IN JUNE 1943, THE CITY OF LOS ANGELES was wrenched by the worst
rioting it had seen to that point in the twentieth century. Incited
by sensational newspaper stories and public hysteria over
allegations of widespread crime among Mexican American juveniles,
scores of American servicemen, joined by civilians and even police
officers, roamed the streets of the city in search of young Mexican
Americans wearing zoot suits -- outlandish suits featuring baggy
pants with narrow cuffs and knee-length jackets with wide lapels.
Once found, zoot suiters were stripped of their clothes and beaten
while police stood by. Only a handful of servicemen were arrested,
but over six hundred Mexican American youths were incarcerated for
disturbing the peace. The riots threw a harsh light on the
deteriorating relationship between the city's Mexican American
community and the Los Angeles Police Department.
In this study, Edward J. Escobar examines the history of the
LAPD and the Chicano community from the turn of the century, when
the police first became a professional organization, to the era of
the Zoot Suit riots. Escobar shows how police increasingly
characterized Chicanos as a criminal element, and how the
assumption of Mexican Americans that the police were deliberately
targeting them grew. As Escobar demonstrates, this troubled
relationship prompted Mexican Americans to forge a new political
identity, even as the LAPD used fear of minority crime to increase
its autonomy. This combination of a politicized minority and an
intransigent police force would eventually contribute to other
uprisings in Los Angeles, including the 1965 Watts riots and the
violence that erupted in 1992 following the acquittal ofLAPD
officers accused of beating Rodney King.
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