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT
Richard J. Stone, General Counsel
Geoffrey L. Thomas, Esq.
September 28, 1992
Interview With Karen Bass,
Executive Director of Community
Coalition For Substance Abuse,
Prevention And Treatment
On September 9, 1992, at 10:15 a.m. Geoffrey L.
Thomas interviewed Karen Bass, Executive Director of the
Community Coalition For Substance Abuse, Prevention and
Treatment ("Coalition") at her office, 8500 South
Broadway, Los Angeles, California. This memorandum
summarizes the 90-minute meeting, including my questions
and comments, together with my mental impressions,
opinions, analysis and conclusions based on the meeting.
I . BACKGROUND
Karen Bass has been the Executive Director of
the Coalition since March, 1990. She has a full-time
staff of nine people. The Coalition receives federal
funding from the Department of Health and Human Services,
Office of Substance Abuse Prevention. The Coalition
concentrates on the South Central Los Angeles area, and
more specifically the 8th City Council District
represented by Mark Ridley-Thomas.
Currently, the Coalition grant is through use.
Ms. Bass helped write the grant and established the
501c(3) status of the Coalition.
The major concern of the Coalition is the heavy
concentration of liquor stores and transient motels in
South Central, which facilitate drug trafficking and
alcohol abuse. Over the years, many African-American
owners sold their liquor stores, which were subsequently
purchased by Asians, including Korean-Americans.
TO: Richard J. Stone
September 28, 1992
Page 2
Ms. Bass has a background as a physician's
assistant. She has worked in several emergency hospitals
and has seen many victims of violence.
II. ANTICIPATION OF VERDICT
Ms. Bass stated that she did not think there
was any way that the four officers accused of beating
Rodney King could avoid being convicted. Her impression
of the videotape was, "Finally, there is proof!"
After the verdicts were announced, a number of
volunteers at the Coalition came in and out of the
Coalition office. Ms. Bass indicated that they all felt
naive in not having anticipated some kind of uprising.
The leadership at the First AME Church had
planned to go out on the streets after the verdicts, but
they did not anticipate the popular outcry in response to
the verdicts. Consequently, the church leadership
changed its tactics and decided to go to the church,
rather than onto the streets.
III. INTELLIGENCE AND PLANNING
Ms. Bass had no personal information on these
subjects.
IV. EFFECTS OF POLITICAL ATMOSPHERE AND PRE-VERDICT
COMMENTS
To Ms. Bass, the community suffered "blow
after-blow-after-blow" preceding the uprising. She does
not think the riot was planned but rather was an outburst
building for a long time. For example, the Soon Ja Du
sentence had just been affirmed by the appellate court
only two weeks before the April 29 riot.
Ms. Bass grew up in the Los Angeles area and
had some negative feelings about the police. She said
her feelings about the police had improved, however,
since she began working with them at the Coalition.
TO: Richard J. Stone
September 28, 1992
Page 3
Nonetheless, it was her experience that many African
Americans are afraid whenever the police pull them over
in their car. Also if blacks call the police to report
crimes, they never know what might happen. For example,
if a resident called the LAPD to report drug activity,
the LAPD might send a black and white car to show up at
the caller's door. Then there might be reprisals from
gang members who beat up the caller because of
"informing" on them.
Ms. Bass had heard from the police that they
had already attempted to employ community based policing,
but that it wasn't working.
Ms. Bass pointed out that many employers,
including General Motors, Firestone and others, all of
whom had affirmative action programs, have left South Los
Angeles. There has been nothing to replace the lost
jobs. She believes there is a parallel between the rise
in cocaine use and the decline in jobs since the 1970s.
Her view is that people must be employed; if they cannot
be legitimately employed, they will sell drugs as another
way of earning income.
V. NATURE OF VIOLENCE
Ms. Bass was at the corner of Florence and
Normandy on April 29 and witnessed the violence first
hand. She said the people in the area reacted to the
verdicts in absolute disbelief and rage. Her reaction to
being on the scene was that it was very frightening,
because there were no police anywhere. She felt as
though Chief Gates and the police leadership were
punishing the community by showing what it was like when
there were no police around for protection. She did not
expect this from the LAPD.
Ms. Bass felt that some of the violence at
Florence and Normandy was indiscriminate. There was some
gang activity, such as when they set up 10 or 15
makeshift barricades on the streets. Also, there was
some organized looting; for example, she saw U-Haul
trucks drive up to appliance stores, and the passenger
took what they wanted, before they opened the store up to
the public. She lives in the Fairfax area and watched
TO: Richard J. Stone
September 28, 1992
Page 4
looting in that area. She said that she was not
personally afraid.
Ms. Bass felt that the media was advertising
11
100% discounts" to the public. The media was
identifying the actual corner, by address and cross
streets, where the looting was taking place. The media
was also advertising that there were no police present.
The public needs to think about this problem in the
future.
VI. POLICE OVERSIGHT
Ms. Bass believes that there was no oversight
of the LAPD by either the Police Commission or the City
Council. The LAPD was viewed as having its own
government. She felt that the Mayor was impotent in
responding to the police. Los Angeles had a loose canon
as the head of the LAPD, but nobody was able to get rid
of him.
The Mayor brought some new people with backbone
to the Police Commission, but they still had no power.
Also, the City Council also had no power. Ms. Bass
believes that Chief Gates had some secret information on
City Council members which precluded them from acting
decisively. She noted that there was an editorial
written by Stacey Coons which praised Daryl Gates and
compared him to J. Edgar Hoover. She believes that the
secret information that both Gates and Hoover had was a
powerful political influence.
VII. LESSONS LEARNED
Ms. Bass said that poverty had a continuing
role in causing the unrest. If the underlying economic
conditions are not dealt with, the violence seen on April
29 is only the beginning. She also thinks that the
dispute is not so much between blacks and whites as
between haves and have-nots. She does not believe that
the April 29 incident was a race riot, because it was not
solely a black uprising.
TO: Richard J. Stone
September 28, 1992
Page 5
Another lesson is that if members of the
community are not allowed to participate in rebuilding
their own neighborhoods, or in making the decisions that
affect their lives, there will be further unrest. The
people who live in South Los Angeles must be empowered to
help themselves.
Many people in South Los Angeles believe that
life has improved now that many liquor stores have been
burned. Approximately 50 of the 100 liquor stores had
been targeted as problems by the Coalition before they
were destroyed in the riots. The majority of these
liquor stores are in the 8th District and are run by
Korean-Americans.
Much of the rest of Los Angeles has learned how
to use its power to prevent building permits from being
issued on liquor stores. The San Fernando Valley and
West Los Angeles have reaped the benefits of this
practice, but South Los Angeles has not.
Liquor stores lower property values. People in
South Los Angeles don't want that to happen by having the
liquor stores return. There have been hearings on this
subject and Peter Uebberoth, among others. has attended
on behalf of Rebuild LA. The problem with Rebuild LA,
according to Ms. Bass, is that it starts with certain
presumptions about American competitiveness and
enterprise zones. These assumptions are not the same
assumptions as those held by members of the community.
To make South Los Angeles attractive to
investment capital, it cannot be a high crime area.
Since liquor stores are magnates for crime and drug use,
she wants to remove them, and the transient motels, from
the neighborhoods. The Coalition emphasizes decision
making by the whole community. Others have focused on
individual drug use but not the communal problems which
are the Coalition's focus.
Liquor stores in South Los Angeles fill several
functions. They are the places where loans are made,
where lines of credit are set up, where drugs are bought
and sold and where food and alcohol is dispensed.
Several of these functions are not positive influences in
TO: Richard J. Stone
September 28, 1992
Page 6
the community. The Coalition's opposition to the liquor
stores is not based on who owns the stores but rather on
the detrimental influence the stores have in the area.
Nonetheless, the Coalition's anti-liquor store
campaign impacts mostly Korean-Americans. Ms. Bass feels
that some Korean-Americans have viewed African-Americans
as thieves. The owners follow them around in the stores
while they are buying merchandise. She feels that many
Korean-Americans do not feel the need to learn English to
run liquor stores; their attitude is that it doesn't
matter, and that they can get away without learning the
language in the African-American communities.
Ms. Bass believes that it is an illusion that
African-Americans have power to make decisions that
affect their lives. The Mayor has exercised his power to
improve Downtown and the Westside, but he has not brought
improvement to South Los Angeles. Although Latinos and
Asian-Americans have the perception that African
Americans have political power, Ms. Bass does not believe
that it is true. She notes that there are "two new kids
on the block, in Mark Ridley Thomas and Rita Walters on
the city Council, but they are just beginning to feel
their power."
In any event, she does not believe that power
comes from elected officials. It comes from the people
in the community. People in South Los Angeles want the
same things as people in the Valley and the Westside.
There are property owners associations there who control
developments, and she is looking for similar tools to use
in her community.
There are maps that show ordinances passed by
different sections of the city to block development.
Most of the ordinances are on the Westside and not on the
Southside of Los Angeles.
Ms. Bass is optimistic that improvements will
be made in South Los Angeles. She thinks that there is
still a great deal of anger in the community against
African-Americans -- as reflected by public reaction
against the riots and reaction approving the sentence by
Judge Carlin in the Soon Ja Du case. Korean-Americans
TO: Richard J. Stone
September 28, 1992
Page 7
have depicted themselves as riot victims and have
attempted to get sympathys from the community at the
expense of African-Americans, she believes.
Ms. Bass points out that violence is associated
with alcohol. The leading cause of death among black
males is homicide, and 60% of those homicides are alcohol
related. The combination of high crime and high violence
has a connection, she believes, to poor planning in
communities that allow so many liquor stores. She points
out that South Los Angeles has over 700 liquor stores, as
opposed to only 280 liquor stores in all of Rhode Island.

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Description

Interview of Karen Bass, Executive Director of the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse, about her impressions of the civil disturbance, 1992 September 28.

Asset Metadata

Core Title Karen Bass, interview, 1992-09-28

Tag OAI-PMH Harvest

Format 7 p. (format), application/pdf (imt), Interviews (aat)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/webster-c100-31098

Unique identifier UC11447630

Identifier box 19 (box),web-box19-018-01.pdf (filename),folder 18 (folder),webster-c100-31098 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier web-box19-018/web-box19-018-01.pdf

Dmrecord 31098

Format 7 p. (format),application/pdf (imt),Interviews (aat)

Type texts