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Watch The Trailer For ABC's Forthcoming Documentary About The 1992 Riots
This coming spring will mark the 25th anniversary of one of the darkest moments in Los Angeles' history. On April 29, 1992, four LAPD officers were acquitted on charges of excessive force for their beating of Rodney King, which was caught on tape. Later that evening, six days of civil unrest began in South Los Angeles, right at the intersection of 71st Street and Normandie Avenue.
Oscar-winner John Ridley has teamed up with ABC News to make Let It Fall: L.A. 1982 - 1992, a two-hour documentary that will air on ABC this spring about the L.A. riots. The documentary itself will span the decade leading up to the unrest, focusing on the militarization of police in Los Angeles, including the controversial gang crackdown Operation Hammer. During the course of Let It Fall, the filmmakers speak to a variety of Angelenos, including black residents of South L.A., Korean-Americans, the family of Karen Toshima (who was killed in a shooting in Westwood in 1988), and even former officers and prosecutors. You can see in the trailer that former LAPD lieutenant Michael Moulin candidly says, "We did cause the problem at 71st and Normandie."
"The goal is to give the space to get the real details from people, and get beyond the images that everyone is so familiar with," Ridley told the L.A. Times. "We're looking at the cascade effect of certain events, actions and situations that I think clearly led to an environment where something like the uprising could happen."
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Ridley is best known for his works concerning race and socioeconomic strife. He won an Oscar for his screenplay of 12 Years A Slave and is the creator of ABC's anthology series American Crime.
"John is committed to seeing the humanity in everyone on all sides of this story," Jeanmarie Condon, an ABC News filmmaker who also worked on the project, said in a statement. "He has a unique way of looking at questions of race and class and conscience. We are all so humbled that the participants have entrusted us with their most personal and emotional memories of this time."
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