Lots of documentaries fall into the realm of the disposable: puff pieces, curios, lurid crime sideshows or lightweight infotainment. John Ridley's 'Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992' (2017) is not one of those. Indeed, 'Let It Fall' is one of the most important American docs in recent years. Ridley's brilliantly edited film delineates the decade-long run-up to the 1992 riots following the Rodney King verdicts that tore Los Angeles apart and shocked the nation. As 'Let It Fall' shows, 1982 to '92 marked a steep rise in street gangs, the further militarization of the police by LAPD Chief Daryl Gates, simmering tensions in the black community with Korean shop-owners and the cops. By the time of the Rodney King incident, South-Central LA was a tinderbox about to explode into flames. When the four cops who were involved in King's vicious, senseless beating - caught on video tape - were inexplicably acquitted by a Simi Valley jury, black LA went nuts and the results were catastrophic. The obvious take-way from 'Let It Fall' is that the city government and the cops were totally and unconscionably unprepared for the five days of rioting that ensued after the acquittals. Then-mayor Bradley comes off as weak but Daryl Gates and some of his subordinates in the LAPD come off as either grossly incompetent, indifferent, or malevolent - or all of the above. The LA riots were called an "uprising" but that doesn't seem quite accurate. The cops stood down and stayed uninvolved while the black ghetto and Koreatown burned (wealthy white sections like Beverly Hills were carefully guarded, of course). In other words, the horrendous damage was mostly inflicted on white working-class people (e.g., truck driver Reginald Denny) and Korean small business owners by African American working-class and poor people who were fed up by a long term diet of poverty and police repression. The '92 riots did not alter the rich, white power structure one iota - though Bradley and Gates soon lost their jobs.
Review of Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992
