Justice: A Question of Race

This is an important book about a police beating case in Los Angeles that happened in 1979. The difference here is that Roberto Garcia was a UCLA-educated journalist, writer and photographer without a single incident of prior contact with the criminal justice system. Many victims of police brutality are never able to prove it, simply because they aren't viewed as credible witnesses to the events. It's far more difficult to dismiss the claims of someone like Garcia, and he writes about this in the book. As a twenty-four-year-old magazine writer, he had important family, social and work contacts that ensured his case would end differently than the 538 others who were arrested with him on that same night in a brutal and bloody round-up of spectators, innocent citizens and others from a single neighborhood in East Los Angeles. As reading, some of the text is repetitive - the first half of the book is actually taken from two earlier books that Garcia wrote about his case, and the last half of the book is an updated and complete summary, written years after the incidents. However, I think the information as it is presented is valuable in documenting Garcia's story. Future generations of researchers may not have access to the first two books, which are both out of print. I would consider this book important as a historical document. It should be purchased by academic and university libraries, with an extra copy bought for permanent collections and non-circulating archives.