Thirty years after the Washington Heights riots, photojournalist Ricky Flores still has the images he captured.

People took to the streets for at least three days, many of them Dominican immigrants, after 23-year-old Jose “Kiko” Garcia was shot and killed by an NYPD officer.

What You Need To Know

  • Dozens of residents and police were injured during the riots

  • People in the Dominican community complained of aggressive policing as cops battled drug crisis

  • Dominican leadership rose out of the riots

 “It was the first time that we had seen people from the Dominican community come out and hit the streets and come out in such vast numbers,” said Flores.

“An immigrant community, many of them are undocumented, to come out in such great numbers to protest what was happening was just astounding to me.”

At the time, Officer Michael O’Keefe said he shot Garcia in self-defense. That was on July 3, 1992.

Police said Garcia pulled a gun on cops inside a building on West 162nd Street. But, Garcia’s family said he wasn’t armed.

“This was also in the midst of the height of tensions between the New York City Police Department and the city in general because of their broken window policies, their street crime units and how aggressive they were back then,” said Flores. “This seemed to be a breaking point for them and they responded.”

There were violent clashes with police, fires set to buildings and cars. Flores remembers the chaos stretching for 30 to 40 blocks at times.

“They were trying to get into Harlem and it was clear to the police that if they made it into Harlem and the Dominican community hooked up with the African American community, they really felt that stuff was just going to escalate and just blow up,” Flores said. “So they made a hard line at that point to stop protests from going down in that direction.”

Then-Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau investigated and a grand jury declined to indict the officer.

But, through protesting, rioting and negotiations the Dominican community made its presence known.

“It was clear that they were a voice to be heard, they were a community to be reckoned with and they needed to have some response from city government to the issues that they were raising,” said Flores.

For the photojournalist, he’s proud of the work he has done over the years, including photographing the Washington Heights riots.

“We recognize our importance in documenting what’s taking place in our cities, in our communities and on our neighborhoods.”   

Flores said it’s important to have knowledge of past police community relations when looking at what’s going on nowadays with the same issues.