A Buddhist Vision of 'To Protect and to Serve'

It was mid-August, 1965 and bullets were ricocheting beneath billowing plumes of smoke that hung over a seething 46-square mile urban war zone in South Central Los Angeles. Watts was burning and minds were churning as police officers hurriedly reloaded firearms behind black and white patrol cars emblazoned with their city crest and a pithy new slogan. Just two years earlier the LAPD had adopted "To Protect and to Serve" as their departmental motto and tooled this missive across the door panels of each cruiser which now shielded the "Thin Blue Line" from civilian fury. Sparked by allegations of police abuse in the arrest of 21-year-old Marquette Fry, who had failed a field sobriety test, the predominantly black community's overwhelming response stemmed from decades of suffering at the hands institutionalized racism and segregation epitomized by the recent 1964 repeal of the California Fair Housing act -- a move latter deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.