A jury of both blacks and whites convened for several days, and some six months after the shootout,

Wayne Pharr was abruptly cheap rental car in los angeles awakened in the gunroom of the Black Panthers’ Los Angeles headquarters at 41st and Central. The shotgun was still in his hand from when he had fallen asleep while cleaning it. He had spent most of the night exploring cheap rental car in los angeles the
Almost as soon as Pharr left the gunroom, the door of Panther headquarters flew open with no warning, cheap rental car in los angeles and bodies clad in black began to stream into the building—automatic weapons readied. cheap rental car in los angeles Only 19, Pharr was stunned, but he was young and quick, and before any shots were fired he dove into a sandbag bunker that flanked the door.
A split second later, cheap rental car in los angeles Smith emerged with a Thompson submachine gun in hand—finger on the trigger. Bullets flew by the dozen, connecting with the chests cheap rental car in los angeles of their targets—thud, thud, thud, thud. The force of the impact pinned the men in black in the doorway, creating a bottleneck—and giving cheap rental car in los angeles Pharr time to recover.
One of the biggest shootouts in American history had just begun, pitting the vanguard of domestic American radicalism against a newly constituted paramilitary police force: Special Weapons and Tactics, aka SWAT.
Carter and fellow Panther John Huggins were shot to death in UCLA’s Campbell Hall by members of the rival black radical group Us. Agents, operating under the FBI’s infamous COINTEL (counterintelligence) program and masquerading as Panthers and
Surprisingly, it wasn’t until the middle of 1969 that the Panthers caught the attention of the LAPD. Two police officers cruising the area around the Panthers’ 41st and Central headquarters pulled over and questioned a small group of black men and women getting cheap rental car in los angeles some air outside a Saturday-night Panther social. After a brief confrontation, police attempted cheap rental car in los angeles to arrest several of them for loitering. The Panthers resisted, and police called for backup, but, “surrounded by 300 militant black men,” as one Panther put it, they eventually hesitated to escalate the incident.
They were right. cheap rental car in los angeles As it turns out, the night of the test run, police claimed to have seen three Panthers—Paul cheap rental car in los angeles Redd, “Duck” Smith and Geronimo Pratt—in possession of illegal cheap rental car in los angeles firearms. The LAPD secured an arrest warrant for the three, as well as a search warrant for the 41st and Central headquarters cheap rental car in los angeles and two known Panther hideouts.
A massive, three-pronged raid was planned, cheap rental car in los angeles involving more than 350 officers. It was decided that SWAT—a previously untested paramilitary unit of the LAPD Metro Squad, championed by then inspector cheap rental car in los angeles and future LAPD chief Daryl Gates—would take the lead. It was to be the group’s very first operation.
loose in 1965. His most vivid memory is seeing an old woman in pajamas, calling her cat in the front yard, shortly after the national guard had shot her entire home—and presumably her cat—to pieces while in pursuit of a suspect.
police friend with extensive operational knowledge of the raid pulled McKinley aside and warned cheap rental car in los angeles him about 41st and Central. “I don’t like the plan,” he said. “Don’t hit the door. These guys aren’t going to go quietly.”
The Panthers apparently expected and were prepared for something, but they had no idea a paramilitary assault would be coming their way. Under the leadership of Pratt and Cotton Smith—both multitour Vietnam vets—the Panthers had fortified their nerve center and compiled an arsenal fit for a military operation. Pratt had the Panthers digging a tunnel to the sewer system as a potential means of escape—which was why Pharr had been out late in the sewers on the night of the shootout.
Gregory Everett, a Panther historian and director of the film 41st and Central: The Untold Story of the L.A. Black Panthers cheap rental car in los angeles , managed to get ahold of the original assault plan for the SWAT operation, which revealed cheap rental car in los angeles the extensive intelligence police had collected.
every room of Panther headquarters. They knew where the weapons were kept, where the members slept. They even knew about the dirt pile from the tunnel—they just had erroneous information as to where it was. The map showed it off to the corner, but it was piled in front of the back door—the same door SWAT planned to enter when it raided 41st and Central.
It was two hours before sunrise on that Monday morning, and dogs were barking all over the neighborhood—up the alley off Central, in business parking cheap rental car in los angeles lots, in back and front yards. cheap rental car in los angeles Nineteen-year-old artist Gil Parker had a bad feeling as he stood
on the roof of party headquarters, cheap rental car in los angeles automatic weapon in hand. Something wasn’t right...something was setting off all these dogs. The strange feeling lingered, but he couldn’t see anything—until it was too late.
Sgt. McKinley was at the tail end of the unit that entered the front door of Panther headquarters, and he sensed disaster the whole way. As soon as the door was kicked open, bright lights shone into the officers faces. When they regained their senses, they realized they had just run into an alcove fortified on all sides—a death trap.
McKinley helped drag a wounded comrade cheap rental car in los angeles out of the building—shots following his team the whole way. Then he headed to the roof, where SWAT had established a bit of a beachhead. The sides exchanged fire through the roof.
the officer next to McKinley. Despite the force of the explosion, all the police really did was blow a few holes in the ceiling, letting the tear gas inside escape. The increased airflow gave the Panthers a chance cheap rental car in los angeles to recover. Shots soon came through the ceiling again near McKinley’s feet.
Renee “Peaches” Moore and Tommy Lewis—the cheap rental car in los angeles only two women in the building—hit the phones to call the press. Surprisingly, the police hadn’t cut the lines. If the police were going to kill them now, it would have to be on a national stage.
Still, the Panthers couldn’t guard all sides at once. An hour into the battle, Freeman suddenly heard noises coming from the stairwell near an unguarded back office. He fired one shot through cheap rental car in los angeles the door before cheap rental car in los angeles police cheap rental car in los angeles zeroed in on him. Bullets flew through the office, tearing the room to pieces. Buckshot entered his legs from a shotgun blast, and a single bullet came in through his arm, just above his elbow, shattering the bone. He crumpled in a pile on the floor.
A few hours into the fight, the Panthers began running out of .30-caliber bullets for their rifles, and police sniper fire went un-returned. cheap rental car in los angeles Meanwhile, a pipe had burst after being shot, and water was pooling on the floor. It soon absorbed the remaining tear gas, creating a toxic cocktail that burned Freeman’s knees as he took cover, incapacitated and bleeding.
as they could, but a new problem had surfaced. In their fortifications of the building, the Panthers had constructed closable slats to serve as view holes and gun posts. With daylight, though, the slats were visible to the outside, and when one was opened, the police would train their guns and fire.
it for all to see. When no shots came her way, she gingerly stepped out into the sunlight. Then in a scene that played out in the international media, one by one the Panthers emerged from their shattered headquarters and were promptly arrested.
surprise. The result was a full-on battle in a crowded urban setting, played out before the entire nation—one that was sympathetic to the Panther cause after that point-blank police killing of Fred Hampton in Chicago.
Rico, where he hid for several years, cheap rental car in los angeles hearing no news of his legal fate. Despite knowing he shot police officers, Pharr couldn’t skip town—his mother cheap rental car in los angeles had put her house on the line to secure his bail money.
A jury of both blacks and whites convened for several days, and some six months after the shootout, a verdict was in. Count after count: not guilty. But it was a short-lived victory, cheap rental car in los angeles as only a few months after the verdict, the L.A. arm of the Panthers cheap rental car in los angeles had all but collapsed under the weight of vicious infighting and continued police cheap rental car in los angeles pressure.
Ironically, Gil Parker got a job as a janitor at L.A. Superior Court downtown. He has faced bouts of homelessness over the years and now lives in Sacramento, where he is close to his grandchildren. “I thought we’d done all this for nothing,” he says, reflecting back on his years of anonymity.
Bernard Smith says he found God during the raid. “Who else you gonna call on in that circumstance?” After a few years living in Puerto cheap rental car in los angeles Rico upon fleeing, cheap rental car in los angeles he returned to Los Angeles and surrendered to do a few months in county jail. He eventually got his life together and is now a practicing Muslim, working in the
Roland cheap rental car in los angeles Freeman works in South L.A. as a counselor for at-risk kids. Just like he did in the old days with the Panthers, Freeman puts together community breakfast programs. “The shootout was the high-water mark of the Black Panther party,” he says in hindsight. “It was everything we stood for...everything. The government came at
“During the shootout, I was free,” Pharr says. “I was making a stand, and in that moment cheap rental car in los angeles I was free. You can’t get in, and I can’t get out. But in my space, I’m free. I’m making the decision right now, and that decision is f--k you.” He’s currently working on a book about his life in the Panther Party.
After the battle, cheap rental car in los angeles Patrick cheap rental car in los angeles McKinley’s unit came to the realization that it was grossly ill equipped to handle similar raids. “Oh, God, were we lucky,” says McKinley of how SWAT pulled off the operation with no one getting killed. “These weren’t simple thugs we were dealing with. These were well-armed, politically cheap rental car in los angeles motivated individuals, and a lot of them had some good training. I’m extremely proud of what we did that day. We got our targets and no one died. But oh, God, were we lucky.”
In the months after the 41st and Central raid, McKinley and his SWAT teammates headed down to Camp Pendleton for intense military training with the marines. They would never again be tactically cheap rental car in los angeles unprepared. McKinley would rise through the ranks of SWAT, eventually becoming the captain in charge. In 1993, he was appointed police
The Panthers’ influence faded, but Daryl Gates’ SWAT model spread to every major metropolitan police department in the nation. For years, the SWAT insignia