Let's Remember When The LAPD Blew Up A Neighborhood

The Los Angeles Police Department has a tumultuous history with the residents of LA, especially in certain low-income neighborhoods that are predominantly Black or Hispanic. Among other abuses of power, the LAPD has been accused of racial profiling and unfairly targeting minorities, but the department went above and beyond that time it bombed a city block because officers couldn’t be bothered to properly dispose of illegal fireworks they’d found and confiscated.

2024 BMW 530i xDrive | First Drive

LAPD officers discovered a large stash of illegal fireworks in the summer of 2021 and proceeded to dispose of the cache by blowing it up and taking out a South Central city block. The blast destroyed an LAPD armored truck along with multiple vehicles and homes belonging to scores of Angelinos, who were displaced by the LAPD’s carelessness.

After finding the fireworks, the bomb squad brought out a specially-equipped vehicle with a containment vessel aboard. It seemed like the LAPD was taking every precaution necessary to ensure the proper disposal of the fireworks. But when the fireworks were set off, the controlled detonation turned into a large explosion that the vessel could not contain, as the documentary When the LAPD Blows Up Your Neighborhood (2022) brilliantly illustrates:

Go watch the whole thing at Aeon because it shows how the destruction could have been avoided. Multiple people were harmed in the explosion, including members of the LAPD and Los Angeles residents who were told by the police that they would be safe in their homes.

Directed by documentary filmmaker Nathan Truesdell, When the LAPD Blows Up Your Neighborhood, is a tragicomic account of the destruction the LAPD wrought on a South Central city block. People lost their homes, their cars. Some residents even say that people lost their lives due to the effects of the blast.

Aeon provides a bit of background into the incident, and introduces the director of the latest film that documents the months-long LAPD bomb saga:

The US filmmaker Nathan Truesdell specialises in deploying archival footage to shine a light on local government incompetence and malfeasance – often to droll, tragicomic effect. For his most recent film, When the LAPD Blows Up Your Neighborhood (2022), he trains his pointed editing skills on an incident from 30 June 2021 in which the Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad detonated some 42 pounds of confiscated fireworks in a residential, working-class neighbourhood…

The documentary is both serious and droll, as Aeon describes, with a backing score that uses music to good effect. In one scene (08:11) an LAPD lieutenant tries to defend the decision to blow up a bomb in the middle of a city as a playful xylophone accompanies the policeman walking to the podium. The lieutenant smiles and says to someone out-of-frame, “It’s a little warm out here.” A little nonchalant for a representative of the organization that bombed the block.

In the background, the LAPD truck is a crumpled ball of metal and glass. The documentary explains how the containment vessel was rated for an explosive capacity of up to 25 pounds while the stash of illegal fireworks came in at 42 pounds. The LAPD reportedly thought they were detonating something with 16 pounds of explosive capacity but they were wrong. Near the end of the film, the LAPD chief says bomb squad technicians visually inspected the fireworks. What he doesn’t say, even once, is that the LAPD is sorry it blew up the neighborhood.

Photo: Al Seib (Getty Images)