Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992: These Curious People Summary & Analysis

Smith interviews Stanley K. Sheinbaum, former president of the Los Angeles Police Commission. Sheinbaum sits in his beautiful house in Brentwood. He appears gruff, but when he smiles, he takes on the demeanor of a grandmotherly old woman. Sheinbaum recalls going to Nickerson Gardens with his good friend, Maxine Waters, to witness the police break up gangs meeting to negotiate the Watts gang truce. When they arrived, the place was swarming with police.

Sheinbaum spent an hour talking to some of the gang members who were gathered outside. He recalls how the men looked like they wanted to kill him, since he was a police commissioner “and therefore all the things that went along with being a cop.” One man looked like he’d been shot some time in the previous months or years. All the men “have been through the wars down there.” Sheinbaum recalls talking with the men and gaining insight into their circumstances.

The police were mad Sheinbaum talked to the gang members, however.  He recalls receiving a letter shortly after, accusing him of having “talked to our enemy.” He responded by heading down to seventy-seventh street and defending himself, explaining how he had taken advantage of learning about these people about whom he knows nothing—and wasn’t this something the cops would want him to do? 

Sheinbaum contends that the abuse goes both ways: the police have abused the city, but the city has also abused the police. His main issue is his fellow police officers’ response to his trying to understand the gang members. They asked him, “So which side are you on?” Sheinbaum thinks that it’s a problem that there has to be a side.