Everyone with any sense who has made a study of successful law enforcement agrees with the virtues of community policing. If a community knows its police officers as people, and vice versa, both groups benefit—as does public safety.

Yet for decades there have been only brief, token gestures in the direction of the strategy in Los Angeles, in part because the city is so physically vast, with an officer-to resident ratio lower than ideal, thus police were pretty much confined to patrol cars, and the infamous Command and Control model held sway.

There have been concerted efforts to move away from that model under Bill Bratton, and now even more under Chief Charlie Beck. A case in point is illustrated in a story by the LA Times’ Joel Rubin who writes about a new kind of community outreach from cops to kids in the Southeast division that is definitely something to cheer about.

Here’s a clip:

As morning broke over the city Monday, cops assigned to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southeast Division went about their normal routine, patrolling the streets. There was, as always, plenty to do. The division’s 10-square-mile area has some of the highest crime and poverty rates in the city and is home to 120 documented gangs and three of the city’s roughest housing projects.

But 18 miles and a world away, Officer Scott Burkett was working a very different beat. Having traded his uniform for a wetsuit, the 15-year LAPD veteran was in the water at Torrance Beach with about two dozen kids from the Watts-area neighborhood that Southeast patrols, teaching them to surf.

Surfing as crime-fighting strategy?

“It’s about changing the relationship between the Watts community and the LAPD,” said Southeast Capt. Phil Tingirides, a first-time surfer who got in the water Monday as well. “To do that, we’ve got to get the kids, and we’ve got to get them early.”

In recent years, the violent crime rates in Southeast were too high to allow officers to work on anything but patrol, gang units and other traditional assignments, Tingirides said. But in 2009, after a few years of declines in crime, he asked Burkett to start a youth activities program.

“We got to the point where we felt we could move away from just violent crime suppression and make a move toward this sort of thing, which is about trying to impact the future instead of just throwing cops up against every crime that occurs.”

It’s not exactly revolutionary thinking: For years, police departments have been trying with varying success to implement so-called community-based policing strategies. But to try it in a place like Southeast, where distrust toward the police historically runs deep, and to commit to it so heavily — Tingirides said he has 13 officers working full time on several community-relations programs — speaks volumes.

Read the rest. It’ll cheer your day.

CORY MAYE’S HOMECOMING FROM DEATH ROW

At 9 p.m. on the day after Christmas, 2001, Cory Maye, a 21-year-old father had just put his 18-month-old daughter to bed when a group of armed men broke down his door. Assuming he and his daughter were about to be killed, the father shot at the men in the dark. One of the bullets found its target with fatal consequences.

What Maye did not know is that the intruders were police serving a search warrant. However, they had the wrong house. They were looking for a drug dealer who lived next door.

When he heard the cops shout “Police,” Maye dropped the gun and surrendered immediately.

While Maye had no criminal record he had killed a police officer. He was convicted of murder and was sentenced to death.

One of my new favorite criminal justice writers, Radley Balko, covered the case in 2006 for Reason Magazine.

Now Balco is writing for the Huffington Post and in this story he covers Maye’s release and homecoming after a decade in prison. And in this story Balco explains what came in between.

Photo by Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times

COULD THE COPS HAVE STOPPED FLOR MEDRANO’S KILLER?

In mid-November of 2009, Flor Medrano, a 30-year-old housekeeper and mother of a 3-year-old, sought protection from her murderous stalker boyfriend at the Wilshire Division of the LAPD. Two officers went home with her and watched her front door from an unmarked police car. But the killer was already inside Medrano’s apartment. He stabbed her repeatedly and fatally before the cops could reach her. [Go here for back story.]

The LA Times Joel Rubin has taken another look at the case, using police reports, DA’s office records, and police commission reports, official review findings and more

The result is a story that is both tragic and clarifying.

Rubin writes:

There seems to be no doubt that the officers tried to do right by a woman who had come to them for help. But a routine internal investigation led LAPD officials to soon question the decisions made that night. As the inquiry progressed, the early praise increasingly seemed misplaced.

Read the rest.

THE SUPREMES DECIDED MONDAY’S CASES WHILE PRACTICING THEIR STAND UP ACTS?

The Supreme Court decided a bunch of things on Monday. For instance, they ruled that, the Citizens United case notwithstanding, corporations are not people too, at least when it comes to personal privacy rights.

They kinda backed away from ruling on the kids-and-the-fourth-amendment issue that I posted about yesterday. They ruled—mostly that they weren’t going to rule, that there was no necessity to do so. (Youth Today has perhaps the best rundown on that case.)

However, Slate’s refreshingly smart Dahlia Lithwick analyzes the day in terms of the mood among the justices—and the quality of Justice Roberts’ one liners.

When Loki, the god of constitutional mischief, is in the right frame of mind, the Supreme Court can be a fantastically fun place to be. With all the talk of judicial bitterness, anger, and recriminations, it’s easy to forget how much fun life tenure can be. Today is just one of those days.

Things get off to a warm and fuzzy start as the justices hand down three unanimous opinions. Unanimous! One is a ruling in favor of an Army reservist in his employment discrimination claim. The second hands a big win to a veteran who filed his benefits claim late. And the third involves AT&T’s claim that, for purposes of the Freedom of Information Act, it should be entitled to withhold information that might violate the company’s “personal privacy.”

Now, as you may recall, oral argument did not go all that well for the company that only really wanted to be treated like a real, live boy. And so it was, perhaps, no surprise that the Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that corporations do not have such a thing as “personal privacy” for the purposes of FOIA. What was surprising was Chief Justice John Roberts’ unanimous opinion for the court, which contains more laugh lines than Two and a Half Men—and half the coke.

CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS MOVES MANY MILLIONS OUT OF PRISON REHAB PROGRAMS—BUT DOES SO, VERY, VERY QUIETLY

Michael Montgomery filed this report for California Watch over a month ago, but it largely flew under the radar. However, it deserves attention.

Here’s how it opens:

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation quietly transferred millions of dollars out of beleaguered rehabilitation programs last year to cover shortfalls in other areas like prison security.

In all, the department moved around $70 million from the adult programming budget, in addition to $250 million that was previously cut from education, drug rehabilitation and other programs, according to a report released by the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

“The department frequently and purposely reduces program services — such as offender rehabilitation programs and prison maintenance — to ‘free up’ funding to support increased prison security costs,” the report states. “This means that CDCR is not performing critical functions for which funding was specifically provided in the budget.”

Yeah, that’s smart. Cut the programs that will help keep people OUT of prison, thus lower our prison costs at the root.

Meanwhile, as the LA Times reported Wednesday, we’re housing a pile of expensively sick and incapacitated inmates. Certainly wouldn’t want the legislature to straighten its spine and vote to save money by releasing them. (Why be logical.)

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE TOPIC OF STUCK-ON-STUPID BUDGETING…..HOUSE REPUBS CUT FUNDS FOR THE NATION’S MOST SUCCESSFUL VOLUNTEER PROGRAMS

This clip from Monday’s NY Times editorial speaks for itself:

House Republicans voted to eliminate the Corporation for National and Community Service and the $1.4 billion in federal funds it would provide to programs that encourage Americans to serve in their communities and around the nation, including AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Teach for America, City Year, Foster Grandparents and others.

If the federal funds are snatched away, some of these programs will lose matching private contributions from individuals, foundations and corporations, as well as money from localities. Some may have to close down.

Now there’s a great way to balance the budget: cut the small ticket item that actually lets us stretch our dollars. Brilliant.

HOW DO WE KEEP LAWBREAKING KIDS FROM RETURNING TO LOCK-UP? LA COUNTY SUP MARK RIDLEY-THOMAS AND CHILDREN’S DEFENSE FUND HEAD MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN…HAVE A 10-PT PLAN

The 10-step plan is part of a 65-page report on juvenile reentry commissioned by Ridley-Thomas and prepared by Children Defense Fund staffers, Michelle Newell and Angelica Salazar, who did much of their research when they were at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

While the report is not definitive, it’s smarter than the County’s purported professionals were able to turn out earlier this year, and features many good moments of analysis plus that list of sensible suggestions.

It is also an excellent place to start a conversation.

Here’s a snippet from its executive summary:

With the largest juvenile justice system in the country, LA County has high rates of youth incarceration. For most juvenile offenders, this incarceration will take place in one of the 19 County probation camps, or residential facilities, and these youth will be released after less than a year and face the challenge of reentering their communities.

Reentry is challenging regardless of the population, but for juvenile offenders it is particularly complicated given the range of developmental changes these youth are experiencing. In Los Angeles, these youth are burdened by high rates of mental illness and substance abuse, low rates of educational attainment and alarmingly high levels of gang involvement. Given these barriers, it is perhaps not surprising that juveniles are currently not successful in reentering their communities. Re-offending rates are high, and while the County Probation Department does not collect much outcome data, available evidence indicates youth outcomes are grim…

Ridley-Thomas and Edelman will be holding a press conference at 1:30 pm Thursday to introduce the report and the 10-step plan. The presser will be held in Ridley-Thomas’s office, in the Hall of Administration, 500 W. Temple Street, LA.

A NEW VOLLEY IN THE BATTLE OVER HIRING MORE LAPD OFFICERS

LA Police Protective League president, Paul Weber, has an op ed in Thursday’s LA Times that explains a bit more about why the union is fighting the mayor’s and Chief Charlie Beck’s collective promise to hire more police officers.

Weber says the department should first use its existing officers more wisely. Here’s a clip.

When the City Council voted to raise trash fees in 2006, the action came with a promise to Angelenos that the money would be put toward expanding the Los Angeles police force to more than 10,000 officers. But even as we’ve moved closer to meeting that goal on paper, the number of officers on the street is being eroded.

Because of attrition, early retirement incentives and mandatory furloughs, the number of police officers doing actual police work is gradually declining, and the problem is becoming more acute.

One huge reason is that the city is no longer paying officers for overtime. There is no way to avoid overtime in police work: An officer making an arrest, say, can’t simply let a suspect go because a work shift has ended….

PS: For the record, I think the department should keep hiring, but let’s not use cops for jobs that non-sworn folks could do cheaper (and just as well).

WWBD? WHAT WOULD BILL DO?

By sheer coincidence, former LAPD chief Bill Bratton indirectly addressed the issue when he was in London consulting with the Brits on policing and gave an interview to some local press:

“In terms of creating safer communities, cops count and policing does matter. But successful policing is not only about making the right investments in law enforcement. You cannot spend your way to a safer community and it isn’t about how much money you spend, or how many staff you have on the payroll.

“It’s about what you do with your most valuable asset - the sworn officer….

(My ital.)

LA’S LIGHT RAIL FIASCO

The LA Weekly’s Gene Maddaus has written a terrific article in Thursday’s edition of the paper that shows LA’s light rail project to be both horribly over budget and a projected 2 years over its deadline for completion.

Oh, yeah, the project’s CEO, Rick Thorpe, lives in Utah, not LA, and is collecting a salary of $334,000. As Maddaus points out, Thorpe, who oversees a staff of 16, makes more than the CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, who is responsible for 8,000 employees (!!!)

A PORTRAIT OF A TWICE ARRESTED STUDENT PROTESTER

Neon Tommy’s Callie Schweitzer writes about 21-year-old University of California, Berkeley senior Ricardo Gomez, who has been arrested twice for protesting in what is “part of a growing student movement fighting tuition increases in the 10-campus system.”

Read the rest here.

9TH CIRCUIT JUDGE THINKS CALIFORNIA MAY BE
ABOUT TO EXECUTE AN INNOCENT MAN

The details are in an unsettling LA Times Op Ed by Alan Dershowitz and David Rivkin Jr.

COLUMNIST/WRITER/MOM MEGHAN DAUM COMES BACK FROM THE BRINK AND TELLS US ABOUT THE VIEW

The LA Times’ lovely, smart, talented, soulful columnist, Meghan Daum, was scarily sick last month and writes about it well in two parts – here and here.

(A lot of us are just very glad she’s okay. We didn’t like that tubed up and skating-the-edge thingy one bit.)

Photo by TIMOTHY NORRIS

I’ll be discussing the LAPD’s handling of the aftermath of the fatal shooting by an LAPD officer of Manual Jamines on Thursday night’s Which Way LA? with Warren Olney. The show begins airing at 7 p.m. and is on KCRW 89.9 FM.

FYI: I was on the 10 minute segment called Reporter’s Notebook, which should be on the air….hmmm…likely around 7:30….or at 7:50. I’m not entirely sure. (Which Way LA? is always taped earlier in the day.)

Whether or not I added substantially to the public dialogue on the matter is for y’all to determine. But have a listen, and let me know what you think.

PS: One thing I didn’t get to say in the segment is that, on Wednesday, in a bit of news unrelated to the Westlake shooting and demonstrations, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department gave out three medals of valor. One of those medals was presented to Deputy Clay Grant Jr. who, as the LA Times reported it, managed to talk down a knife-wielding woman at Target, earlier this year, without having to fire his service weapon.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca awarded his department’s highest honor Wednesday to the deputy who stopped a knife-wielding woman in a slashing rampage at a West Hollywood Target store earlier this year.

Deputy Clay Grant Jr. was shopping for paper towels on his day off in May when he came upon the bloody scene. The woman ignored his initial demands to drop her two knives — dashing across the store’s aisles. Grant was praised for not firing his Beretta service weapon, eventually convincing the mentally ill woman to disarm with his words.

Mr. Jamines presumably did have a knife. (Yes, the new witness who says he didn’t is a bit troubling, but let’s assume for purposes of discussion that he had that knife with a 3-inch blade). But he was drunk and staggering, by most accounts. So why didn’t the officer fire a non-killing shot?

Look: I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to be a police officer who, in the course of work, frequently confronts violent people in the street. But, I do wonder why the officers in this instance, couldn’t have chosen a course more like that taken by Deputy Grant.

I’m just asking.

PPS: You can listen live to KCRW here. The podcast of the show may be found right here.

(PHOTO NOTE: A bunch of people posted rainbow-over-Los Angeles photos Monday on Facebook. This one is by my friend, photographer Anne Fishbein. She ran out and snapped it while she had turkey soup cooking in the kitchen.)

Monday night, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck sat down at the LA Times for a Q & A session. Video of the event will be available shortly, but until then, by far the most entertaining account of the event is from LA Times crime reporter Richard Winton’s Twitter updates.

(UPDATE: The video was promised. But it still ain’t there. Keep you eye on this spot. If I see it, I’ll post it.)

(Winton, who goes by the handle, LACrimes, is a champion Twitterer.)

The Tweets are as follows:

1. Lapd chief Beck says there is projected to be about 300 homicides this year-still too many-but 19% than 2008

2. New lapd chief charlie beck more willing to say other influences on crime than predecessor Bill Bratton.

3. Stations aren’t unstaffed but they are staffed at the danger level, lapd chief charlie beck. He plans to put more resources to line offcers

4. Chief Charlie Beck says the use of force was clearly out of policy in rodney king beating. Charges yes. .Prison time “not sure abt that.

5. Chief Charlie Beck says he is a product of the lapd change. The dept use to police over the city than w the city.

6. New LAPD is about policing with people than over people, says LAPD Chief Charlie Beck at LA Times forum

7.Policing is about the entire community policing itself, says new LAPD Chief Charlie Beck at LAT chief forum at latimes.com

8. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck at LA Times forum says he guesses 13 to 17% of crime related to illegal immigrants. He supports special order 40.

9. Lapd Chief Charlie Beck says to do the policing he would like to do 12000 officers would be ideal. But he knows he isn’t abt to get that

10. New lapd Chief Charlie Beck says he won’t endorse candidates. Bill Bratton endorsed candidates and angered some.

11. Chief Charlie Beck tells LA Times forum his goal is to create an organization who success is not dependent on the leader.

12. Lapd chief charlie beck says of new lapd hq art “just glad it is on the times side of the building” the the art was dubbed cow splats

.

And the logical last and pièce de résistance Tweet:

13. When Edtr Jim Newton joked with Chief Charlie Beck that there are journalists sme lke to see in prison, Beck replied “where is Winton.”

So there you have it: Chief Charlie Beck in a lucky 13 Tweets—1820 characters or under.

And while we’re on the subject, here is that must-have book for your Christmas stocking. It is called, in all seriousness, Twitterature: The World’s Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less, by LA writer David Rensin’s son Emmitt Rensin. David has just Tweeted that you should buy this book, 1. because it’s funny, and 2. because it’ll help pay for his son’s college education.

Below you’ll find the release that announces the latest round of musical chairs going on at the LAPD, as Chief Charlie Beck continues with his reorganization.

Other than the very depressing site of seeing Sharon Papa’s name being snatched away from the role of Assistant Chief to the position of Assistant Commander in the Valley Bureau (likely meaning around a $60 K pay cut), there are no monster surprises.

Since this is all being closely watched, (by those of us who watch such things, anyway) certainly as time goes along there will be more opinions surfacing—both praise and otherwise.

Right now, however, most on the list are getting good reviews.

Here’s the official statement:

Chief Beck Names Three New Commanders and Continues Reorganization

Los Angeles: Today, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck announced that Captains Blake Chow, Bob Green and Mike Moriarty will each be promoted to the rank of Commander.

In addition to the new members of his leadership team, Chief Beck revealed the next phase in his effort to reorganize the Police Department for efficiency and effectiveness. The following changes, subject to budgetary review and approval, will be effective January 3, 2010.

Office of Operations

• Commander Dave Doan will become the Assistant to the Director, Office of Operations.

• Captain Blake Chow will be promoted to the rank of Commander and will become the Assistant Commanding Officer, Operations- Central Bureau.

• Captain Bob Green will be promoted to the rank of Commander and will become the Assistant Commanding Officer, Operations- South Bureau.

• Commander Andrew Smith will become the Assistant Commanding Officer, Operations- West Bureau.

• Commander Sharon Papa will become an Assistant Commanding Officer, Operations- Valley Bureau.

• Commander Jorge Villegas will remain an Assistant Commanding Officer, Operations- Valley Bureau.

More after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been madly editing and grading around a zillion pages of student papers (and will be doing so through next Friday), thus I’m a bit slow in posting the list of command staff that new Chief of Police Charlie Beck announced yesterday after noon.

The complete text of Beck’s announcement is at the end of the post. But Joel Rubin’s article in Tuesday’s LA Times gets to a lot of the issues that have the city’s police watchers talking.

Here are some clips [Bracketed italics are mine]:

Less than a week after taking over the Los Angeles Police Department, Chief Charlie Beck announced a shake-up in the department’s command staff, including the demotion of two of the LAPD’s highest-ranking officials and promotion of several others.

Beck, who was confirmed as chief by the City Council last Tuesday, promoted Deputy Chief Michel Moore to become one of the LAPD’s three assistant chiefs and assigned him to a newly created post in charge of Special Services…. [NOTE: THERE USED TO BE TWO Assistant Chiefs under Bratton.]

In his new post, Moore will oversee an array of specialized operations that, until now, have been run separately, including the agency’s Counter-Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau, the elite Metropolitan Division and the Detective Bureau.

To make room for Moore, Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell, who for several years has been the second-highest-ranking person in the department, dropped one rank to deputy chief and will take on a new position as chief of detectives.

[This is a significant series of moves. For example, the new arrangement makes Moore the boss of McDonnell, among other people, which is a little weird. McDonnell has been a very highly regarded Assistant Chief of some sort or another for seven years. Now he goes a rung down to become a Deputy Chief of Detectives. But instead of reporting directly to the Chief of Police as Beck did when Bratton put him in the same position, he reports to Mike Moore, the guy who's been Deputy Chief in the Valley, and the other member of the threesome who were all vying for the department's top job. it's fine, I guess, but weird.

On the other hand, although I've not confirmed this with McDonnell, I've heard that he wanted a position in which he was commanding troops, in other words, something more on-the-ground rather than simply managerial, as that kind of post was the element that his already full CV has somewhat lacked. There are only a few possible jobs that would have allowed him this kind of troop command---one of them the Chief oF Detectives position. But nearly all those jobs required a drop down a rank to Deputy Chief.

Yes, I know this sounds like angels....pins...dancing. Or an irritatingly insider drama with more characters than a Russian novel. But, as with the formation of a presidential cabinet---albeit on a far smaller scale---in forming the LAPD command staff, it is exactly this kind of minutiae that could eventually matter.

In any case, out of Bratton's original 10th floor configuration, Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger is about the only one left in place, as well he should have been. But the new arrangement significantly carves away at his power, which is likely not accidental. ]

In the most dramatic move, Beck demoted Assistant Chief Sharon Papa, who has run the Support Services Bureau, down two levels to the rank of commander….

Papa was replaced with Deputy Chief Sandy Jo MacArthur, who is well-liked, was a Bratton favorite, and one of the people whom, all those betting on Beck’s inner circle command staff, had listed as a sure thing.

But Papa was very, very well-liked too, so….

Anyway, there’s more here.

And there will be more still to come.

ONE MORE NOTE: With rare exceptions, Bill Bratton surrounded himself with the strongest people available, not necessarily the ones who were his closest friends.

But of course Bratton was an outsider, thus he did not come to the department with close friendships.

In constrast, Charlie Beck has spent a lifetime at the LAPD and has, naturally, forged strong personal ties.

How those personal ties affect his ongoing and crucial shaping of the department’s command staff is something that many in the city are watching, and will continue to watch, with a great deal of interest.

Okay, here’s the actual Beck memo:

Read the rest of this entry »

So ….when you are a brand new chief of police how do you gain the respect and professional devotion of your newly acquired troops?

What unmistakable signal can you give that will communicate to your officers that you have their best interests in mind?

One method is to give all the cops a gift-–something they really, really want.

Newly-sworn Chief of Police Charlie Beck had his first official staff meeting at the LAPD’s recently completed headquarters on Wednesday. Everyone from captain’s rank and above was asked to attend.

Most of the meeting reportedly fell into the realm of what was expected. Beck talked about how he respected all the other contenders for chief, how crime and community patrol are his priorities and how he is going to push resources away from centralization and out to the divisions. His vision is to “make what Bratton started our destiny.” In other words, he will keep crime down, keep the counter terrorism bureau healthy, and will further transform the LAPD culture from the roots up while honoring what was started with the federal consent decree.

He will also be doing some reorganization in January, he said, and asked for input from those in the room.

And then he gave everyone a gift.

He told the officers that, when in uniform, cops would no longer have to wear ties with their long-sleeved dress shirts.

Everyone was thrilled.

“The big news for the rank and file,” one insider told me in an email. “New rule -long sleeve shirts with no ties ………hooray!”

One of the first chiefs to recognize the importance of giving department members this sort of psychological cadeau was Daryl Gates who told his troops that, except on formal occasions, officers no longer had to wear the traditional LAPD billed hat when on the job.

Gates told Patt Morrison that the hat business (and the fact that he made it the fashion for LAPD brass to wear plain blue uniforms, even for dress, instead of the gold braid covered parade get-ups that had previously been required) was something he was ” really proud of…”

When I was assistant chief in operations,” he said,” I’d roll up on a call and I’d see these officers run back to the car and put their hats on: Hats are part of the uniform. These poor officers were diverting their attention from the incident because they’re concerned about not wearing their hats. So when I became chief, I said the hats go.”

Willie Williams, who was quite unpopular with the rank and file, cemented the cops’ antipathy for him with what one might call an anti gift. I’ve had any number of officers tell me about their irritation regarding Williams’ insistence that they make a large, very un-So-Cal, and rather expensive jacket, a required part of their sartorial accouterments. (Cops groused to me privately that they were convinced Williams only chose the coat because it better covered his formidable girth.)

“What Gates and now Beck did may sound small,” said one of my department sources, “but it’s actually a big deal, because it says to the officers, ‘I get it. I get what you deal with, day to day. I get what’s important to you.’” All of which goes a long way in winning loyalty.

Good move, Chief Beck. Sometimes it really is all about the accessories (metaphorically speaking).

Yesterday I linked to Kevin Grant’s Neon Tommy story about new LA Weekly editor-in-chief, Drex Heikes and his plans to bring the paper back to strength and relevance.

Last night, as I reread Kevin’s piece I got to thinking about what has become so bothersome about the existing LA Weekly in the last few years.

Certainly, it still has Jonathan Gold’s wonderful reviews, and Christine Pelisek is still doing truly fine crime reporting. (Although, Christine, is it really necessary to refer to some of LA’s less affluent neighborhoods as the city’s “badlands?” A small point, admittedly, but that and the use of diseases to describe certain elements in LA’s population could go, trust me.)

And the new guy, Dennis Romero, seem to be doing a lively job his daily news blogging. I miss Steve Mikulan’s intelligent take on things, but okay, we’ve got Dennis now. And he’s got his good qualities too.

He had, for example, a nicely grumpy take this week on the city council’s inability to regulate marijuana dispensaries after two years, contrasted with their quick passage of a regulation banning cat declawing. (I’m personally against cat declawing too, but really. Priorities, people.)

But here’s the problem. Too often I catch the Weekly writing things that are either cringe-makingly slanted, or demonstrably untrue. One example of the former was the Weekly’s hit piece on Bill Bratton that ran last spring..

Then more recently, Romero wrote a small news feature on the new chief of police, Charlie Beck, that was littered with unsupported insinuations and outright falsehoods.

POLICE CHIEFS AND POODLES

The piece led with the suggestion that Beck was being trotted around like the mayor’s “poodle” to the four regional meet-and-greets that he and Villaraigosa did in South Los Angeles, Van Nuys, El Sereno, and the Westside. Student reporters from my USC class went to two of the four events and found them jammed with community members, and described Beck as very responsive to the questions and comments of residents who seemed thriller to have a chance to check out the new (nearly) chief.

But, sure, yeah, Antonio had his own political reasons for trotting out the likable Beck in advance of Beck’s confirmation by the City Council. And, okay, if one wishes to write a snarky story to point that out, why not?

IT WAS MIDWAY THROUGH THE SAME STORY THAT ROMERO WENT OFF THE RAILS.

After the snark about Beck being the mayor’s fancy dog (which is reasonably preposterous, but whatever) Romero went a lot farther.

He wrote that Beck was a forced choice who was jammed down the collective throat of an unhappy police commission by the mayor (along with Bill Bratton) who was determined to have Charlie Beck and no one but Charlie Beck as his chief.

….a backroom process that was so rapid and, perhaps, so prejudiced toward the man backed by Bratton that few outsiders applied for what is the brass ring of the police world.

Romero quotes blogger and former LA Daily News editor, Ron Kaye, as saying: “….it was always a done deal. There wasn’t any real process or search that was conducted.” (On his own blog Kaye goes further and quotes anonymous sources as saying that Beck wasn’t even on the list of the commission’s original three finalists at all, and that the commission had to rejigger the list of three to add Beck so as not to anger the mayor.)

Romero followed up with how…”…it is widely known now that the Police Commission was irritated when Villaraigosa undercut it by publicly announcing during the summer that a chief would be chosen by the fall, making it all but impossible politically for the Police Commission to launch a serious nationwide search that takes months…

In that the position of chief of police has a strong affect on the city’s health and well being, if the mayor had completely compromised the selection process that would be in important thing on which to report.

If it happened to be true.

SOURCES ANYONE?

Since I’d followed the selection process closely, some might say….um…obsessively, and Romero and Kaye’s reporting didn’t jibe with anything I heard, I figured I’d simply do a bit of fact checking.

Although, I had plenty of inside sources, I had not talked to anybody on the police commission.

I called Alan Skobin, one of the five police commissioners who were given the task of narrowing the 13 semi-finalist candidates given them by the city’s personnel chief (whose team had winnowed the field from the original 24 applicants).

In other words, Skobin was one of those five-some of folks whom Romero and the Weekly said had been force-fed Beck, and who were “widely known” to be damned unhappy that their search process was amputated, and who may not have wanted Beck on their list of three finalists at all.

I noted that Romero had briefly quoted Skobin, meaning he too had spoken to him. So maybe Skobin knew the inside dirt that I had somehow missed.

THE COMMISSIONER SPEAKS

Skobin and I spoke for about a half hour during which time we chatted in dept about all of the Weekly’s points—about the pressure, the truncated search time, and so on.

Skobin—an attorney and the Vice President of Galpin Motors—is a very bright, mild-mannered man, but he was clearly exasperated about what the Weekly had inferred.

“That’s absolutely not true,” he said—and he had told the Weekly as much as well.

“I was there. I was one of the five people in the room for every discussion! We didn’t have any pressure from the mayor. He kept his hands completely off and let us do our job. In fact I even thanked him for it.” Skobin paused to look for the right words. “Honestly, Celeste, we felt good at the end because we felt the process really worked. I know my fellow commissioners. And I really feel that everyone had an open mind. There was an incredibly diverse pool of very credible, capable candidates. And we worked to make sure that everyone had an even playing field.”

Skobin said a lot more and in greater detail. But that’s the bottom line of it.

About the accusation that there wasn’t a proper search, Skobin laughed. “Look,” he said, Bill Bratton was the highest profile police chief in the nation. When he resigned it was national news. “We paid for a small search and certainly had ads in all the proper places.” But what serious candidate wouldn’t know the job was open, Skobin said. “We didn’t feel in was necessary to spend $100 thousand more of the tax payers’ money to pay some executive search company. Why would we? Everyone knew this job was open.”

Moreover, according to Skobin, although there was there was the general belief that, unlike when Bratton was selected, the time was likely ripe for a homegrown candidate, the process still welcomed all comers.

The Weekly, however, insisted otherwise. As further proof that the fix was in, Romero wrote ominously that “….such big-gun names as San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon and Miami Police Chief John Timoney did not turn up as finalists. The process was seen by some as a mayoral ramrod down the public’s throat of Bratton’s favorite soldier.”

Let’s see. Hmmmm. Maybe it’s a mayoral a conspiracy. Or…..maybe Gascon and Timoney weren’t on the list of finalists because they didn’t apply for the job?

I knew the answer to the question from my own sources, but I asked Skobin anyway.

“Timoney didn’t apply to my knowledge. We certainly never saw him.”

And Gascon?

George Gascon is the LAPD’s former Assistant Chief who had since taken over as chief of police in Mesa, Arizona and then had been sworn in as San Francisco’s new chief on the day that Bratton formally announced his resignation.

Skobin laughed again. “I know George didn’t apply because he announced as much publicly. It was in all the papers.”

Right. A fact that I knew because I know Gascon. But also information which Romero or his editor Jill Stewart could have acquired with a 30-second with Google search.

But really, why let facts get in the way when you’ve got a mayor to slam.

EVERYONE IS NOT ENTITLED TO HIS OWN FACTS

For the record, yes, Bratton made it known that Beck was his preference, plus Connie Rice and Jeff Carr (the mayor’s former gang guy, now chief of staff) were actively and forcefully lobbying for Charlie Beck who was also their pick to click.

But by every single credible insider account, the mayor liked Beck a lot, but was dithering right up until the last minute BECAUSE HE DIDN’T LIKE BEING PRESSURED.

“I know for a fact he was still deciding up until the last minute,” said Skobin.

I do too.

And so to counter those sources and to bolster their assertions the Weekly had…..?

No one. Not a soul on the record. Or off the record for that matter.

Evidently Romero was able to intuit that these things were “widely known”.….. by “many”…. and also by “some City Hall critics.”

Okay, to be fair, the Weekly also had Ron Kaye—editor turned pundit, who on his own blog had the purported conspiracy so muddled that he couldn’t even get the number of semi-finalists sent to the police commission right, and gleefully reported as valid every crackpot rumor he could get his hands on, no matter how easily dispelled.

SO WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT THIS?

Why does this matter? After all the LA Weekly is perfectly free to opine however much it wants about Antonio Villaraigosa and any other public figure.

It is a newspaper’s job—it is its sacred task, if you will—to hold public figures accountable.

(And Villaraigosa assuredly has a list of things that require some accounting. [see above post])

A news outlet is not, however, free to manufacture its own facts in order to do so.

If a paper shaves the dice on the truth when it is convenient—even if the untruths are the inside-baseballish sort of things most people would not catch, and even fewer would care all that much about—then we cannot trust what that paper says on anything.

And that, my dear friends, matters very much.

A FRIENDLY NOTE TO DREX HEIKES:

Drex, I know your work well and I don’t think for a minute that you would willingly co-sign on this kind of shoddy, deliberately mendacious behavior. But it has happened more than a few times at the paper whose helm you are now commanding, and this time it happened under your watch.

So it is you who needs to fix it. We are counting on you.

The LA Weekly once mattered.

It would be nice if it mattered again.

An hour and a half into a meeting that started at 8:30 a.m. or so, and after much self-congratulatory pontificating (on the part of the council members, that is) the Los Angeles City Council has confirmed Charlie Beck as the 55th Chief of the LAPD.

Congratulations Chief Charlie.

We are utterly delighted to have you at the helm of our city’s police department.

[insert sound of loud applause.]