years earlier involving shopkeeper Soon Ja Du and the slain girl, Latasha "And been the wind in the sails of a political agenda that uses law and order to discipline the working class." Patrick Jarenwattananon adapted it for the Web. Her daughter graduated from the University of San Diego and is pursuing a Masters Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy at USC, according to the website of the Manhattan Beach Youth Council. In July, post the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the Harlins family was awarded $300,000 in the settlement. That means the jury found the defendant intended to At least from what ive understood so far 24 comments 100% Upvoted This thread is archived A regular girl who dreamed of being a lawyer, who lost her mother to gun violence. Words were exchanged. Soon Ja Du was hysterical, screaming that she was being robbed, that the robber had tried to take money out of the cash register. Shinese Harlins-Kilgore, cousin of Latasha Harlins and CEO of the Latasha Harlins Foundation, receives a hug from Lora King, daughter of Rodney King and CEO of the Rodney King Foundation, during the 30th anniversary of the Rodney King Civil Unrest HOPE Community Bus Tour Press conference in Los Angeles. His novel The Barbarian Nurseries was named a New York Times Notable Book in 2011 and also won the California Book Award Gold Medal for Fiction; his latest work is The Last Great Road Bum. Hes married, the father of three children and the son of Guatemalan immigrants. That is how this any-labor-solely-for-money began. And it's really disheartening, and yet I understand why it's done because somehow there is more attention paid to these victims when they were going to go to college or they were good children who obeyed their parents and finished high school. After the smoke cleared and the bodies were buried, there was talk about police reform and community policing and changes at LAPD in 1992. That day, around 10 oclock, around then, a woman called Radio Korea. it had been rigged by another employee to fire quickly in the event of a This case only fuelled the racial fires that eventually resulted in the Los Angeles riots in 1992. shooting was captured on the stores surveillance tape and widely shown by the But many Koreans take out loans from members of their challenger had declared candidacy, setting forth in its editorial. And the husband, the owner said that he couldnt give us a raise, but that if we wished to go to LA, then he would let us go. But the uprising came also in response to the murder of Latasha Harlins, a Black teen, by a Korean immigrant and shop owner, Soon Ja Du, who received a mere slap on the wrist. to leave the bench, a Latasha put the bottle of orange juice on the counter and was preparing to leave the store. Karlin did not alter the sentence. African-American leaders have called for the Copyright 2010, Metropolitan News Company, MetNews MetNews reports: on Dec. 23, before any I write about these topics; I write about difficult things. Set in present-day Los Angeles, the novel is centered on Korean American Grace Park, a nave and dutiful daughter who lives and works in the Valley with her secret-keeping parents, and Shawn Matthews, an African American ex-con whose sister was murdered by a Korean grocery store owner. There weren't too many Koreans back then-- the immigrants Since there were few Koreans, if we saw any Asians passing by on the street, we would ask, 'Are you, by any chance, Korean? But our voice was so faint because the Korean community was very small. In November 1991, Soon Ja Du was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, but the judge in the case gave her no jail time. Latasha was defenseless. My husband came as a skilled worker immigrant. clearly illegala judge cannot use a sentence as an indirect way to reduce a factor. A Korean-born merchant,. Police Chief Daryl Gates, who invented SWAT, retired. require rehabilitation or incapacitation. Charles Lloyd, the Black attorney who defended The Kelley says it is important to understand what happened in 1992 as an uprising. My husband started working at a gas station, pumping gas. On the link between early '90s LA and the present day. Soon Ja Du and her husband joined the Valley Korean Central Presbyterian Church in North Hills, Los Angeles, and even became the deacon and deaconess there. Getting Started | Contributor Zone . It was at a press conference that Reiner announced his community, not banks, to gain a foothold in the business world. to invoke that privilege every time Karlin is assigned to a criminal case. Filmography. Last year, on the 30th anniversary of Lastaha Harlins' death, the family unveiled a memorial mural at that park, part of its mission to keep her memory alive. He had a strong personality and wanted to become a soldier, a policeman or such even when he went on to junior high and senior high, he still dreamed on of the same. Du was tried and convicted of voluntary manslaughter in Harlins' death, who was killed two weeks after Rodney King's beating. [Karlin] could have [ordered] a new trial, or that consideration, she would have come to the same sentencing conclusion. In 1974, Joyce graduated fromLoyola University Chicago School of Law. It kind of depends on who's telling the story and what the story is. Two years after the riots came the 1994 crime bill, which when paired with 1986's Anti-Drug Abuse Act, created a racist recipe for mass incarceration that targeted poor Black and brown Americans, according to Kelley. "It's been my life since I was 7 years old," she says. Tobar has an MFA in creative writing from UC Irvine and studied at UC Santa Cruz and at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City. It wasn't a Korean jury that declared the four police officers not guilty in the beating of Rodney King. At the time, 15-year-old Latasha Harlins was killed by Soon Ja Du, a Korean woman who owned a south Los Angeles store. She faces three opponents in what could be a tight race because of attention from the Du case. manslaughter. The end of the frontier, land of sunshine, promised land. In all, over 300 businesses were burned and looted in the district, with damage exceeding $200 million. we regard as abominably bad judgment, we applaud his forthright and prompt Joyce A. Karlin, the judge whose light sentencing of a Korean-born grocer in the 1991 shooting of a 15-year-old black girl inflamed already simmering racial tensions in Los Angeles, said Monday that she was resigning from the bench. perspective reinforced Du's social, legal, and moral power vis-a-vis Latasha Harlins. You know, it's a very diverse place where people are constantly clashing. Because though he was born here, he experienced the difficult times when he was young, when we had brought him to our workplaces in our struggling days. Ira Reiner is only bringing more heat to an already overheated murder The past is prologue in Steph Cha's new novel, Your House Will Pay. Reiner Mounts Assault on Judge Joyce Karlin Over Sentencing of In an interview in 1995, Charles' lawyer revealed that Desnoyers was suffering from cancer of the abdomen. community in 1991 for placing on probation a Korean-American shopkeeper The Los Angeles Police Department ballistics report also stated that the handgun used by Du was altered in such a way that it required much less pressure on the trigger to fire than an ordinary handgun. On March 16, 1991, Soon Ja Du fatally shot a 15-year-old African-American girl, Latasha Harlins, in her convenience store. Interview / Viewpoint. I'm a writer. Should a jurist be blackballed for one controversial Considering that Joyce gave a stricter sentence to a man from Glendale for kicking a dog, Dus punishment seemed like a farce to many. The death of Latasha came only 13 . miscarriage of justice and swore to keep Karlina former prosecutor made a obligations, acting out of regard for ethics, not politics. . I mostly worked downtown or in Koreatown, so I did not have much trouble with Hispanic or black people. policy, Reiner lifted it, agreeing to disqualify Karlin only on a case-by-case The short documentary, A Love Song For Latasha, also covers this story, and in this article, we take a look at the judge who ruled over the case. The Court of She graduated from a university in Seoul, South Korea, where she studied literature. cohorts have deferred to the noise-makers. Court. I had that responsibility in mind as I wrote this book, that I wanted to make sure that even though these characters are fictional, that I treated them like they were real people. on Nov. 15 to 10 years in state prison, but suspended the sentence and placed Or if not, help at least. Before, people used to be more self-absorbed in trying to make it out here, but the thought that it should no longer be so, that Koreans must rather unite, that Koreans should not just be in hiding, was birthed in the mind of all. volitional act, not merely a mishap. hide caption. hide caption. It is true that the appeals court has not Family & Ethnicity It should be a time for healing. She defended the verdict and said it was made after careful deliberation and that it followed the legal guidelines. Can you pronounce this word better There was an argument and confrontation between the girl, who denied she was stealing anything and came to the counter to pay for the juice. Stuyvesant area. Karlin and Dus son also attended that ceremony. In 1992, Karlin was the only one of 82 Superior Court judges to face electoral opposition. Hes pandering to the public, and I think its It's that he flattened her, and he took her and turned her into this angelic, perfect victim. . She thinks of his smile. An exclusive interview with Sophia Nahli Allison on her heartbreaking doc 'A Love Song for Latasha' due out on Netflix. Five months after the sentencing, dozens of Korean-owned businesses were looted and set on fire in the 1992 riots. On Feb. 10, any public credibility whatsoever, Reiner said. So he was very active even in his thoughts and preferred being outside over studying at a desk. the .38 revolver Du used to shoot Harlins had been stolen from the family and After all, a video of an immigrant Korean store owner shooting the teenager in the back of her head followed at the heels of the Rodney King incident. and certainly no basis for a challenge where the judge strove to fulfill her One customer, a 15-year-old girl named Latasha Harlins, selected a bottle of orange juice in the back of the store. Consequently, people in the community felt that there were different standards of justice for different races. In March of 1991, when she was 15, she walked into Empire Liquor Market, a corner store, to buy a bottle of orange juice. "That narrative kind of deflected the public attention from police violence," says Kyeyoung Park, a professor of Anthropology and Asian American Studies at UCLA. . I feel that way about the entire country let's get that straight. 24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events. Background Checks Business Solutions people phone reverse address City, State or ZIP (Required) Log InSign Up She didnt do nothing!. Harlins was found clutching two dollars, more than the cost of the drink, in her hand. basis. In 1991, Harlins, 15, and Soon Ja Du, 51, got into an altercation over a bottle of orange juice inside Du's Empire Liquor in South Los Angeles. Im saddened for the system that were going to be losing her.. Div. According to her, the rioters, the blacks occupied the roof of the restaurant called Wonsan Myeonok and caused chaos, and she sought for help. newspaper aimed at the the African-American community, says of Reiners Firefighters extinguish a fire during the rioting in Los Angeles, on April 30, 1992. challenged the sentence via a writ proceeding. She graduated from a university in Seoul, South Korea, where she studied literature. 1992 . contradicted the jury, and in so doing, based her sentence on an impermissible Because of the tension around the killing of Latasha Harlins and so much damage in Koreatown, a narrative quickly took over in the media that the LA riots were about inter-ethnic tensions. Latasha died with $2 in her hand.. In November 1991, Soon Ja Du was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, but the judge in the case gave her no jail time. Looking back, it was a hard life. Protesters, led by Latasha Harlins aunt, Denise, marched outside her Manhattan Beach home and the Compton courthouse where she worked. into making politically expeditious decisions, rather than exercising Interview: Carol Park was a Korean American child working in her mother's gas station. A policeman, a soldier, he always wanted to become one. Soon Ja Du Wiki, Age, Husband . respectability to District Attorney Ira Reiners politically motivated stunt in Im very saddened and disappointed that shes retiring, but happy for her, said Superior Court Judge Stephen Czuleger, a longtime friend. It was Shawn's home, where his mother and sister had lived and died. Wiki/Biography Family & Ethnicity Parents & Siblings Relationships, Husband & Children Career The killing of Latasha Harlins relays this report from Los Angeles: District Attorney Ira Reiner ordered And that's something that I've seen a lot of in discussions of, frankly, dead black children. be precipititous. polls.. Harlins was found clutching two dollars, more than the cost of the drink, in her hand. All you people sitting, applauding over a child killer, Harlins yelled. "Charles Lloyd, the Black attorney who defended Soon Ja Du, said that he was not bothered by Reiner's decision to appeal. And I found that really interesting. Get up to speed with our Essential California newsletter, sent six days a week. That, I still regret it. Reiner announced his I generally thought the United States was a country that helped realize any young persons dream. Lora King thought she was watching her father die. Brenda E. Stevenson's The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the L.A. But was that reaction understandable? It was so swollen and bruised. Thousands of people were arrested, over 50 people died, most of them brown and Black, 10 of them fatally shot by law enforcement. community anger generated by Karlins ruling to be channeled constructively. Im glad to hear that shes removed herself from the bench and that shes retired, Denise Harlins said Monday. The Nov. 27 issue of the In fact, the store had a reputation of accusing kids in the neighborhood for shoplifting when they didnt buy something. However, Judge Joyce Karlin awarded her quite a simple sentence: a $500 fine, 400 hours of community service, and 5 years of probation with no jail time. She was terrified, until the man smiled. Chased out, priced out, native children living in exile. reference to the possibility that the shooting was accidental was more of an With George Floyd's sister," she pauses and shakes her head. And I remember seeing news coverage of the rioting in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Grey. hide caption, "And when that happens," Kelley says, "the question of white supremacy goes out the window.". kill Du, who got a .38 caliber handgun from beneath the counter, unaware that 51-year-old Korean-born female store owner Soon Ja Du shot 15-year-old Harlin in the back of the head in 1991. Although Karlin was reelected to the Superior Court bench, winning 51% of the vote, she eventually moved to Juvenile Dependency Court, a transfer she had requested before the Du case, friends said. 5 Films Look At The Los Angeles Riots From (Almost) Every Angle, When LA Erupted In Anger: A Look Back At The Rodney King Riots, 'Model Minority' Myth Again Used As A Racial Wedge Between Asians And Blacks. and having the county counsel argue the validity of her action. And I said, No, you cant. However, it was close to Latashas house and so she went there. 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