“It looked like D-Day,” said one witness to the operation.
The three sweeps were coordinated to occur simultaneously. Police and DEA agents arrested virtually everyone they found on the streets and hustled them off to school buses waiting at strategically positioned staging areas. People found exiting tenements and houses during the commotion were arrested as well.
The school buses, each manned by six armed guards in addition to a driver and equipped with reinforced metal screens covering the windows, transported the suspects to the Los Angeles Coliseum. There, in the eerie glow of the stadium’s floodlights, the suspects were arraigned in six open-air courtrooms hastily constructed on the playing field.
The sweeps, the largest in the history of Los Angeles in terms of arrests, followed a blueprint established in similar operations in New York and Washington, D.C. The American Civil Liberties Union, which has challenged the outdoor detention centers in New York and Washington on constitutional grounds, has filed suit against Los Angeles County on behalf of the detainees.
—Los Angeles Times, 14 July 1995
The day felt and looked exactly like the aftermath of a storm. The sky was a brilliant clean blue, the highway was littered with debris left by Caroline— branches, palm fronds, Spanish moss, even a mailbox still attached to its post. The rented Rover sped south, its balloon tires whining on the macadam. The thick palm and mangrove forest that swept past in a blur plunged the highway into complete shadow. The air was cool, almost frigid.
Aaron Weiss gripped the dashboard with one hand and pressed his Donegal walking hat to his head with the other. He hated open cars, hated convertibles of any sort. If he ruled the world, or at least that portion of the world responsible for overland travel, every motor vehicle would have a roof reinforced with a roll bar and a governor to prevent it from exceeding fifty-five miles an hour. But there was a story beyond that mangrove forest, and he knew that speed was essential.
“Can’t you go any faster?” he screamed over the rush of wind.
Zeke Tucker glanced at him, then looked back at the littered highway. He said nothing, but nudged the accelerator slightly. He smiled enough to reveal the gap in his front teeth. He was amused by Weiss’s consternation.
Tucker and Weiss had worked as a team for seventeen years, since the Reagan assassination attempt. He had seen the reporter annoy thousands of people, from headwaiters to heads of state. When it came to aggravation, Aaron Weiss was a true egalitarian. And Zeke Tucker was the ideal cameraman to team with him: lanky, slow-drawling, absolutely unflappable.
Tucker slowed and squinted at the hand-drawn map Weiss had taped to the dashboard. He swerved off the highway and punched the Rover through a screen of brush and young palmetto, engine growling, camera gear jouncing on the back seat. Beyond the brush, two slender trails of sand curved through the trees. The makeshift roadway was not exactly wide enough for the Rover; Weiss was stuck several times by overhanging palmetto spines. He grumbled curses each time. Eventually the trees and bushes thinned enough to reveal the glare of the sun reflecting off the ocean. The Rover broke out onto a beach. Tucker let it roll to a stop on the white sand.
“Great,” Weiss snapped. “Now where the hell are we?” All he could see was a ridge of sand and, beyond that, the glittering water stretching to the horizon.
“Not far now,” said Tucker, a long bony finger tapping the map. “If you want to, Aaron, we can sit here and watch the shuttle launch.” The gap-toothed grin came back to his long-jawed face.
“Fuck the shuttle. Nobody wants to hear about shuttles anymore, only when they blow up. The big news is right here.” Weiss pounded the dashboard to signify the surface of Planet Earth.
Nodding, Tucker released the clutch and the Rover churned through the loose sand. Weiss leaned over the windshield and shaded his eyes against the sun. As the Rover crested the ridge, he saw them. They were about half a mile to the north, several huge gray slabs lying in pools left by the outgoing tide.