When the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts erupted in violent protest in
August 1965, the uprising drew strength from decades of pent-up
frustration with employment discrimination, residential segregation, and
poverty. But the more immediate grievance was anger at the racist and
abusive practices of the Los Angeles Police Department. Yet in the
decades after Watts, the LAPD resisted all but the most limited demands
for reform made by activists and residents of color, instead
intensifying its power.
In Policing Los Angeles, Max Felker-Kantor narrates the dynamic
history of policing, anti-police abuse movements, race, and politics in
Los Angeles from the 1965 Watts uprising to the 1992 Los Angeles
rebellion. Using the explosions of two large-scale uprisings in Los
Angeles as bookends, Felker-Kantor highlights the racism at the heart of
the city's expansive police power through a range of previously unused
and rare archival sources. His book is a gripping and timely account of
the transformation in police power, the convergence of interests in
support of law and order policies, and African American and Mexican
American resistance to police violence after the Watts uprising.