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Hollywood: Riots Remembered on 10th Anniversary; New Developments in Robert Blake Case
Aired April 29, 2002 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: Ten years ago today, the City of Angels was a city in flames.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four current and former Los Angeles police officers were acquitted today.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: All hell breaks loose in Los Angeles hours after the acquittal of police officers on trial for the beating of Rodney King. A decade's past, but have deep wounds healed?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DARRELL TATE, 1992 RIOTER: It's better, but you don't see a lot that went on in the past.
REV. CECIL MURRAY, FIRST A.M.E. CHURCH: The wounds are in process of healing. They have not healed.
CHARLES FELDMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on-camera): Is it fair to say you were nervous?
BART BARTHOLOMEW, FORMER "NEW YORK TIMES" PHOTOGRAPHER: I wasn't nervous. I was scared to death.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: We'll speak both to police officers and demonstrators caught up in the chaos.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the proudest moments of my life.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Fresh developments in a Hollywood celebrity murder case.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you wait for a criminal trial, you're out of luck. You have to file within one year in California.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Robert Blake now faces new charges.
LIVE FROM HOLLYWOOD. Now here's Leon Harris.
LEON HARRIS, HOST: Good evening and welcome to the place they call Tinseltown. But you know there are also nightmares on these streets of dreams. We're looking at several of them this hour. The latest developments in the Robert Blake case come later on, but first our first stop is south central Los Angeles. It's just off to the side of those gleaming skyscrapers you see behind me. But 10 years ago, you couldn't have missed it. Just follow the smoke of countless fires, to a scene of rioting, a scene of death. Before we go looking for what's changed, we need to come face-to-face with what happened and why.
CNN's Thelma Gutierrez takes us back to the day four white police officers were acquitted in the beating of an African-American motorist named Rodney King.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The jury has reached a verdict.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty of the crime of assault by force.
THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): April 29, 1992...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know I'm innocent, and that was the verdict.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: John Anpittamy (ph) is a racist pig.
GUTIERREZ: An hour and fifteen minutes after the verdicts were read, all hell breaks loose in Los Angeles.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, Jesus Christ, go!
GUTIERREZ: The next 24 hours is chaos, and South Central turns into a war zone.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You will see roaming gangs on the rampage. Stan (ph), that's right, we didn't even have a chance...
GUTIERREZ: By 6:45 p.m...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now this is where some of the worst violence is taking place near the corner of Florence and Normandy.
GUTIERREZ: ... the nation watches as Reginald Denny is beaten on live television. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And there you see the man driving that truck being robbed, not a sign of a L.A. police officer or a highway patrol officer or a sheriff's deputy or any kind of law enforcement.
MURRAY: It is unjustifiable to take advantage of someone, first who is down, secondly, who is innocent.
GUTIERREZ: By 8:00 that night, the violence and destruction reach a feverish pitch. Los Angeles is on fire.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is MC-1. We're cornered by fires.
MURRAY: Those fires got started in south central, spread to mid- central, and then north of Wilshire, then on the verge of Hollywood and Beverly Hills.
GUTIERREZ: While buildings burn around the city, as looters empty stores, the faithful gather at the First A.M.E. Church in south central that night to pray for peace and calm.
(on camera): It must have been a surreal experience. Inside, people are singing and praying, and outside they're rioting.
MURRAY: Indeed. It was surreal. But it was real as we find out flames are real. We were planning what to do in case there was an eruption.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There we go.
GUTIERREZ (voice-over): The eruption was enormous and still haunts the Reverend Cecil Murray 10 years later.
(on camera): Reverend, what was your most vivid memory, the most disturbing memory of April 29?
MURRAY: It is the memory that comes even as we walk right now, here on this bend. That house in the middle was burning. Families were in there. And the mother of the child was weeping and weeping, and the father of the child was just shaking his head asking, how could this be, how could this be?
GUTIERREZ (voice-over): Many thought the night would never end.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What we're looking at now is wide shot from the helicopter of smoke plume after smoke plume after smoke plume. It is just a horror story to look at.
GUTIERREZ: Daybreak over Los Angeles after a night of insanity.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There were people throwing things at us. Now, what you do is stand there and take it.
GUTIERREZ (on camera): Have the wounds healed, and do you think that things are any better?
MURRAY: The wounds are in process of healing. They have not healed. And there are isolated moments where you can note progress here on this hill.
GUTIERREZ (voice-over): The rioting in Los Angeles continued for three more days; 55 people were killed, 1,100 buildings destroyed 10 years ago today.
Thelma Gutierrez, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS: Those pictures and sounds sure do bring back a lot of memories, but that was then. What about now? Well, today, I went out and took a walk through south central L.A. with Bernard Kinsley. He co-chaired Rebuild L.A., a group formed after the riots by then Mayor Tom Bradley.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS (on-camera): Now, this actually is a rather remarkable development area almost for any place, but particularly what when you consider what this city has gone through. What did it take to bring all of this together?
BERNARD KINSLEY, FORMER CO-CHAIRMAN, REBUILD L.A.: Well, it took - first of all, an awful lot of hard work. And it took some time. I mean these kinds of projects don't come together even in areas that never had problems. But in south Los Angeles, where we are now, it takes some time. But you got a $60 million project, 225,000 square feet. You got services here that are going to do what we want to do. We want to bring more services, more competition, more quality and more choice to our citizens.
HARRIS: Well, what was here before? I'm looking here now and seeing - I see a Home Depot over here. I see a Radio Shack across the street. A brand new...
KINSLEY: IHOP here. You know, Starbucks. You know, a new 75,000 square foot Food 4 Less. I mean that's what you need for a community. First of all, you need signs now to play in this game. I mean people talk about mom and pops, which is really good for creating jobs, but mom and pop cannot deliver against a Home Depot or some of the large supermarkets.
HARRIS: But what was here first though?
KINSLEY: Well, they had a dairy here. They had an old part of a railroad yard was here. They had some mom and pop. They had a strip mall, just an assortment of businesses that, you know, had to be assembled to get this kind of acreage to be able to put this development together.
HARRIS: So it's clear that this is definitely a success story here.
KINSLEY: Well, this is one of many.
HARRIS: I was going to ask you that. How representative is this of the other areas around town if you give the other five of the seven communities that you say have been developed?
KINSLEY: Leon, we had a 163 square mile area impacted by the riots, a billion dollars worth of loss. And I tell anybody to come to Los Angeles on the Stanley - 10 Freeway and get off on Crenshaw, Slawson, Vermont, you name the street and ride it and see if you can find the riots. You cannot find the riots. Eight percent of the buildings have been rebuilt. And there's been over $1.5 billion worth of economic development.
Now, is that enough? No, but let me say this. It is a long first step toward getting this community back to a point where it ought to be back in the 60s.
HARRIS: Well, let me ask you about this because I've read about this poll that was done recently that indicated that despite the success story you're talking about here, that you mentioned, and all these other areas where you can go and you can't even tell there was a riot, this poll showed that people believed, like almost half the people polled believe that it could happen within five years.
KINSLEY: Well, I'm not one of those persons and I don't think the leaders in our community believe that either. And that's the key point. I think the kinds of economic back stops, the kinds of interventions that have gone on and the kind of outreach that happens almost daily from our churches, from our community organizations, from our council people, I don't think - I don't think we're going to have it. Plus, I think it's an awful story. I mean to talk about what could happen in a negative in a situation where we have recovered to this extent helps no one.
HARRIS: Well, speaking of that then, how have lives changed with the, you know, implementation of facilities like this? And you got housing over here so people are actually living near these new developments. How have lives changed around here with all of this?
KINSLEY: Well, it's kind of a two-headed coin. One of the things I want everybody to understand is that this is not the answer for the black or the brown community by itself. We're never going to change the employment situation until we change the education rates and the public schools and the graduation rates in colleges. You follow me? When you do that, we can do it.
Let me give you a statistic. One out of 10 Koreans is a businessperson. One out of every 67 blacks is a business owner. So, we have a situation where Koreans are producing 6.7 more jobs than blacks are. Who's going to be better off? That's why Asians have the highest per capital income in this country even above whites. And that's what we need to focus on, is entrepreneurship and getting our education levels and our graduation rates up so that we can take advantage of the opportunities in this country.
HARRIS: Now, almost everybody who's followed this story knows that the Asian community, the business community, was targeted more than any other. And they suffered the most. I don't see any other -- anything around here that looks like it may be Asian owned? Have they all been forced out of this neighborhood even once all these new developments were coming in?
KINSLEY: No, we just - we're more in a Black-Latino demographic than in a Korean. If I took you to Vermont down two miles, it would be all Korean. So it depends. I mean L.A. is a wonderful mix of all kinds of sub communities and it - I mean, you know it got 121 languages in the school. I mean pick one.
HARRIS: So this is a lesson that L.A. can teach the whole world.
KINSLEY: Yeah. Yeah, I mean we could have picked Vermont and Wilshire or something and saw nothing but Korean. You see? So I mean, we chose this because I think Chris Hammond, one of the developers here, has done a fabulous job. He is a young man. He came out of the church, came out of the housing Section 8 program, all that and has learned the business and look what he's done. I mean I'm real proud of this young man. And that's what we need more of in our community, more business people saying I can do that. I can make this thing work.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS: Then President George H.W. Bush came to Los Angeles after the 1992 riots. Later that year, he lost the presidential election and most of the African vote as well to Bill Clinton. And 10 years later, a different President Bush is in the White House, and tonight he is visiting south central L.A. Our senior White House correspondent John King has been traveling with the president. Let's go to him now live.
Hello, John.
JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good evening to you Leon. The president now across town in Century City, Los Angeles. He is here on the tenth anniversary of the riots, more by coincidence than any political calculation at the White House. Mr. Bush tonight will be the main speaker at a $2.5 million fund-raiser for the Republican candidate for governor her in California, Bill Simon.
It was two weeks ago, we are told, when senior White House aides realized that fund-raiser was scheduled on this very day, the 10-year anniversary of the riots. And at that moment, the planning began to put some sort of an event together. And as you noted, the president was indeed in south central Los Angeles. He had a roundtable with community leaders and activists, with businessmen and entrepreneurs whose shops and streets were affected by the riots ten years ago. Mr. Bush said in a brief speech after wards that he heard many stories about the ugliness and violence, but the president tried to have a very upbeat posture on this day, saying that 10 years later, he believes Los Angeles has learned its lesson and is a city on the rebound.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Ten years after civil unrest that made history, the community is rebuilding herself with great hope and great promise. And that's an important lesson. It's an important lesson not only for other communities; it's an important lesson for our whole country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Mr. Bush used that event to promote his so-called Faith Based Initiative. He says one way to foster better ratio relations, foster economic development, deal with social problems like alcoholism and drug abuse in communities like south central is to allow church groups and other religious organizations to take federal money and help those who need the help the most. So the president putting in a plug for that program.
Obviously, some political parallel and comparisons to be drawn, President Bush, the first, did come here after the riot, but he waited some time to come. And I recall at the time Democrat Bill Clinton then running for president, rushing out here and getting out here before then President George Bush and making the case that President Bush, Bill Clinton's aides did, that President Bush could have come sooner.
And this President Bush now still seething back in Campaign 2000, he though he would be - do much better among Africa-American voters. Al Gore beat him nine to one. This president has been determined all along to try to improve that heading into the 2004 elections. But again, this event added by President Bush here in Los Angeles only after he had been scheduled to come here for a big Republican fund- raiser tonight -- Leon.
HARRIS: John King in Los Angeles, thank you very much. Travel safely back. We'll see you later on.
Coming up, we will have more looks back and looks ahead here from Los Angeles on this tenth anniversary of the riots. Also, still on the radar screen here in southern California, that Hollywood case of the murder charges against Robert Blake. We'll have more on that as well. Don't go away.
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, a cop, a rioter, a photographer. Ten years later, they tell us what's changed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARTHOLOMEW: You ask an interesting question, because could it happen again?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Not just what has changed, but who has changed and how.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I'm at the University of California Berkeley studying English.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: And later, the L.A. of today, including the latest on actor Robert Blake.
The scene lives in infamy. But where is Rodney King now? Since the trial that sparked the worst race riots in L.A. history, King's legal problems have continued. He's been arrested several times on charges related to drugs, domestic abuse and drunken driving and is currently in a battle with his legal time over the $3.8 million settlement he received from the city of Los Angeles.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: Reginald Denny was a man in the wrong place at the wrong time, but where is he now? A truck driver, Denny testified he had more than 90 broken bones in his face. He refuses to talk about the beating.
HARRIS: Well, millions of TV viewers saw what happened to Reginald Denny, but countless others were affected by the L.A. riots. And CNN's Charles Feldman found three of them.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RIOTERS: Justice! No peace!
FELDMAN (voice-over): Bart Bartholomew, Mike Moulin and Darrell Tate all experienced the '92 L.A. riots up close and personal. Moulin was an LAPD cop at the recognized flash point of the riot, the intersection of Normandy and Florence in south central L.A. Bartholomew was shooting stills for "The New York Times" when the riots began. Darrell Tate was 24 that day. He was one of the rioters.
(on-camera): You had a unique perspective because you watched it.
TATE: Yeah.
FELDMAN: You took part in it, too. What did you make of it as it was going on?
TATE: Like I say, at the time it was unexpected. It was something that never happened, you know, before, right here in south central. And it was just - it just seemed, at the time, it was the thing to do because everybody else was doing it.
FELDMAN (voice-over): Retired LAPD Lieutenant Mike Moulin was a 23-year veteran of the force the night the riots began.
MICHAEL MOULIN, LOS ANGELES POLICE (RET): The community was on edge. We had just seen a tape that most black people believed had been occurring for years and years, although they had no evidence that that was, in fact, the case. And here, we have evidence. We have a tape made by an independent person, George Holiday, of the activities of the Los Angeles Police Department under cover of dark darkness doing to a black man that is against the law to do to a dog and they were infuriated.
FELDMAN (on-camera): You're telling me that you parked under this tree.
BARTHOLOMEW: I parked right about here.
FELDMAN (voice-over): After watching the Rodney King verdicts on TV, Bart Bartholomew's news instincts led him to the intersection of Normandy and Florence.
BARTHOLOMEW: I left my car here and I walked slowly this direction. And the crowd was really gathering. There were about 30 police officers here and it was a very big mix. There were white officers. There were black officers. There were Hispanic officers. There were a lot of female officers.
FELDMAN (on-camera): Is it fair to say you were nervous?
BARTHOLOMEW: I wasn't nervous. I was scared to death.
TATE: Rodney King caused all this to happen, so it was basically, you know, police - it brung out the hate in people. So people just started really destroying their own neighborhood, which it started hurting us later on.
FELDMAN (voice-over): That hatred between some of L.A.'s black neighborhoods and the then mostly white LAPD left more than 50 people dead, some 2,000 injured, property damage estimated to be at least $1 billion.
(on-camera): Is it accurate to say that it was less than a competition between the black community and the white police force than it was between the black community and the police?
BARTHOLOMEW: It was against the police, yes. I don't think it was a black/white thing as much as it was a community/police thing. That's true.
FELDMAN (voice-over): Bartholomew got caught in the middle of this community/police thing, being badly beaten by rioters.
BARTHOLOMEW: One guy was pummeling my stomach. Two other guys were on each kidney. They were just trying to make me pee blood. All the time, they're yelling, "Get his film. Get his cameras. Get his film." I managed to get back in the car, got the ignition turned on and as I pulled out to drive away, a big rock came through the window and just shattered the glass and hit me right in the side of the head.
FELDMAN: Bartholomew was saved by Lieutenant Moulin whose career was cut short after LAPD leadership blamed him for pulling back his badly outnumbered and ill-prepared unit.
Darrell Tate now works to keep the peace among various L.A. gangs.
The LAPD is no longer mostly white. "Relations with the shrinking black community," says Tate, "are improved."
TATE: It's better, but won't see a lot that went on in the past. FELDMAN: But racial tensions in L.A. clearly remain, recently brought to the surface again by the ouster of the LAPDs black chief.
BARTHOLOMEW: You ask an interesting question because could it happen again? Sure, it could happen again. You never know what's going to be the spark.
FELDMAN: Bart Bartholomew, Mike Moulin, Darrell Tate, just three voices out of many, just three people who seemed fated to share a day of madness a decade ago.
Charles Feldman, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS: We are joined now by another person who lent a voice and had a view about what happened that day, a voice that basically was launched nationally after those riots, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who represented the Watts District, if I'm not mistaken, at the time.
REP. MAXINE WATERS (D), CALIFORNIA: Well, I was at the time. I am representing and part of that area now I represent. Not all of it, but part of it.
HARRIS: Well, we're glad you're able to come and share some time with us this morning. We know you've been busy with a number of events planned around the city today. Didn't think we'd get a chance to get you, but we're glad you chose to stop by today.
First of all, your thoughts about where L.A. stands today and we've been taking looks back and looks forward.
WATERS: Well, you know, there has been progress. And certainly, we have not done everything that I think should be done, or even could be done. But I was absolutely thrilled today, because I was with about 200 young people, our people, from the south central Watts area telling success stories about how long they've long they've been working, showing their pay stubs and talking about having benefits, talking about owning businesses and having bought homes. And so, I was absolutely thrilled with the fact that we had this reunion of a lot of the young people who had been in the streets that day.
HARRIS: These were people who were actually in the rioting there.
WATERS: These were former gang members from about five to six different neighborhoods that came together to talk about their lives and all positive stories about what has happened to them and how they view Los Angeles and the world and their future.
HARRIS: And do you feel that this positivity is directly born of what happened that night 10 years ago?
WATERS: Well, I think it's connected because a lot of the people there today talked about how they did feel very hopeless, that there was nothing in life for them, that you get what you can get, you get it when you can get it and get it any way that you can get it. But they don't quite see life that way any more. They're talking about living and growing and loving, and that was absolutely a wonderful experience.
HARRIS: OK. Let me ask you -- speaking of experiences, I mean we are quite familiar...
WATER: Yes.
HARRIS: I know I am...
WATERS: Yes.
HARRIS: ... of your role in the aftermath...
WATERS: Yes.
HARRIS: ... as well as what happened that night. Well, what is your most poignant memory from what happened?
WATERS: Well, my memory flying into Los Angeles is seeing the smoke, seeing the streets torn up and the water mains burst and no lights in my neighborhood, in my community and thinking, my God, I mean, this place has been devastated. It was quite a sight and quite a feeling to just fly into that. And that's - and I got up the next morning knowing what I had to do. I had to get out there and get into the neighborhoods and to help those people who were cut off from food and services, and to talk about, you know, not putting their lives at risk any more with any negative behavior and then, trying to get the services back on, working with the Department of Water and Power to get the lights on and all of that.
HARRIS: You know something else that was devastated that night was the race relations. And they may not have been the best of all, but that night certainly, especially when you look at what happened between the Koreans and the African-Americans who basically were targeted, most of the Korean shop owners and business owners in that area, and the Latinos who also were out there participating in the rioting, now, looking at where we are right now, if we were to say that we're on a some sort of a gauge here, where would you put things in terms of recovery between the races here in?
WATERS: Well, one thing that's very positive is many of the Korean business owners decided to stay. Despite what happened, they did not leave and they still are in the same areas where they had the problem. And people are getting along. And I think when people are desperate, they are always looking at someone else, thinking that's what's causing them to have their problems to the degree that we open up opportunities for all people and we recognize that most human beings want to do good. They want to be successful. And if we can open up opportunities from both the public sector and the private sector, we lessen the confrontations, people thinking somebody is doing better than I am because somehow they're more favored than I am. And I don't see a lot of that. And I see that the number of Korean business owners not only has grown and it's probably getting back to where it was 10 years ago. HARRIS: That's interesting. I talked to a number of people in the last couple days here and they come from all walks and they've all pretty much said the same sorts of things, preached from the same book. And we sure do appreciate you coming in and sharing with us your version of it.
WATERS: Thank you.
HARRIS: Congresswomen Maxine Waters.
WATERS: Thank you.
HARRIS: Take care. Good luck to you.
All right, we're back with more in just a minute. Don't go away.
ANNOUNCER: Perspectives from a decade's distance.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you go back 10 years ago and you view some of the video, it's more like a party.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: The view from the streets and from the man who was chief of police.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you look at the Los Angeles Police Department, it's gone downhill ever since I left.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: But first, what do you think? Have race relations in the United States improved in the last decade? To take the quick vote, head to CNN.com. The AOL keyword is CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: Former Police Chief Daryl Gates was forced to resign amid criticism he resisted reform in the wake of the LA riots. With the recent resignation of Police Chief Bernard Parks, Gates said he will seek out his old job, and pledges to restore morale to the LAPD within six months.
HARRIS: And that announcement has raised quite a few eyebrows in this town. You know back when he was LA's police chief, Daryl Gates was never one to mince words. Some things don't change. Today on CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING" with Paula Zahn, Gates was, to say the least, blunt about what he thinks has happened to the LAPD in the decade since those riots.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DARYL GATES, FORMER LA POLICE CHIEF: If you look at the Los Angeles Police Department, it's gone downhill ever since I left, ten years and it's dysfunctional. It's reached the point where it's dysfunctional. The morale is in the pits. It's just horrible, and I want to return it to the pride that people had in that organization, that the people within the organization had as the best police department in the world. I can do that. I can bring the morale up.
HARRIS: Well, like Chief Gates, many people became famous and some infamous after the riots. Ten years later, where are some of those key players? Well, CNN's Anne McDermott set out to find out.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNE MCDERMOTT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): They were scary and they were angry. Watch this guy, and where is he now? Yes, Mark Craig (ph) is a suburban dad, but the former Gulf War veteran says the Rodney King beating and the cops' acquittal so sickened him that he had to protest. He had to do this.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the proudest moments of my life.
MCDERMOTT: Nothing to be proud of here and there was no stopping the looters, and they did it all in the name of Rodney King. King wanted no part of it.
RODNEY KING: Can we all get along? Can we get along?
MCDERMOTT: But King isn't talking now. He's in rehab and said through a spokeswoman, "focusing on getting better." He spent a decade in and out of trouble with the cops. The cops who beat King don't do many TV interviews either.
Then there's Reginald Denny, the man who got beat up while we all watched on TV. He told me, "I just want to move on." GregAlan Williams can not move on. Yes, he's busy with his acting career. This is him in "The West Wing." But ten years ago, Williams was a hero. This is him rescuing another bloody beating victim on video used in the attacker's trial.
Now he tells kids all about it, about flagging down a cop, trying to get the guy to a hospital.
GREGALAN WILLIAMS, ACTOR/ACTIVIST: Excuse me, there's a man hurt here (UNINTELLIGIBLE) drove away.
MCDERMOTT: Drove away. The cops say their leaders failed them.
DETECTIVE TOM LANGE (RET), LAPD: yes, it was worse than being in Vietnam. At least in Vietnam I could shoot back.
MCDERMOTT: Detective Tom Lange, who one day would be known as the O.J. cop, was out of the streets then. He remembers the department in paralysis. LANGE: He's probably afraid of the image of the police department. They just went through the Rodney King situation that caused the most bloody riots in U.S. history.
MCDERMOTT: Bloody, you bet. But for some.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You go back 10 years ago and you view some of the video, it's more like a party.
MCDERMOTT: Well, a terrifying party then that went on night and day. But passions eventually cooled and cleanup began with actor Edward James Olmos in the lead. "Things will get better" he says today, if we can just remember . . .
EDWARD JAMES OLMOS, ACTOR: There's only one race and that's the human race.
MCDERMOTT: Its members include Nigel Campbell who was 12 when rioting touched his neighborhood. It didn't hold him back.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I'm at the University of California, Berkeley, studying English.
MCDERMOTT: Campbell isn't sure if things are better now, but the man in the mural is sure, or at least he figures thins will be better for his children. They better be.
Anne McDermott, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS: We're going to change focus in a minute and take a look at the Robert Blake case coming up, but before we leave the subject of race relations, here's Aaron Brown with a preview of a special edition of "NEWSNIGHT" to come tomorrow.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AARON BROWN, NEWSNIGHT ANCHOR: It has been 10 years, 10 years since the riots in Los Angeles.
KING: Can't we all get along?
BROWN: Ten years. The riots were a reminder again that the most difficult problem in American life is, as it has been for all our history, race.
In a special edition of "NEWSNIGHT," we'll look at race in America ten years after the rioting. Where is the country now? Where is it headed? The numbers tell a part of the story. Eighty percent of American kids, Black and White, earn a high school diploma, but African- American kids continue to score less well on tests and college admissions remain a difficult issue.
There are other troubling numbers. One in six Blacks live in a poor family, one in three in single parent homes. Three times as many Black babies will be born out of wedlock by teenage girls than Whites.
Playwright Anna Deveare Smith will be on the program. So will the mayor of Cincinnati, Charlie Lukens (ph). Actor/Comedian D.L. Hughley and many others will join us too.
I'm Aaron Brown. Please join us for a special edition of "NEWSNIGHT, Black & White in America" tomorrow night, 10:00 Eastern time.
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ANNOUNCER: In your next half hour, LA's latest celebrity scandal. Actor Robert Blake's latest legal troubles, when LIVE FROM HOLLYWOOD returns.
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ANNOUNCER: Robert Blake is being held in the hospital wing of the LA County Jail. Robert Downey, Jr. also spent time in the very same cell. Other celebrities held at the hospital wing included O.J. Simpson and Sean Penn.
HARRIS: Actor Robert Blake, already charged with Murder in the death of his wife Bonny Lee Bakley, now faces a wrongful death suit. Bakley's four children filed papers in Los Angeles today, seeking unspecified damages. The suit also names Blake's bodyguard, Earle Caldwell, but Blake remains in jail awaiting trial for Murder, and CNN National Correspondent Frank Buckley takes a look at the case.
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FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Robert Blake's attorney says the case against the actor is not as strong as police claim. Harland Braun says that in his initial review of evidence provided to the defense during the discovery process, there is no apparent physical evidence that ties Blake to the crime.
BRAUN: They don't trace the gun to him. The GSR tests, the other tests are inconclusive because he had a gun on him. There's no blood on him. I don't see any physical evidence that links him to it.
BUCKLEY: Investigators won't comment on the evidence, but privately police remain confident. Last week, they presented a detailed criminal complaint against the celebrity suspect that said Blake at first tried to hire two potential hit men to kill Bonny Lee Bakley before Blake allegedly did it himself.
CNN learned that the would-be hit men were stunt men Gary McCardy (ph) and Ronald Duffy Hamilton. Both are said to be cooperating with police. Braun questions their motives.
BRAUN: It's all Hollywood. These are people from Hollywood. They want to get their role in the big drama, and I think they're suspect.
BUCKLEY: He also questions the credibility of Bonny Lee Bakley's sister, Margerry Bakley, who claims her sister was worried that Blake was going to kill her.
MARGERRY BAKLEY, SISTER: She was scared. She was scared for her life right up to the day she left with him to go to dinner.
BUCKLEY: Braun dismisses Bakley as someone trying to profit from the case. Bakley admits she received $20,000 from a tabloid to tell her story, and she is upfront about criminal convictions on fake ID and other charges. But she says she turned her life around several years ago.
But Braun says the Bakley sisters were both grifters, and today he leveled new charges against Bonny Lee Bakley, saying she was an unfit mother.
BRAUN: Bonny really didn't care about this child. You got to understand. She was putting Kaopectate in her formula when she was two weeks old because she didn't want to change the diapers. The child was catatonic when (UNINTELLIGIBLE) took care of her. She had a flattened head in the back, because she was never lifted up. She was non responsive.
BUCKLEY: A Bakley family attorney called the allegations baseless lies, designed to steer attention away from Blake's alleged murder of Bonny Lee Bakley.
Meanwhile, another attorney representing Bakley's four children, including Blake and Bakley's daughter Rosie, filed a wrongful death suit against Blake that he says will cast Bonny Lee Bakley in a different light.
BARRY NOVAK, BAKLEY FAMILY ATTORNEY: She was really a good- hearted person, and this aspect of her character as a mother, you know, hasn't come out and will come out. I mean, she was a wonderful mother with an unusual occupation, but she was a wonderful mother.
BUCKLEY (on camera): Last week, Blake put up a million dollars to bail out his alleged co-conspirator in the case, his handyman bodyguard Earle Caldwell. On Wednesday, his attorney will attempt to bail the actor out. Harland Braun says Robert Blake is not a flight risk, and is willing to be subject to electronic monitoring. A spokeswoman for the District Attorney's Office tells CNN prosecutors will oppose bail. Frank Buckley, CNN, Los Angeles.
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HARRIS: Coming up, the next moves in and out of court in the Robert Blake case. I'll be speaking with CNN's legal analyst, plus this.
JOHNNIE COCHRAN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: If O.J. was an "A" movie, this clearly would be just a "B" movie.
HARRIS: That's Johnnie Cochran's take. Later, I'll be speaking with James Ellroy (ph). He's the author of "LA Confidential." We'll talk about why the Blake case is front and center in the headlines. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: And welcome back to Hollywood. You know, first came the criminal charges, now a wrongful death lawsuit. It seems like Robert Blake's legal troubles just keep getting deeper. So what's next? CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin joins us from New York. Jeffrey always good to have you.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Hi, Leon.
HARRIS: Let's begin first of all with this filing of the wrongful death lawsuit today. Why now? Why not after the criminal trial?
TOOBIN: Well, all the Bakley family is doing really here is getting in line. The way it always works is that the civil proceedings must wait until all the criminal proceedings are over. Until that can even proceed, they're just putting their chit in. But that case is going to go nowhere until the criminal proceeding is resolved.
HARRIS: OK, I understand that you talked with Harland Braun, Robert Blake's attorney today. What did you talk about?
TOOBIN: Well, we talked mostly about bail, because that's really going to be the agenda on Wednesday when the parties are back in court. He's going to make a very forceful presentation that Robert Blake is not a risk of flight and he's no danger to anybody.
He said, in fact, the only danger if Robert Blake got out was that the news copters would run into each other above his house. I mean this guy is probably not going to escape. But the rule has been in California and in most jurisdictions now for a serious crime like Murder, even though the death penalty is now off the table, it's very unlikely that he'll get bail, I think.
HARRIS: Well then why is it that Earle Caldwell was offered bail and was allowed to get out?
TOOBIN: Well, he's facing considerably different and lesser charges, and here we have the very unusual situation of Blake, the co- defendant putting up the bail money for Earle Caldwell, the bodyguard and assistant.
Now I asked Braun about that and he said it's really a very simple matter. He was the employee, Caldwell was, and just like Enron is paying the legal fees for its employees, Blake is paying the legal fees and the bail for Caldwell. I think it's not quite that simple. You have only two defendants in this case, and that certainly possibly could come back to haunt Blake.
If Caldwell turns out to stand by Blake, the prosecution could point out that there is this financial relationship between them and Caldwell is indebted to Blake for the bail and for the legal fees.
HARRIS: Right now as we understand it, Wednesday is the next trial date or next date in court at least for this case. What is it that we should expect to see, both inside the courtroom and outside the courtroom here?
TOOBIN: Well the first issue that will be resolved - will be attempted to be resolved is bail, and there I think it's unlikely that Blake will get out on bail.
The second issue is the setting of the preliminary hearing, which is the next really major step in the case, and Harland Braun said to me, he didn't think the preliminary hearing in the case, which is where the prosecution begins to lay out its evidence in public for the first time. He doesn't think that will be held for four or five months.
So I think we're going to see that the California legal system doesn't move very quickly in these big, high profile complicated cases. So it could be a considerable gap between May 1st the next time we're in court, and the preliminary hearing.
HARRIS: All right, Jeffrey Toobin thank you very much. Jeffrey Toobin in New York, we appreciate it.
TOOBIN: OK, Leon.
HARRIS: Celebrity and scandal, they go together almost as much as Hollywood and glamour. We'll dig into the seamy side of Los Angeles with the man who gave us "LA Confidential" just ahead.
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HARRIS: Inevitably, the Robert Blake case brings up memories of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Well, will it be as big? One time Simpson attorney Johnnie Cochran says no, partly because authorities are being a lot more careful this time around.
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COCHRAN: I think they're being a lot more cautious out there. If O.J. was an "A" movie, this clearly would be just a "B" movie, I think at this point.
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HARRIS: Well, Los Angeles has long held an attraction for novelists. James Ellroy is no exception. He's working on a historical trilogy about the U.S. underworld that includes last year's "The Cold 6000." His earlier works include "LA Confidential," the crime novel based in Los Angeles in the 1950s. James Ellroy lives in the Kansas City area and that's where he is tonight. He joins us live. Good to see you. Thank you very much for taking time with us.
JAMES ELLROY, AUTHOR: Mr. Harris, it's a pleasure.
HARRIS: Let's begin with that comment we just heard there by Johnnie Cochran. Do you believe that?
ELLROY: Johnnie Cochran's wrong. If O.J. was an "A" list murder case, this is a "Z" list murder case. This is O.J. Simpson for the extreme poor.
HARRIS: Now why would you say that? Why would you be so extreme in that sort of assessment?
ELLROY: First of all, both the suspect, the accused Robert Blake and the victim Bonny Lee Bakley are White. There's no race angle right off the bat. Secondly, you got no Rodney King riot two years in the past, subtext there. Third, people don't hate the LAPD the way they hated them in 1994.
Look at O.J. Simpson. He was a big, handsome, great halfback. Nicole Brown Simpson was a fox. Ron Goldman was a good-looking kid. I mean, Robert Blake and Bonny Lee Bakley are raggedy assed. This is Tobacco Road.
HARRIS: Those, of course, the words of James Ellroy and not us at this network, that's for sure. But let me ask you about the legacy here of what we've seen in summers past. Are you saying all of this because the standard has been set so high, when you consider the stories that we've had, you know that kept us like page turners going through the summers past, whether it's been the Chandra Levy case or the O.J. case rather?
ELLROY: There's all these things. There's the Finch Tregov (ph) murder case in 1959, when I was 11 years old. That was to me LA's first big media murder. You had a handsome playboy physician, his slinky good-looking fox red-headed girlfriend. His middle-aged wife wasn't that bad looking either. It went through three trials. That was a big one there. Nobody ever talks about that one.
HARRIS: Yes, but you know what? The LAPD is conducting itself as if everyone is going to be watching this case with the same scrutiny that they did the O.J. case. We've seen they've gone to what, some 20 different cities looking for evidence here?
ELLROY: Right.
HARRIS: How about the stakes here for the LAPD?
ELLROY: The stakes are very high. We're very lucky now. Bill Garceti (ph) is not the DA Steve Cooley (ph) who's a reformer is. Cooley has stepped out of the spotlight. He is leaving it to his prosecutors. LAPD worked on this case for eleven and a half months, cautiously, circumspectly, diligently, quietly. I think Robert Blake's ass is grass and the LAPD and the LA DA's office is the lawnmower.
HARRIS: You know, what I find fairly interesting about that is that you are a novelist. Aren't you supposed to be looking for some sort of a twist and turn here, and you're accepting it pretty much the way it is right now at face value?
ELLROY: That's true, but you know what? A novelist's mandate is always to look for the truth, besides which my next novel is going to be set between the years 1968 and 1972. So, Robert Blake and Bonny Lee Bakley don't even apply. HARRIS: James Ellroy, thank you very much.
ELLROY: Thank you.
HARRIS: Appreciate the comments, entertaining as always. Good luck to you. Take care.
ELLROY: Take care.
HARRIS: And that's going to do it for us from here in Hollywood. Before we wrap things up though, we would like to go back to our first topic of the evening, that being the tenth anniversary of the LA riots, the riots that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) this town, riots from which this town is still in some ways trying to recover.
But let me tell you something. In all the questions that we have asked today and all the people that we have talked to, here's I guess the epitaph from what we have heard so far. No one says that the work is done, but no one has said here that the work is impossible, and no one we've met yet has said that they're not willing to try, and we'll be here to watch and see how it all progresses.
Thanks for joining us tonight. I'm Leon Harris. Stay tuned. "LARRY KING LIVE" is coming up next.
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