Marines stole the spotlight from the National Guard in the LA Riots

When the Los Angeles Police Department responded to a domestic dispute during the 1992 LA Riots, they likely didn’t need the backing of the United States Marine Corps, but they had it anyway. Upon approaching the house from which the call was made, one officer was hit by a shotgun blast of birdshot. He called on the Marines to cover him. Unfortunately, what “cover” meant to the Marines and what it meant to the LAPD were two entirely different things.

The officer just wanted the threat of Marine Corps M-16s pointed at the house, an attempt to keep the shooter from shooting again. The Marines thought the 200 rounds they fired into the house would be enough. They were probably both right. But that’s not how the U.S. Army National Guard would have done it.

In the early 1990s, Los Angeles was a dangerous place. Even the LAPD officers who regularly walked their beats admitted to losing the streets to the tens of thousands of gang members who controlled much of the city’s south side. The city soon became a powder keg of racially and socially fueled frustration.

That ticking time bomb exploded on April 29, 1992, after four LAPD officers were acquitted of using excessive force against Rodney King. King was a black motorist who the officers savagely beat after he evaded them on a California freeway, and his excessive beating was captured on video for the world to see.

Their acquittal sparked the 1992 LA Riots, a huge civil disturbance that covered 32 square miles, from the Hollywood Hills to Long Beach. Eventually, the governor of California would call in more than 10,000 California National Guard troops and 2,000 active troops to quell the growing disturbance. That wasn’t enough. Then-Gov. Pete Wilson, a Marine Corps veteran, knew what he needed and asked President Bush to send in the Marines.

Within 36 hours, state and local agencies, along with thousands of California National Guardsmen, had largely restored order. That’s when they were suddenly federalized and augmented with more active duty troops and the United States Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton.

According to U.S. Army Maj. Gen. James Delk, this caused the morale among the soldiers of the California Guard to plummet. After all their work in restoring Los Angeles, suddenly being told the Marines were coming in to finish the job didn’t feel so great.

Local civilians, on the other hand, knew exactly who to thank. According to Gen. Delk, locals cheered at the appearance of the California National Guard in their neighborhoods. Shopkeepers and restaurants refused to take money from the Guardsmen, often even delivering food and drinks to the staging areas.

So, in the immediate aftermath of the rioting and violence, the media latched on to the idea that calling in the Marines was the solution to restoring law and order, even though the job was mostly complete by the time the Marines arrived. The Guardsmen, for their part, continued to do their jobs despite the lack of national appreciation.

By the time the Guard withdrew, the streets were significantly safer than they had been before the riots began. The crime rate dropped by 70 percent, and local citizens did not want the troops to leave. In fact, it was more than a month before the last National Guard soldier left Los Angeles.

The good news is that the federalization of the joint task force worked precisely as it was supposed to, and no one wearing a uniform of the U.S. military was killed or seriously injured. Most importantly, no U.S. troops killed or wounded any innocent civilians.