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WASHINGTON (Map, News) - D.C. police Sgt. Ron Winters was there at the beginning of the Washington riots.
But he and the other 3,100 police officers were ill equipped to stop the violence that still scars the city.
Without a coherent plan, officers, four to a car, drove around answering the stream of calls blurting over the radio, arresting rioters and shoving suspects into an overstuffed cell block.
They surrounded firetrucks to protect the firefighters from flying rocks and bricks and prevent rioters from cutting the hoses. He remembers watching helplessly as 300 looters raided a grocery store, and uselessly trying to put out a house fire with a limp garden hose as the female homeowner cried.
“We were four against hundreds. As soon as we threw a tear-gas canister, everybody would scatter then reappear,” said Winters, 73. “What could we do?”
The Washington riots were a wake-up call for the D.C. police department. The police were caught flat-footed, without enough manpower to protect the buildings, equipment to protect themselves or a plan to confront the chaos, said former officers.
The District’s police force, a federal agency at the time, was overwhelmed by 20,000 rioters who got within two blocks of the White House.
President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered in 13,000 troops. The occupation of Washington was the largest of any American city since the Civil War.
The riots also highlighted the difficulties of a largely white male police force maintaining order in a mostly African-American city, said Sgt. Nick Breul, the department historian.
Breul says he doesn’t believe more black D.C. officers could have prevented the violence that weekend. But former Assistant Police Chief Tilmon O’Bryant described in his biography, “Black Cop,” maintaining control in his corner of the city because he was black.
Former Det. Lt. Sam Wallace, now 81, believes that police could have prevented much of the destruction had they made a stand at the Safeway grocery store at 14th and U streets, but the troops were ordered back.
“It was chaos everywhere; It was awful. A lot of innocent people got hurt,” Wallace said. “It was burn, baby, burn.”
smccabe@dcexaminer.com
Comments from Examiner Readers
12:37 PM MST on Fri., Apr. 4, 2008 re: "Locals recall fateful day: ‘My mom and dad were both crying’"
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Examiner Reader said:
So, let me get this straight. People loot and burn down the businesses in their own neighborhood and then wonder why, 40 years later, they have not returned yet? Perhaps that question is best answered by another one. Who, in their right mind, would risk their hard earned capital in a neighborhood where the residents reward them by looting and burning down the capital of others? What other result could they have possibly envisioned? Small wonder that 40 years later some parts of the city have yet to come back.
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