In general, if you have scream and yell that a riot took place, I think it’s fair to conclude that a riot did not, in fact, take place.

I live in a neighborhood that is wedged along Crenshaw Boulevard, just a bit north of Leimert Park, which is a great neighborhood in Los Angeles–don’t let any Fox News types tell you different. Beautiful houses, nice little commercial district.  I know that various and sundry parts of the punditry want the world to believe that rampaging Negroes took over this part of Los Angeles and beat up defenseless, gunless, white people, but I *actually live* here on Crenshaw–I can throw a softball over my back fence and hit traffic on Crenshaw. I sent out tweets and FBoo updates about the seven or eight ghetto birds that flew all night.  Traffic was a mess. And yeah, there were some scuffles, Wal-mart got broken into, and a journalist got pushed over. But looking at the arrests and citations is pretty enlightening. Jaywalking citations.  Some citations for excessive honking.

Oh my! Not excessive honking.

I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure in 1992 that the police  didn’t have the sort of time on their hands that would have allowed them  to give out tickets for excessive honking.

This is LA, people, and this was not a riot.  This was a peaceful protest with some jerks who came out hoping to use the protests as an excuse to run wild and act like the  jerks they are. They come out after the Lakers win championships, as they do in just about every city when sports championships are in play.

It is a sign of how screwed up the entire discussion about race is in this country when people cite Reginald Denny as an example of how scary and unjust and horrible it is to be targeted for random street violence simply because of one’s race.   Um, yes, it is, isn’t it?

But as it is, there’s not much to see around these parts, except some lovely gardens and nice old houses.