not see any improvement or change. Salas stated that one cause of the rift between the police and minorities is that "whites are physically afraid of minorities and people of color such as blacks and Mexicans." Mike Zinzun, leader of the Coalition Against Police Abuse told Smith his own story of police brutality in which he was repeatedly maced, trampled and beaten by a group of officers after being single out of a crowd of people trying to help another man being beaten by police. As a consequence his optic nerve exploded and he lost sight in one eye and had to get forty stitches on his head. Zinzun sued the city and received 1.2 million dollars and got two police men fired. Theresa Allison, founder of Mothers Reclaiming our Children told her horror stories of having one of her sons shot to death by the police and the other arrested unjustly. She also told stories of police picking up youths from her neighborhood and dropping them off in other projects to get shot. Josie Morales who is a clerk typist told Smith her story of ten or twelve officers surrounding one man, George Holliday, and beating him outside of her apartment one night. Harland Braun, counsel for Officer Theodore Briseno told a story about a run in with the police that his son (who goes to Princeton) had while a black friend of his in was driving his Mercedes in Westwood. His son confronted the cop by saying they had been pulled over because his friend Bobby was black and driving a Mercedes. The cop quickly told his to shut up or he'd "put a screw through his chest." He wondered what might have happened if they had been pulled over in a public area rather than a dark neighborhood or both of their safety might have been in serious danger. It is this fact that a large percent of LA citizens (mostly minorities), has their own stories of police brutality and injustice in the system that caused such uproar after the Rodney King verdict. People identified with Rodn...
