Operation Hammer

The film OJ: Made in America is a film that digs deep into the man himself, OJ's life and everything that led up to the day in history, the day he became a criminal. The film also covers many key events in the history of Los Angeles, where the crime had occurred. The Simpson verdict was, in a way, a culmination of years of police mistreatment in the black community and was seen as a balancing of the scales. The documentary jumps back and forth from Simpson's golden days as a student athlete at USC, to being a player on the Buffalo Bills NFL team, and history of police misconduct in Los Angeles. The tenure of LAPD was particularly highlighted, Chief Daryl Gates hoped to militarize the department through concepts like the Swat team and initiatives with names like Operation Hammer that sought to deal with gang violence and drug dealing through extreme shows of force. Gates was the chief during the incident of Rodney King, and was criticized for his very delayed response to the riots that came out of it. LA was made the perfect breeding ground for the Simpson spectacle after the occurrence of everything else that had happened during Gates time in position of Chief, but also illustrated the never-ending cycle of racial antipathy to exist in American Culture. Levels of discontent were extremely high between the Los Angeles police department and parts of the black community in South Central and East LA in the 1980s. Influential moments in the fracturing of that relationship included Operation Hammer, a crackdown on gang violence which resulted in arrests of thousands of people. These moments in LA history helped fuel the riots that followed the verdict in the Rodney King case and the explosive public reaction to the Simpson trial.