LAPD: Will Bratton be reappointed?
In the Los Angeles Times, Chief William Bratton who heads the Los Angeles Police Department has been highly critical of the actions taken by some of his Metro Division police officers during a rally held at MacArthur Park on May Day.
Today, he's trying to make amends with those in his department who have bristled at the harsh words he has said about the incident to the media, including those members of it who were hit with batons and shot at with less lethal munitions despite an agreement between the department and the media reached in 2002. In order to stay as chief, Bratton understands that his employees have to have confidence in his abilities to lead. In other words, he knows that the city council is not the only entity which has the power to appoint him or not, to another term.
(excerpt)
Bratton, who has called the actions of officers at the rally an embarrassing mistake, met Monday for an hour with members of the executive board of the police union who had warned over the weekend that comments by city leaders were damaging officers' morale.
"This is not a witch hunt. This is not a feeling of having to hang 'em high," Bratton said, adding that he would wait for the outcome of the investigation.
"Not a single Metro officer at this time has been suspended. There is no rush to judgment by me."
In the article, at least one unnamed city official was concerned by the fact that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa chose to be out of the country on the day of a protest which last year attracted tens of thousands of people. At the time, police officers were charging a permitted rally in the park, Bratton was attending a political fundraiser. Interestingly enough, so was former Chief, Darryl Gates when the verdicts in the Rodney King beating trial were announced almost 15 years ago to this day.
But the Times editorial board cautioned the city from appointing Bratton to his second term as chief just yet, stating that city officials should wait until the outcome of the multiple investigations into the May Day incident before rendering a decision. Those actions should remain accountable to the public as well as transparent.
(excerpt)
The commission, when all is said and done, is still likely to retain the chief for another five years. There is nothing about his conduct in the last week that militates against this. In fact, Bratton's response so far has been a model of police leadership — and a change from LAPD chiefs past — as he repeatedly apologized for the failure in the park even before the investigation began, removed officers from the street, liberally shared information as it became available, acknowledged a breakdown in the very systems he established and vowed to figure out what went wrong. There is nothing apparent in his public actions that should disqualify him from continuing on the same course he set five years ago for building and focusing the LAPD.
But if he is eventually reappointed, as expected, the commission must act with a full understanding of what happened in the park.
Columnist Tim Rutten told the media in an article that they needed to keep a watchful eye on what the LAPD does in its multiple investigations into the May Day incident. And no doubt, many people will both at City Hall and in the city itself. Bratton will be under a microscope as he faces his worst crisis as chief during a particularly difficult time for him.
(excerpt)
Our news media excel at outrage, but they too frequently have the attention span of a fruit fly. The federal consent decree under which the LAPD now operates was imposed because the local news media —and, particularly, the Los Angeles Times — maintained a relentless focus on what the Rampart scandal told us about the police department's conduct, especially its callous victimization of an immigrant community too cowed to protest and deeply skeptical that it would be heard if it did.
Now, the city's English-language news media need to shake off their habitual lethargy and the Spanish-speaking media their too-pervasive frivolity to give the investigations into the MacArthur Park police riot the attention they demand. In the past, LAPD had made a practice of stringing out these inquiries endlessly, of enmeshing them in conveniently overlapping complexities masquerading as due process.
Your average LAPD investigation of one of its own scandals makes Jarndyce versus Jarndyce look like a rush to judgment.
By the time the probe sputters to the usual ambiguous and desultory conclusion, all the wounds have scarred over, all the outrage has burned itself out and the status quo has survived to strangle another opportunity for change in its cradle.
If that happens again, the people of Los Angeles should blame not simply LAPD and their city government, but also their news media.
Not long after officers in Colton sued their former police chief Kenneth Rulon, officers in the police department in San Bernardino have done the same according to this article in the Press Enterprise. A law suit was filed against Chief Mike Billdt in U.S. District Court in Riverside County and other law suits and complaints have been filed at the Department of Fair Employment and Housing alleging unfair treatment against officers by Billdt including retaliation.
(excerpt)
"I think there is a common theme," said Dieter Dammeier, an attorney representing the San Bernardino Police Officers Association.
"It's retaliation against officers who are doing nothing but abiding by the law and sometimes upsetting the chief. The association thought long and hard... and decided they needed to defend everybody's rights."
Up in the Bay Area, former Officer David Lee Miller, Jr. who worked for Sunnyvale Police Department was sentenced after pleading guilty to tipping off brothels that they would be raided by police officers.
Over 22 years after a retired Riverside Police Department officer was shot and killed at a bank, DNA evidence led to an arrest, according to the Press Enterprise. Leslie Gene Parker was arrested for shooting and killing Frederick A. Taylor in 1985.
Letters are being published in the Press Enterprise's Reader's Forum supporting particular candidates in the upcoming city council elections here. For those who are voting through the mail system, you should have received the ballots or should be receiving them within a day or so so fill them out and send them in before June 5.
Also, Dan Bernstein's latest column about the city's decision not to seize the La Sex Shoppe through eminent domain or threat of such as it's done with other small business owners downtown and in the Wood Streets neighborhoods.
(excerpt, Press Enterprise)
Turns out Le Sex Shoppe had not gone through the city's design-review rigors before selecting the purple-and-gray palette. The city expressed displeasure, though not in the sell-or-else manner reserved for mom 'n' pop markets.
So Le Sex Shoppe and the Planning Department came up with a new color scheme. Robert DePiano, a San Diego lawyer who has represented Le Sex Shoppe for 27 years, calls it "the Mission motif." Mission motif? You know. Mission Inn. Sex Shoppe. Earthy tones.
DiPiano: "All I know is we're in some larger Renaissance zone. They've never asked us to go somewhere else. We have a good rapport with the city."
Redevelopment's Belinda Graham says the agency has looked at the building. For now, aside from the paint job, it's evidently Renaissance-proof.
Maybe this business passed the muster of the city because its owners are probably not Asian-American or Latino?
And in other news.
Two police officers
One action.
One consequence.
Two years.
One decision.
Two votes.
What does this all equal? And what does it have to do with what's going on in Sacramento?
Today, he's trying to make amends with those in his department who have bristled at the harsh words he has said about the incident to the media, including those members of it who were hit with batons and shot at with less lethal munitions despite an agreement between the department and the media reached in 2002. In order to stay as chief, Bratton understands that his employees have to have confidence in his abilities to lead. In other words, he knows that the city council is not the only entity which has the power to appoint him or not, to another term.
(excerpt)
Bratton, who has called the actions of officers at the rally an embarrassing mistake, met Monday for an hour with members of the executive board of the police union who had warned over the weekend that comments by city leaders were damaging officers' morale.
"This is not a witch hunt. This is not a feeling of having to hang 'em high," Bratton said, adding that he would wait for the outcome of the investigation.
"Not a single Metro officer at this time has been suspended. There is no rush to judgment by me."
In the article, at least one unnamed city official was concerned by the fact that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa chose to be out of the country on the day of a protest which last year attracted tens of thousands of people. At the time, police officers were charging a permitted rally in the park, Bratton was attending a political fundraiser. Interestingly enough, so was former Chief, Darryl Gates when the verdicts in the Rodney King beating trial were announced almost 15 years ago to this day.
But the Times editorial board cautioned the city from appointing Bratton to his second term as chief just yet, stating that city officials should wait until the outcome of the multiple investigations into the May Day incident before rendering a decision. Those actions should remain accountable to the public as well as transparent.
(excerpt)
The commission, when all is said and done, is still likely to retain the chief for another five years. There is nothing about his conduct in the last week that militates against this. In fact, Bratton's response so far has been a model of police leadership — and a change from LAPD chiefs past — as he repeatedly apologized for the failure in the park even before the investigation began, removed officers from the street, liberally shared information as it became available, acknowledged a breakdown in the very systems he established and vowed to figure out what went wrong. There is nothing apparent in his public actions that should disqualify him from continuing on the same course he set five years ago for building and focusing the LAPD.
But if he is eventually reappointed, as expected, the commission must act with a full understanding of what happened in the park.
Columnist Tim Rutten told the media in an article that they needed to keep a watchful eye on what the LAPD does in its multiple investigations into the May Day incident. And no doubt, many people will both at City Hall and in the city itself. Bratton will be under a microscope as he faces his worst crisis as chief during a particularly difficult time for him.
(excerpt)
Our news media excel at outrage, but they too frequently have the attention span of a fruit fly. The federal consent decree under which the LAPD now operates was imposed because the local news media —and, particularly, the Los Angeles Times — maintained a relentless focus on what the Rampart scandal told us about the police department's conduct, especially its callous victimization of an immigrant community too cowed to protest and deeply skeptical that it would be heard if it did.
Now, the city's English-language news media need to shake off their habitual lethargy and the Spanish-speaking media their too-pervasive frivolity to give the investigations into the MacArthur Park police riot the attention they demand. In the past, LAPD had made a practice of stringing out these inquiries endlessly, of enmeshing them in conveniently overlapping complexities masquerading as due process.
Your average LAPD investigation of one of its own scandals makes Jarndyce versus Jarndyce look like a rush to judgment.
By the time the probe sputters to the usual ambiguous and desultory conclusion, all the wounds have scarred over, all the outrage has burned itself out and the status quo has survived to strangle another opportunity for change in its cradle.
If that happens again, the people of Los Angeles should blame not simply LAPD and their city government, but also their news media.
Not long after officers in Colton sued their former police chief Kenneth Rulon, officers in the police department in San Bernardino have done the same according to this article in the Press Enterprise. A law suit was filed against Chief Mike Billdt in U.S. District Court in Riverside County and other law suits and complaints have been filed at the Department of Fair Employment and Housing alleging unfair treatment against officers by Billdt including retaliation.
(excerpt)
"I think there is a common theme," said Dieter Dammeier, an attorney representing the San Bernardino Police Officers Association.
"It's retaliation against officers who are doing nothing but abiding by the law and sometimes upsetting the chief. The association thought long and hard... and decided they needed to defend everybody's rights."
Up in the Bay Area, former Officer David Lee Miller, Jr. who worked for Sunnyvale Police Department was sentenced after pleading guilty to tipping off brothels that they would be raided by police officers.
Over 22 years after a retired Riverside Police Department officer was shot and killed at a bank, DNA evidence led to an arrest, according to the Press Enterprise. Leslie Gene Parker was arrested for shooting and killing Frederick A. Taylor in 1985.
Letters are being published in the Press Enterprise's Reader's Forum supporting particular candidates in the upcoming city council elections here. For those who are voting through the mail system, you should have received the ballots or should be receiving them within a day or so so fill them out and send them in before June 5.
Also, Dan Bernstein's latest column about the city's decision not to seize the La Sex Shoppe through eminent domain or threat of such as it's done with other small business owners downtown and in the Wood Streets neighborhoods.
(excerpt, Press Enterprise)
Turns out Le Sex Shoppe had not gone through the city's design-review rigors before selecting the purple-and-gray palette. The city expressed displeasure, though not in the sell-or-else manner reserved for mom 'n' pop markets.
So Le Sex Shoppe and the Planning Department came up with a new color scheme. Robert DePiano, a San Diego lawyer who has represented Le Sex Shoppe for 27 years, calls it "the Mission motif." Mission motif? You know. Mission Inn. Sex Shoppe. Earthy tones.
DiPiano: "All I know is we're in some larger Renaissance zone. They've never asked us to go somewhere else. We have a good rapport with the city."
Redevelopment's Belinda Graham says the agency has looked at the building. For now, aside from the paint job, it's evidently Renaissance-proof.
Maybe this business passed the muster of the city because its owners are probably not Asian-American or Latino?
And in other news.
Two police officers
One action.
One consequence.
Two years.
One decision.
Two votes.
What does this all equal? And what does it have to do with what's going on in Sacramento?
Labels: business as usual, City elections
posted by Five Before Midnight | 10:44 PM
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