Were they ever interviewed after they defended their shops? Were they prosecuted?

I haven't done much research on the 1992 LA riots but this is one point that I haven't seen come up before.

They got off okay. Many of the owners that DIDN'T defend their stores were burned down, some rebuilt other couldn't. The liquor stores and auto repair shops were denied permits to rebuild, and many lost a life time of work.

I thought they went through quite the legal hassle for awhile.

They should've given them a medal.  Those poor bastards found themselves smack dab in the middle of a demilitarized zone without rule of law.  If I were the deputy prosecutor I wouldn't have gone after them for defending themselves (when nobody else would).

They became heroes.

I need to do some more research. I was borne in 1988 so i have no memories of the LA riots.

How many looters, rioters, etc. did the Koreans actually take out?

That was my question. Did they draw blood or was their presence enough to stop the assholes

Not many.Alot of the footage you saw of the store owners on the roofs of there stores holding weapons....They were toy guns that they got from there own stores.Worked great as a deterrent(very risky but it did help alot)

Who cares?  The point is not that they "took out" rioters, it's that they successfully defended their lives and property.  

where ever did you get the idea that they were holding toys?

Yeah and that's well and good but the guy was asking a question. So, I'm sure he cares for the answer.


OP I can't find anything with a quick googling about any specific body count. A few mentions of them intentionally firing in the air/ground...but I've seen footage of what appears to be aimed shots at individuals (I believe there's a good clip of one shop owner taking an isoscoles stance and firing)

It has been well documented that some of the store owners did not have enough real firearms to handout to everyone and they instead spray painted toy guns .
Below is a link that talks about it.

http://old.i2i.org/main/article.php?article_id=350

Cases in which U.S. governments are unable or unwilling to protect citizens still occur.  When that happens, people need guns to protect themselves.  During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, police were pulled out.  People desperate for a means to defend themselves were turned away by gun stores forced to comply with a state mandated 15 day waiting period.  Those who had guns faced a mayoral ban on the sale of ammunition.  When looters attacked Korean-American shops, merchants saved one building by patrolling the roof with toy guns that looked like Uzis.  Some houses and apartment buildings were also spared, reportedly because rioters knew the residents had guns.  Nobody, as one 13-year-old put it, wanted to mess with those folks[LG6].

I will find more for you if your google is not working.

I read somewhere that a percentage of those storeowners and shopkeepers were former ROK military....it's my understanding those guys are some hardcore dudes. Regardless, if they weren't caught up and ready for the 1992 riots you can damn well be sure they're ready for the 2012 ones.

 

The Korean store owners in the '92 riots are one of the reasons (and one of the points in history) that I maintain that the whole fantasy of roving bands of marauders who'll fight to the last man, or dedicate their lives to revenge if you shoot some of them is a Mad Max wet dream.



While I can't speak to what happened to those folks after things quieted down, I do remember a good many stories from both ends of the spectrum where they were pointed out,either as dangerous vigilantes or as heroes of the day.  



I don't remember, though, any stories citing anybody actually killed.  Like in Detroit years earlier and NOLA years later, the mere sight of resolute men openly bearing arms was enough to divert the rabble to easier targets.


 

This story relates to the Korean store owners and the murders still unsolved.  

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/29/for-22-murder-victims-la-riots-leave-legacy-justice-eluded/

For 22 murder victims, LA Riots leave legacy of justice eluded


By Jim Crogan

Published April 29, 2012

FoxNews.com








For five days in 1992, the nation watched as entire neighborhoods in Los Angeles descended into violent chaos.



Twenty years ago, Los Angeles erupted in riots after four cops were acquitted in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, but during an uprising supposedly in the name of justice, some people got away with murder.

During the five "Days of Outrage," a disbelieving nation watched on television as looters broke store windows and emptied shelves, Korean grocers sat atop their stores with assault rifles and fires were set throughout South Central and other parts of the city. Beatings, including the brutal one administered to truck driver Reginald Denny, were captured on video by news crews.

“Can’t we all just get along?” pleaded King as the city was plunged into violent chaos. The phrase became a rallying cry for a city determined to heal after being torn apart by racial divisions.

The police were overwhelmed, and the National Guard was called in to help quell the violence. When the mayhem subsided five days later, nearly 1,600 buildings were destroyed or damaged and more than 2,300 people were hurt. The final cost of the riot was estimated at more than a billion dollars, including $735 million in property damage.




“Can’t we all just get along?”

- Rodney King, motorist whose beating by police led to LA Riots


But the human toll is the most disturbing legacy of the riots. Some 53 people were killed in what police have classified as riot-related homicides and accidents. Of those, some 22 homicides remain classified as open and unsolved.

The dead for whom justice remains elusive include a 15-year-old boy shot as he stood on a corner, a Good Samaritan who tried to douse flames set by a crowd of angry looters, a hard-working immigrant who insisted on making grocery deliveries even as his neighborhood burned, a suburban man shot when he came to check on his store and John Doe No. 80, whose identity may never be known.

Here are their stories:

- Arturo Carlos Miranda, 23, was killed on April 29, 1992, at the intersection of 120th St. and Central Ave. Miranda, a Mexican-American, his nephew Valentin Moreno and another friend were driving back from a South Central park when an unidentified blue car pulled up next to theirs and someone fired a shot at the trio. Miranda was struck in the chest. Inexplicably, his nephew and friend first drove Miranda home before taking him to Martin Luther King Hospital, where he died.

- Dwight Taylor, a 43-year-old African-American, was walking home from work when he was shot in the neck and killed the same night, in a drive-by attack on W. Martin Luther King Boulevard.

- Eduardo Canedo Vela, a 33-year-old Mexican-American, was driving with two friends in the riot zone that night when their car broke down on Slauson Ave. Vela stayed with the car while his companions went to find a phone. When they returned, he’d been shot in the chest.

- Anthony Lamarr Netherly, 21, an African-American, was found between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. shot in the head at the intersection of 78th and San Pedro streets. The driver who found him loaded Netherly into his car and took him to Martin Luther King Hospital, where he died in the emergency room.

- John Henry Willers, 37, of Salt Lake City, stopped on a busy road in Mission Hills to help some people involved in a head-on collision and was gunned down.

- Elbert Ondra Wilkins, 33, was with pals just before midnight at 92nd St. and Western Ave. when shots rang out from an unidentified car driving by. One bullet hit Wilkins in the chest, ripping into his aorta. Wilkins’ friends drove him to Martin Luther King Hospital, where he later died.

- The body of Nissar Daoud Mustafa was found by demolition workers in the rubble of the J.J. Newberry department store on Aug. 12, months after rioters set it ablaze. The 20-year-old was classified as a John Doe, until the coroner, who determined he burned to death, identified him through dental records.

- Ira Frederick McCurry, 45, pleaded with looters not to burn down the store adjacent to his home on Avalon Blvd. He was shot through the right eye and died at the scene.

- Police believe Meeker Mardah Gibson, 35, had stopped to use a pay phone at a Pomona gas station when someone blasted him in the chest with a shotgun.

- William Anthony Ross was initially listed as John Doe No. 79, when his body was found in a looted and torched grocery store in Koreatown. The owner found the 25-year-old African-American’s body on May 1. He was curled up under a metal desk in the rear of the store, a large wad of cash stuffed in his pocket.

- Howard Epstein, a 45-year-old Orlanda resident, was driving through South Central to check on a business he owned in the riot zone on the afternoon of April 30 when a driver pulled up next to him and shot him once in the temple. His Ford Thunderbird careened into a tree and as he lay mortally wounded, rioters robbed him and looted his car. He died at the scene, and when police arrived the hostile crowd forced them to tow away the car with the body still inside.

- As the rioting raged on, Thanh Lam, 25, continued to make deliveries to customers of his family’s small grocery store in Compton. Police believe the Vietnamese-American was stopped at a red light on Alondra Blvd. when a late 1970s or early 1980s blue Cadillac pulled up alongside him. An African-American male in the passenger seat yelled a racial slur at Lam and then opened fire. Lam was shot four times, three hits to the chest and one to the back.

- One of the riot’s youngest victims was Gregory Davis Jr. The 15-year-old African-American boy was shot once in the forehead as he walked near Vermont and 43rd streets on April 30.

- Police found the knife that was used to stab Adolpho Morales to death, but they were unable to lift prints from it. The 37-year-old’s body was found on W. Pico Boulevard.

- Louis Amari Watson, 18, was with a group of people at the corner of Vernon and Normandie avenues when someone shot him in the head.

- John Doe No. 80, is a white male, approximately 35, who stood just under 5 feet tall and weighed 117 pounds. The only remaining unidentified victim from the riots, his body was found May 2 in a burned out Pep Boys on S. Vermont Ave. It appears he suffered a skull fracture, likely from a punch, before dying in the store of smoke inhalation.

- Police believe George Antonio Sosa was looting a store in Huntington Park when someone shot him in the chest.

- Ernest Neal Jr., 27, was standing on the corner of  Western Ave. and 92nd St. during the rioting when a car rolled up and someone shot him in the head..

- Kevin Andrew Evanshen, 24, became known as “the Good Samaritan,” after he tried to douse a Venice store as it was being looted on May 1. He climbed onto the roof and was hosing down the flames when he fell through. Firefighters later recovered his charred body; whoever set the blaze is guilty of felony murder.

- Police believe Wilson Alvarez, 40, was beaten to death by a throng of stick-wielding looters after he threw stones at them.

- The body of Carol Ann Benson, a 43-year-old African-American woman, was found on Harbor Freeway near downtown L.A. Police believe a hit-and-run driver struck the South Central resident and that her body had been dragged underneath a car.

- It was three weeks after the riots ended that a worker from a nearby business found the body of  Juan Veron Roberto Salgado, 20, in the rubble of a burned out clothing store, Collective Merchandise, on Main Street. The coroner reported the cause of death as smoke inhalation and burns and it was ruled a homicide.

Police say all the cases above remain open. But with the passage of time, evidence is lost forever and witnesses fade from the reach of prosecutors. Authorities privately acknowledge the possibility of solving these homicides, and bringing to justice the people who committed them, become more remote with every year that passes.

“With regards to the specific cases being handled by our division, I can tell you that we had a whole team of detectives that collected all the available video from the surrounding stores and from the news media after the riot was quelled,” said LAPD Detective Olivia Spendola of the Major Crimes Division.

“Our detectives combed through every piece of footage to try and identify suspects or vehicles and witnesses, but we never got any leads from that work and we still haven’t 20 years later,” she added. “But you never give up hope.”


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/29/for-22-murder-victims-la-riots-leave-legacy-justice-eluded/#ixzz1tYDczOOX

What about this one?

It might be more effective if it included a magazine.

That's the part that you fill with water, right?

yes congratulations you found a picture of a Korean store owner holding a firearm. As I said in my earlier post. THey did not have enough guns for everyone so they used toy guns (spray painted black ) .That way it looked like they were all armed. I did not say NONE of them had weapons I said some of them ...
I included a link above. Use Google you will be surprised as to what you will find.

Korean Store Owner

I'm assuming you are referring to the picture I posted?

I was posting it because it actually looked like it might be a toy.  I had a knock off entertech (battery powered squirt gun from the late 80s/early 90s) that was exactly like that one.  The real AP 9s had a space between the barrel shroud but the toy had them molded together.  That looked to me like one of those squirt guns.

Even if a few had toys, they were not all fake as evidenced by this gun fight



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmsKGhLdZuQ  at around 1:34


 

I was responding to the poster who was calling me out , I thought the pic was his , sorry about that.
Looking at the pic a little more closely it does look fake.

Here is why you did not hear of them being prosecuted.  

California penal code section 197

Homicide is also justifiable when committed by any person in
any of the following cases:
  1. When resisting any attempt to murder any person, or to commit a
felony, or to do some great bodily injury upon any person; or,
  2. When committed in defense of habitation, property, or person,
against one who manifestly intends or endeavors, by violence or
surprise, to commit a felony, or against one who manifestly intends
and endeavors, in a violent, riotous or tumultuous manner, to enter
the habitation of another for the purpose of offering violence to any
person therein; or,
  3. When committed in the lawful defense of such person, or of a
wife or husband, parent, child, master, mistress, or servant of such
person, when there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design to
commit a felony or to do some great bodily injury, and imminent
danger of such design being accomplished; but such person, or the
person in whose behalf the defense was made, if he was the assailant
or engaged in mutual combat, must really and in good faith have
endeavored to decline any further struggle before the homicide was
committed; or,
  4. When necessarily committed in attempting, by lawful ways and
means, to apprehend any person for any felony committed, or in
lawfully suppressing any riot, or in lawfully keeping and preserving
the peace.

It happened.  Been there done that , got the T-shirt!

Hope Florida is paying attention





 

Thats the truth!



But I suspect that L.E is now much more prepared for this sort of thing.

I agree, much like the BoA robbery that the police were woefully unprepared for, SWAT and other specialized units are much more prepared for events like these. I think the current political climate and ubiquitous news stories have lead to a better understanding of what's happening and what to be prepared for. I'd imagine that another L.A. scale riot would see the national guard being called in.

I wonder why some of the victims were Americans and others weren't?  For
instance, the one guy that's positively identified as a white guy isn't
identified as any sort of -American.  Shades of the forgotten man!




I just love the way the Reporterette says that they just "suddenly" started shooting at anyone and everyone, although her crew continues filming the entire time and takes not a single round. And how she describes the crew in the car that rolls up and starts firing at the Koreans like they're boyscouts coming to the rescue. And the notion that the Koreans were surprised at "what they'd started"
Gosh and golly gee, Mr. Wizard, certainly no bias there.
edited to snip quote to manageable length
 

I doubt it, large scale riots/mayhem requires a bulk of people to contain it. Just like a fire you might quell a couple patches but if one gets out of hand, you can only do damage control.



Just like the mil could not enforce martial law throughout the US, too much area. it could get a few towns but the scale would be impossible.  



 

If anyone thinks the police or local governments in Florida are prepared for their area to go LA ala Rodney King, don't count on it.  Institutional memory is short at best.  After a problem like LA, NOLA, or some such, a lot of money and training is thrown about.  But after a couple of years the money and interest runs out.

The thing that makes preppers look so weird and loopy to the general public is our commitment.  Year after year we plod along doing our thing despite no shift in the earth's poles or nuclear armageddon.  Sure we look good during the occasional snow storm or power outage, but that too is soon forgotten.  You can be sure the various government agencies are no different than the people they govern.  There is very little time or effort invested in the seldom seen or needed.  Too much time and money to be spent on the flavor of the month.

You can bet that the rank and file, maybe even some of the police leadership, has been thinking about it in the abstract.  But I'd bet there has yet to be any real discussion or serious planning done.  But you never know, they could get ahead of the curve on this one.  It's just that experience has taught me that it is unlikely.

stasiman

Damn.... I've got some pictorial books done by the LA times.... This guy was in several pictures defending his store with a hammer!! The fuckers shot him!

Can't speak for the rest of the state.... But I and my associates are paying attention!

As are those who will be causing the problems....better comms and probably better armed!

I can honestly say.... with out a doubt... my county LEO's (as probably most of the surrounding counties around me) don't have the resources to deal with on a scale like the la riots.

Do you guys have any sort of auxiliary forces?  Sheriff's posse or reserve police or the like?



It's a shame more states no longer have State Militia's.



 

I do not recall the Korean shop owners being interviewed or being prosecuted.  I do not recall a number of injuries or deaths attributed to their actions.  It all just faded away with the smoke from what I recall.  Looking back on it I would say it was because it didn't fit the narrative.  These people took action and proved that they could defend themselves and property with legally owned firearms.

That answered I do wonder about what the police response will be next time around.  Will they charge in and shut things down or will we see a repeat of Florence and Normandie?  I would hope that the lesson has been learned and a strong show of force will nip things in the bud.  Sadly I believe as another poster alluded those lessons will be forgot and nothing will be done until it is well out of control and much too late.

One last tangent to explore.  With the advent of social media is there a higher probability of the goblins moving out of their own backyard to hit more up scale areas?

Kimmel AP-9  9mm––––––-not a fake

I don't think so.
Cops know their wage is paid by those in the middle and upper social economic scale so they don't want to have those people leave their city and they will if a riot hits their home area.
Police chief will know that those people will vote him out of office if something happens to their community.
Also, middle class home owners are not going to easily let anything happen to their homes... too much to loose so they will fight and fight hard.

Interesting interview with one of the shop owners about his armed response to the riots 20 years ago

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/27/151526930/korean-store-owner-on-arming-himself-for-riots?device=iphone

Chiefs of Police are almost always appointed by Mayors/City Councils.  Sheriff is usually the lowest elected law enforcement office.





Homeowners fight?  After forty years of having it hammered into their mushy middle class skulls that "it's only stuff?"  Hell, I hear that in this forum.  "It's only stuff.  It can be replaced."  Don't kid yourself.  For every homeowner who fights for his/her property, there'll be ninety or a hundred who'll scamper off for the sunset, insurance forms tucked safely beneath their arms.





The Koreans were a particular subset of property owners whose culture dictated their actions.  That culture is not shared by the majority of this country's population.  Not any more.




 
 

Thanks for the link. The store owner said he was only firing into the air to scare the looters. That may or may not be true.

Yes they have aux....

It's a rural county.... with most of the bigger cities on the northern end of the county... These cities border Duval county/Jacksonville! Them boys are going to be busy if something kicks off.

I was at Vandenburg AFB in the base hospital recovering from back surgery when the riots happened, and I remember watching the news story. I remember one Korean store owner who tried to guard his business with a gun and was ordered by the cops to put the gun away. Soon after that his store was looted and burned. After that, I saw some guys defending their stores, but the news reports didn't say much about them.

Because some folks live a fantasy of being able to shoot other people.

Statute of Limitations issues if I had to guess...22 unsolved murders from the rioting on the books. I would imagine if he said anything else he could have a case built against him somehow

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/29/for-22-murder-victims-la-riots-leave-legacy-justice-eluded/

I don't know how it is for the CANG, but after LA we did riot control annually for about 3 years. Then it dropped right off the training schedule and never returned.

Having some guys really get messed up during the training didn't help matters.

I don't expect the Guard to be up to speed on riot control anymore. Too many other pressing training needs in the era of the War on Terror.

Hehe, you two seem very cynical with those two responses. If we tried a little harder we could come up with a legitimate reason for asking this question. Could knowing the answer to this question possibly help you in a similar situation? Could knowing the answer to this question help you judge the legal action taken against the shop owners as justified? hmmm.... perhaps not everyone who posts a question on the innertubeweb is a fool... despite a lot of evidence to the contrary.



 

I'm all for people educating themselves. It just seems that in some cases there is a morbid fascination with exacting street justice

I'll buy that. The moral decline in our society seems to be picking up steam. I still try (and fail a lot) to hope for the best in people but it is easy to get discouraged.

 

I would guess he may not have been telling the whole truth. I probably wouldn't if i was giving an interview either.