Las Vegas Police officer Lew Roberts remembers chaos of riot night

Much of that night is a blur to Lew Roberts, who at the time was part of the Metropolitan Police Department's gang unit.

The long-ago scene was chaotic and surreal, he said.

"I was shocked it happened here," the now-retired homicide lieutenant, 47, said. "It's the only time I've ever seen anything like it."

Roberts was dispatched with other officers to Bonanza Road near D Street, where a crowd of people were marching toward downtown.

"The next thing you know there's gun shots," Roberts said.

People began screaming and running away, and officers took cover behind their vehicles.

"I thought, 'Wow, it's going to be a long night,' " he said. "And things just got progressively worse hour by hour. Everything just turned sour."

Officers moved quickly to cordon off the area.

As Roberts and other officers later patrolled the neighborhood, they saw "guys throwing Molotov cocktails on top of buildings, people trying to tear stuff up. People were just angry and destroying property."

The police were outnumbered, and there wasn't much they could safely do, he said.

"There's fires all around and people would take off running. If you follow, maybe they get hurt and you get killed."

Roberts acknowledged that police weren't equipped to handle the rioters.

"I don't think we were prepared at all for anything of that magnitude," he said.

He remembered one particularly harrowing incident, when he and other officers in five vehicles formed a caravan to rescue a family trapped inside a home near Lake Mead and Martin Luther King boulevards.

According to the police report, a family was "under attack" and in fear for their lives. The home's windows were shattered and people were trying to come through them.

As the police caravan neared, gang members from a public housing complex opened fire, striking some of the vehicles, the report said. Two officers returned fire. Police were able to eventually rescue the five family members.

"It was hard to tell what was going on because there were so many people and a lot of muzzle flashes," Roberts said. "You couldn't tell if they were shooting at you or each other. You have to remember that the gang problem was pretty large back then. The (housing) projects were flash points. It was a powder keg."

Many of those projects have since been torn down.

"The gangs are still there, but it's not like you can go to one neighborhood and see 50 guys hanging out," he said.

Roberts understood why people would be angry about the Rodney King acquittals. As a police officer, he was embarrassed by what he saw in the videotaped beating.

But, "I looked at it from two perspectives," he said. "Regular people were pissed off about police brutality, and criminals were using it as an excuse to destroy property and maim people."

Contact reporter Lynnette Curtis at lcurtis@reviewjournal.com.