The city of Tampa, Florida, has experienced five instances of rioting.
On June 11, 1967, 19 year old Martin Chambers was suspected of robbing a camera store. Chambers ran from police near Nebraska and Harrison Streets and was shot in the back and died. Several days of riots around Central Avenue followed.
State Attorney Paul Antinori ruled the shooting was justifiable. A 1990 investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement also found the shooting justifiable. The case was re-opened in 2007 under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.
On June 3, 1977 a Led Zeppelin concert at Tampa Stadium was interrupted after 3 songs due to a large thunderstorm. A riot broke out between police & several thousand of the estimated 70,000 fans. There were dozens of injuries & a number of arrests. The make up concert scheduled for the next day was canceled by city officials.
On February 20, 1987, a group of 200 to 400 began rioting after starting a fire in a dumpster at the intersection of 22nd Street and Lake Avenue in the College Hill community in East Tampa.
The incident started the night after the death of mentally-handicapped black man, Melvin Eugene Hair. He died after police used a carotid neck-hold on him. Less than 24 hours later, the attorney's office released a report clearing police of racism in the December 1986 arrest of baseball star Dwight Gooden. The incidents sparked three nights of rioting.
Drug dealer Edgar Allen Price was arrested on February 1, 1989. Price scuffled with police, and later died. Word of his death spread in the College Hill community, leading to several nights of violence including the burning down of a local supermarket. The lack of fire stations in the area helped exacerbate the damage. Black residents believed he was beaten to death by police, but an investigation revealed that he died from asphyxiation after having his hands and legs cuffed and placed face down in the back of a police cruiser, possibly being deliberately asphyxiated by his captors.
Parallel rioting occurred in a variety of cities around the US in conjunction with the LA riots over the Rodney King findings; Tampa had rioting centered around 22nd street between E Lake and E Frierson Avenues, including burning of at least one vehicle and both direct and indirect attacks on passing traffic in this area including news anchor Sheryl Brown.[1] Although there was no local news coverage of the events at the time, the events were covered on various European television news shows.