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The Angeles Riots On the First of May 1992, 1st LAI Bn. was deployed to assist the Law Enforcement agencies of the City of Los Angeles to quell the civil uprising caused by the verdicts of the officers involved in the Rodney King beating. We were out on a nice little 'hump' a several miles out of 41 Area, and the Bn. C.O. received the call to return to our base and await deployment orders. We basically 'double-timed' back to our barracks and made ready to deploy to Los Angeles. We mounted our LAV's and convoyed to MCAS Tustin, where we boarded '5-Tons' for the ride into Los Angeles. We were greeted by the wonderful citizens as we drove through an area riddled with poverty. The people here hurled insults at us telling us to go home. We set up operations in a above ground multi-floored parking lot in Long Beach. We ran our operations out of this car parking lot, as well as lived on cots here. We ran patrols out in the city as well as manned check points, assisting the Long Beach Police Department with curfew enforcement. It was an interesting time, strange to be walking the streets of LA in full gear, locked and loaded. I wish I had time prior to our deployment to have grabbed a camera. If there is anyone out there who has pictures of us in the streets of LA., please email me using this link. There is not a lot of information out there on specifically the Marines involvement of Joint Task Force-Los Angeles, so if you do find some, please email me. There is an interesting article on the use of the Marines, Army and National Guard Units during the LA Riots. Written for "US Army War College Quarterly" - Summer 1997, written by CHRISTOPHER M. SCHNAUBELT. It is titled: "Lessons in Command and Control from the Los Angeles Riots" (Click it to read it) One bit of information I found, which we had heard about, was "Police officers responded to a domestic dispute, accompanied by marines. They had just gone up to the door when two shotgun rounds were fired through the door, hitting the officers. One yelled `cover me!' to the marines, who then laid down a heavy base of fire. . . . The police officer had not meant `shoot' when he yelled `cover me' to the marines. [He] meant . . . point your weapons and be prepared to respond if necessary. However, the marines responded instantly in the precise way they had been trained, where `cover me' means provide me with cover using firepower. . . . over two hundred bullets [were] fired into that house." We returned to Camp Pendleton on 9 May 1992.
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