LA Riot remembered - Los Angeles Police Differ Sharply With Prosecutors on Arrest Totals

Story by New York Times - May 10, 1992
Written By Jane Fritsch

Reflecting the confusion that has characterized this city's response to the violence that broke out 10 days ago, prosecutors and the police are giving widely different estimates of the number of riot-related arrests.

Police officials said today that they had arrested 18,000 people from Wednesday night, April 29, the day the riots began, through this morning. But prosecutors said they could not account for as many as 10,000 of those people.

"We don't know where these people are," said James K. Hahn, the Los Angeles City Attorney. "It is a mystery to a lot of people in the system right now." Difficult Job Ahead

Prosecutors said they had finished the initial processing of all those arrested during the riots, and only about 8,000 defendants had come through the courts. The police said they could not explain the discrepancy, but they stood by their number.

Whatever the case, prosecutors anticipate unusual difficulties in proving the charges against the thousands of defendants arrested by harried police officers amid the chaos of the riots, in which more than 50 people were killed and hundreds of businesses were looted and burned.