Although the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a radical militant group of the first half of the Seventies, began and operated primarily in northern California, its members were involved in crimes in the Los Angeles area, including one of the most violent shootouts with civilian law enforcement in history.
Donald DeFreeze was a prisoner at California’s Vacaville Prison. In March, 1973, he escaped and made his way to the San Francisco area. He founded the Symbionese Liberation Army with Patricia Soltysik and recruited more members from the people he met while living in a commune. Never more than ten or eleven at its strongest, SLA members often took creative pseudonyms, two were Generals, and for the group’s symbol, they used a seven-headed cobra custom-designed by DeFreeze.
In its first act of violence, SLA members killed Oakland, California school superintendent Marcus Foster and almost killed his deputy in November, 1973. They targeted Foster for his involvement in the planned introduction of student ID cards in Oakland schools. Two months later, a police officer arrested the two members involved, and in February, 1974, the SLA kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst as a bargaining chip for their release. With safe-houses and luck, the SLA evaded capture, and in mid-April, SLA members, with Hearst participating, robbed a San Francisco bank. A few weeks later, DeFreeze, A.K.A. “Cinque”, decided to move the group to Los Angeles.
In mid-May, two SLA members entered Mel’s Sporting Goods in Inglewood, CA, a suburb of Los Angeles, and what began as a simple shopping trip became an attempted robbery when a store security guard caught SLA member William Harris (Teko) trying to shoplift a pair of socks. Harris pulled a gun and the guard knocked it out of his hand. The SLA trusted Patty Hearst enough to station her in the group’s get-away van; when it became obvious that the trip had gone wrong, Hearst shot up the store as they drove off. They later abandoned the van.
LAPD found the van and tied it to the attempted robbery, and this led them to the SLA Los Angeles-area safe-house. Watching news reports, SLA members abandoned the safe-house, and six moved into another house on East 54th Street in Los Angeles. William Harris and Emily Harris (Yolanda), together with Patty Hearst, traveled to a hotel near Disneyland. After a phone tip, the LAPD sent literally hundreds of officers, together with FBI agents and California Highway Patrol officers, to the area. When SWAT officers with bullhorns ordered everyone out of the house, two “civilians” walked out. One of them, a child, told police that people with guns were still inside. More bullhorn warnings followed, but no one responded. A SWAT officer fired tear gas rounds into the house, and local television stations covered the ensuing battle which lasted for hours.
LAPD officers killed one SLA member as she ran at them in a kind of banzai charge. The house eventually went up in flames and the remaining five SLA members inevitably died violently. Amazingly, no one else was hurt in the fight. The Harrises and Hearst retreated to the San Francisco area and began to rebuild the group.
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EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">Even after the bloodshed, the SLA was not done with Los Angeles. Sympathizer Kathleen Soliah made her way to Los Angeles, and investigators later linked her to a bomb planted near an LAPD patrol car in August, 1975. Miraculously, the bomb did not explode, and Soliah went on the run for more than two decades. In mid-1999, investigators finally arrested her in Minnesota, and after a trial, she served time in a California prison. This finally brought closure to the violent campaign the Symbionese Liberation Army waged in Los Angeles.
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