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April 29th may have marked the 20th anniversary of the start of the now-famous Rodney King Trial verdict insurrection, but April 30th was when the shit truly hit the fan and the streets were filled with anger and violence. Fires sprang up everywhere, most raging out of control because fire fighters were in short supply and the ones who did respond were attacked. The Police were mostly powerless to stop the rage and stores and businesses throughout the city were broken into, ransacked and burned. As of the start of the morning of the 30th, 9 had already been reported dead, with scores injured and a city in chaos and spreading.

Here is coverage, as presented by Public radio station KCRW, who also broke in and out to carry news reports from the local TV outlets as well as CNN. This recording covers the period of time from 8:55 am until roughly 10:00 am on the morning of the 30th. There are two press conferences, one from Mayor Braddley assessing the situation and Chief Darryl Gates. Also covered are statements from President Bush and a lot of eyewitness accounts.

And this day was only starting.

(Buron Fitts - the sort of DA Mickey Spillane would write about)

I guess every large metropolitan area has its fair share of historic corruption and Los Angeles is no different. If you live in Los Angeles you may hear the name Clifford Clinton from time to time and be reminded of Clifton's Cafeteria, something of a legendary landmark and famous for it's credo of "pay what you can" during the depression years.

But Clinton was also something of a firebrand muckraker in the 1930's which seems to have gone unnoticed over time. Clinton was adamantly opposed to the corrupt political machine that ran Los Angeles in the 1920's and had woven itself into the fabric of L.A. - Clinton hosted a daily radio show, heard on KFAC from the late 1930's to 1940's and spent his fifteen allotted minutes digging up dirt and exposing corruption within the city four times a day.

Clifford Clinton: “ In one of our visits to persons whose help we thought would assist in the exposure of vice and the racket payoff system in Los Angeles, we stepped into a well laid trap. A Dictatophone that was set out to find our exact intentions. When those intentions were discovered, Los Angeles was soon to learn once more, that those who profited by the millions annually as a result of protected law violations in Los Angeles would not stop at murder to protect those illicit profits”.

It certainly didn't endear him to the power structure that was Los Angeles at the time. In fact, he was the intended victim of a house bombing in 1937, carried out by the LAPD who were in the pocket of the Mayor, Frank Shaw who would later be thrown out of office on his own set of corruption charges.

This broadcast, from August 13, 1940 takes aim at District Attorney Buron Fitts, who was part of the Shaw machine. Since it was an election year, Clinton was supporting Reform candidate John Dockweiler (yes Angelenos, the namesake of that beach near El Segundo), who Fitts was actively smearing as a draft dodger during World War 1 (remember, when they say "The World War" they mean the first one as the second one hadn't started yet). Dockweiler's brother takes part in an interview with Clinton to answer the smears and take his own shots at the DA.

Buron Fitts would lose the election and Frank Shaw had already been thrown out in 1938. But Los Angeles was by no means done with corruption.

Just in case you were wondering . . .