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Police denied that there was any brutality. But as word of the arrest spread, the crowd quickly grew, and became steadily angrier, egged on by Negro hoodlums. Soon it numbered some 1,500, and Negro youths started throwing rocks at stores and passing cars in an eight-square-block area. Motorists were bombarded with empty bottles, slabs of concrete, rocks, bricks, nuts, bolts, boards and chunks of asphalt torn from the pavement. More than 100 helmeted police poured into the area; under orders not to use tear gas on the rioters, they chased them with billy clubs. The police, nearly all white, only infuriated the mob. Said one Negro girl: "There was one Negro officer there. He was trying to talk to us. He got us calmed down. Then all these white cops came. They pulled out their shotguns and clubs and the whole thing started again." Some Negroes charged that the police seemed eager to stir resentment. Said Bobby Daniels, 23, who was returning from a fishing trip: "We got out of the car and these 15 officers ran up to us. They jabbed us in the back with clubs and told us to get off the street. They pushed us down and jumped on us, laughing about it." In retaliation, gangs of Negroes overturned, burned or damaged 50 vehicles, including two fire trucks. Not until dawn did the crowd disperse. The first night's toll: 19 policemen and 16 civilians injured, 34 persons arrested. THURSDAY Most undamaged stores opened for business as usual. Throughout the day, knots of young Negroes clustered on street corners discussing the previous night's excitement, speculating about the night to come. Boasted one teen-age boy: "Anyone with any sense will stay out of here tonight. We're really going to show those cops." They did just that. By midnight, some 7,000 rioters were swarming through the streets, smashing anything they could find in an area that had spread to 20 square blocks of Watts and environs. By now, 900 city policemen, deputy sheriffs and state highway patrolmen were on duty, but again they were overrun; though they had been given long-range tear-gas guns, they were told again not to use them until ordered to. Anarchy on Avalon. During the day the rioters had apparently prepared stockpiles of Molotov cocktails, which they hurled on any inviting target. Fires blazed in liquor stores, in a church, in overturned cars, in piles of debris along Avalon Boulevard, a major highway. Fire trucks and ambulances delayed entering the area for fear of flying missiles .—while false alarms from rioters tried to lure more of them in as targets. White drivers were dragged from their cars and beaten. After looting pawnshops, hardware and war surplus stores for weapons, the Negroes brandished thousands of rifles, shotguns, pistols and machetes. When fire trucks came to extinguish three burning cars at Avalon and Imperial Highway, they were driven back by gunfire. Later, when a grocery store at the same intersection was set ablaze, the firemen could not get through until 50 armed policemen cleared a corridor. Robert Richardson, a Negro advertising salesman who spent hours in the riot area that night, marveled that "anyone with a white skin got out of there alive. Every time a car with whites in it entered the area, word spread like lightning down the street: 'Here comes Whitey—get him!' The older people would stand in the background, egging on the