Forty-five Years Ago, Chicanos In Placentia Rioted Against the City's Police
Updated: Aug 20, 2020
Street fires blazed in front of the condemned Shamrock apartment complex in Placentia on the balmy night of June 18, 1972. A crowd of Chicano youth, angry at Placentia police for their baton-happy ways, was growing by the hour, and the cops didn't know what to do. Finally, Police Chief Norm Traub called community activist Rose Orosco and asked her to cool tempers. Orosco hastily left a graduation pool party and headed to the scene: the city's historic La Jolla barrio, where tensions between police and Chicanos had existed for decades and were finally going to erupt. The spokeswoman for the Committee of Concerned Mexican-American Citizens didn't even have time to change out of her bathing suit. And she didn't know her teenage son, Larry, had been there since the trouble began.
Read more on my latest OC Weekly News Feature out on newsstands tomorrow:
http://www.ocweekly.com/news/forty-five-years-ago-chicanos-in-placentia-rioted-against-police