The men and women that serve as police officers in this country over the past year or so have been coming under heavy heat because of the methods and procedures that they follow to “maintain the peace”. Police state is a term denoting government that exercises power arbitrarily through the police, and this is what much of America has come to be if you are on the wrong side of the racial divide. With cases such as the Trayvon Martin incident and the happenings in Ferguson, Missouri only adds to the notion that the police force within this country is racially biased and are putting individuals in their graves for it.
While in Los Angeles, the ever reaching arm of the law was very prominent in certain areas rather than others, which brought up the question of why here, and why so many? Los Angeles as a city, has had her fair share of run ins with law enforcement , most infamously during the Rodney King Riots of 1992 where widespread anarchy and chaos ensued in parts of Los Angeles because of the acquital of police officers who were videotaped beating Rodney King. 
The Rodney King riots were a part of the history of Los Angeles we heard a lot about while in the city, it was like a time where everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing. The most interesting retelling was when we were ferrying between the organizations we were visiting, and our van driver drove past the cross roads of Florence and Normandie where the riots had originally begun on that fateful April 29th night. He talked about how a truck was stopped at that very intersection and pulled out and beaten by a mob in retaliation for what had happened to Rodney King. The way he told us this story, one could sense the fear in his voice, how close his beloved city of Los Angeles had come to falling into absolute uncivilized chaos. The idea that this was all caused by the abhorrent behaviour of those we put our society’s safety and security in, is beyond what any state should allow, especially the United States. We visited the downtown Los Angeles are and made our way through the many neighbourhoods within, these included the Arts District and Skid Row and alos Boyle Heights and Little Tokyo. The presence of police in the hordes in areas like Boyle heights and Skid Row, where the homeless and immigrant populations reside puts one at a state of discomfort. For one, in Boyle Heights, the substation of the L.A police Department is one of the largest in the entire city and the size of the Boyle Heights area does not warrant it. In Skid Row, while walking around during daytime , I counted at least 4 different police vehicles “patrolling”the area constantly, as if to remind its residence that they better be careful cause they were being watched, constantly. On the flip side, the areas of the Arts District and Little Tokyo are almost devoid of law enforcement to the naked eye, these areas are much wealthier and heavily gentrified and seem to within the idea of what is “acceptable” to the law enforcement there.
The battle for the soul of Los Angeles, is one that is less subtle when it comes to racial and other minorities against the police, in the eyes of law enforcement, it would seem that all people of colour could be a criminal and vagrant. The idea that the police are for the protection of some and not all is a detail of the system that must be fixed, if there is to be a clear and open dialogue for the improvement of race relations in this country. The irony to me was how the race relations within this country took a turn for the worse once the First African American President was elected into office, there is a troubled notion here that the government and officials working within policy must address, but more importantly those living within this oppressive and discriminatory system must speak out. For change to come, it has to be from self reflection and addmittance rather than a repeat of the Rodney King riots with violence.
