If my schedule will cooperate, I’m going to try to sort through the various views of Special Order 40 and where LA ought to go with it from here. This includes the points of view of LAPD Chief Bill Bratton, City Councilman Dennis Zine and his proposal to amend SO40, the proposal contained in Jamiel’s Law (which is just a little different than what Zine is suggesting), the view taken by the Police Protective League, which in general supports Zine’s proposal.

In the meantime, take a look at this opinion piece in Sunday’s LA Times in which researcher Monica Varsanyi tells what 450 police chiefs across the country said when asked how they feel about cops doing immigration enforcement.

And be sure to read the compilation in this morning’s LA Times Opinion in which 40 “prominent Angelenos”—chosen from one end of the political spectrum to the other—sound off on Special Order 40.

UPDATE: I missed linking to Rick Orlov’s column on the issue, which is at least fun to read, while advancing the dialog

Here’s pieces of his Bratton quote:

(ABOUT ZINE & HIS MOTION)

“He has not had a conversation with anyone, including my leadership team. He talks so much about being a reserve officer, he should go to his commanding officer for clarification.”

(ABOUT SO 40 IN GENERAL)

“I don’t understand what’s so difficult. We don’t ask people their immigration status if they are not breaking the law. Once they are arrested, we check to make sure they are in the country legally.”

“Our priority is going after gangbangers,” Bratton said. “Once they are arrested, we check their immigration status and if they are in the country illegally, turn it over to ICE.”

I love when Bratton gets on his high horse. (I’m not being ironic here. I actually do.)

And here’s Councilman Dennis Zine:

“This chief doesn’t think anything needs to be changed,” Zine said. “Ask any 10 officers on the street and they will tell you they don’t know what to do with Special Order 40. They feel they can’t do anything.”

Which suggests that Bill Bratton’s right; it’s not a legal issue, it’s a training issue. The problem isn’t with Special Order 40, it’s with the rank and file’s knowledge of it—-meaning the training and oversight on the matter is faulty.

But….although I’ve taken a POV on the issue before, I’m willing to concede that its a complex matter with various valid perspectives to consider. So I’ll continue to gather puzzle pieces for further discussion.

PS: I’ve put in a call to the LAPPL for clarification of their stand. Back with more on that tomorrow or the next day.

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In an era of dire city and state budget slashing, LA City Controller Laura Chick released a report today that shows how the LAPD could get at least 500 more officers out from behind desks and on to the street by filling those same positions with civilian employees—who, as it turns out, cost an average of $29,000 a year less than sworn officers. Some of the positions include public information officers, front desk and security staff, court liaisons and the like.

This is one of those cases where no one’s been thinking clearly, it seems. Mayor Villaraigosa and Chief Bratton have been, quite rightly, trying to hold on to the money needed to hire additional police officers for our drastically underpoliced city. But they are doing so in the face of budget amputations that will be draconian for other city agencies.

(For instance, unless something changes, it has been reported that with $2 million cut from the city library system, LA’s libraries will be unable to buy any new books. None. At all.)

But, during all this push for cop hiring, there has been a freeze on civilian hiring in the department, meaning that more and more cops are behind more and more desks, which is just dumb, said Chick in press conference today (although I don’t believe she used quite those words.) Chick pointed out that step one needs to be an unfreeze on civilian hires, so that the uniformed men and women can be moved out from behind counters and desks and on to the street—which is where most of them would prefer to be anyway.

“We do not need hundreds of police officers, at a cost of $30,000 a year more than a properly trained civilian, performing administrative functions that do not require carrying a firearm. While Chief Bratton has made major progress in deploying our officers more effectively, this report challenges us to fully engage in smarter 21st Century policing,” said Chick.

UPDATE: The LA Times’ Joel Rubin has taken the time to wade through the finer details of the 200 plus-page report and has a very good rundown here.

Bratton is reportedly down for it. And anyone with any sense should be too. The union has not weighed in yet. But we trust that they will see this correctly. ( Right guys?)

UPDATE: Okay, Tim Sands did release a message that states (I think) that he mostly agrees: with Chick, but it is so cautious and pretzeled that it’s difficult to tell.

This is the second smart report in a row from Chick. (Her gang report, on which there has STILL been no action, was very good and sensible as well.)

GO LAURA!

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All day today I’ll be at the Criminal Justice Conference sponsored and organized by the USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism, where I’m a senior fellow. (They’re the folks who sponsor this blog.)

The prime mover behind the conference, which is open to anyone, is my pal Joe Domanick, and the three-day schedule will feature LAPD Chief Bill Bratton, Sheriff Lee Baca, Connie Rice, and loads of others. (You can find the full schedule here
Here’s a snippet from Joe’s introduction to the reasons he think the conference is important:

The purpose of the Justice and Journalism conference….is for L.A.’s criminal justice professionals and experts to discuss what they see taking place on the other side of the Los Angeles criminal justice conveyor belt – a belt that never stops. Over 30% of those moving into the state’s overstuffed prison system come from L.A. County. After doing their time, tens of thousands return each year to Los Angeles – the majority having received little or no educational help, mental health care, treatment for drug or alcohol abuse, or other services while in prison. When they arrive here and hit the streets, there is no serious, sustained and coordinated reentry strategy to assist them. It’s no wonder that 70% are placed back on the conveyor belt and returned to prison within three years following their release….

Come on down if you can manage it. The event is free and it will be very, very interesting, I guarantee it.

(Naturally, I’ll be blogging it.)

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Joe Domanick has a smart, insightful, authoritative, and wonderfully gossipy story on LAPD Chief Bill Bratton in February’s Playboy Magazine. It covers Bratton’s past, present and future and includes such hot spot topics as the LAPD’s May Day debacle, Bratton’s relationship with Rudy Guiliani and how he’d feel about a job offer from a new President of the United States, should such an offer be forthcoming.

Regrettably, Playboy doesn’t post its articles online so you’re going have to actually get the magazine to read the whole thing. But I’ve clipped a couple of excerpts to give you the tenor of the piece. (And Kevin Roderick at LA Observed has still other excerpts.)

ON BRATTON AND GUILIANI:

He wore expensive doublebreasted suits, tasseled loafers and Hermes ties, and instead of sitting around and kissing up to Giuliani, he surrounded himself with his own cadre of innovative police thinkers . The cynical, hardedged New York press loved it all, seeing him as an effective, savvy cop who knew what New York reporters needed and gave it to them. Predictably, the press coverage angered Giuliani because it wasn’t about Giuliani—who once banned ads for New York magazine from city buses because of the tagline POSSIBLY THE ONLY GOOD THING IN NEW YORK RUDY HASN’T TAKEN CREDIT FOR. So when Bratton appeared on the cover of Time he was unceremoniously dumped for the sin of upstaging Giuliani and for forgetting that, in the narcissistic loopiness of Giuliani World, there could be only one king. After that Bratton formed his own security firm advising police departments in South America. When the planes hit the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 he found himself in his Manhattan apartment, watching the biggest calamity in New York City history unfold on a television screen. “As a police officer,” says Bratton, “you live to deal with crisis and be tested by it. It’s very frustrating when you’re not in a position to do anything, particularly when you know what needs to be done.”

ON WHETHER BB WOULD TAKE A POSITION IN A DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION:

He answers the next question before it is asked. “In terms of Homeland Security and the FBI, those are very significant positions. And when the president of the United States knocks on the door, you certainly have to respond to the knock and give it consideration. I’m somebody who needs to be stimulated; I’m not a maintenance-type person. But I don’t see myself going into maintenance mode in Los Angeles anytime soon.” In any case, not until January, when a new administration moves into the White House.

*******************************************************

By the way, in addition to what Bratton told Joe D, back door rumors from those in a position to know also have it that if there is a Democratic president, Bratton will not finish out his new five-year contract but will be likely to head to Washington. About two weeks ago, when I was in D.C., a very close friend of Bratton’s was even more specific when we talked about the possibility of Bratton moving on. “Bill likes to fix things that are broken,” said the friend. And Homeland Security would, for that reason, be “very attractive.”

******************************************************************

PS: I want to emphasize again that it is very much worth your while to go to the newsstand and pick up the physical magazine featuring those siliconed naked girls so that you can read the whole damned article. Angelenos in particular should read it, because Bill’s our guy. But, his relevance doesn’t stop at LA’s city borders. Bratton is, and is going to be in the foreseeable future, America’s most forward looking cop. This is not to say he’s the most visionary person in law enforcement, necessarily. But, more than any other law enforcement figure in America, he understands all the necessary pieces and how to move them forward into a kind of 21st century policing that is both high tech and humane, and he has the force of will and leadership ability to do it.

Joe spent hours and hours with Bratton and with loads of people around him. Then he took his stacks of material and distilled it all down to a smart, breezily-written piece that’s very entertaining and informative both—and also has much to say about Big Picture issues in law enforcement. I just randomly pulled clips as it was 2 am when I posted and I thought the Rudy/Hillary stuff might be the most interesting in a blog setting. But it’s all very much worth the price of admission.

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As I posted yesterday, the “Final Report on the MacArthur Park Incident”-–also known as the May Day Melee report— was presented to the Police Commission Tuesday morning.

And, in your spare time, you too can download all 80 plus pages in PDF form from the LAPD website. The thing includes diagrams, training manual excerpts, and a minute-by-minute timeline of how matters went south—and it actually makes for pretty interesting reading (or skimming, if I am to be completely honest).

While some people present at MacArthur Park that day (and their lawyers) have already disagreed with certain perceptions put forth in the timeline, nearly all agree that the report is truly heartening for its detail and transparency.

From nearly day one, Bill Bratton and his command staff have displayed a willingness to issue in-depth mea culpas—a 180-degree change from the pre-Bratton years when the LAPD’s knee-jerk MO was to place blame anywhere BUT on the department’s shoulders—no matter how laughable the logic required to perform this pretzelling of responsibility.

Yet, again Tuesday Chief Bratton apologized to both the rank and file and to the public—an act that most listening agreed is completely unheard of. “In 33 years,” said Police Union head, Tim Sands, “I’ve never seen it.”

The report was written in the same spirit by Deputy Chief Michael Hillman, and LAPD Consent Decree head, Gerry Chaleff, and it lays out with unusual candor all the missteps made by those in command that ultimately resulted in the mayhem that left 40-some people injured and resulted in more than 100 lawsuits.

Among the problems cited are the following:

There were contradictory orders given….there was a failure to “issue a lawful dispersal order” to the crowd….there was an inexplicable okay of the use of force on the crowd…..plus a lack of communication and “abrogation of responsibility” by incident commanders.

And then, even when things started to get really out of control, none of the on-scene shot callers bothered to pass that information up the chain of command (a VERY big deal, according to Chief Bratton).

Moreover, the report doesn’t just list failures, it names names, calling out all those brass who blew it—something that is, in itself, unprecedented.

The seriousness with which the department intends to take the report was heralded last spring when Bratton made swift changes at the top, yanking two of the men who take the much of the report’s heat. Former South Bureau Deputy Chief Caylor “Lee” Carter, and Commander Louis Gray were replaced by Deputy Chief Sergio Diaz, and Commander Andrew Smith.

Unfortunately, the report is far less complete when it comes explaining the acts of the Metro guys (and/or women) who actually did all the whacking and “non-lethal” shooting of reporters and fleeing parents with children, which turned up in video form on YouTube for the viewing pleasure of millions.
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Just slightly over two years ago, an LAPD SWAT team tried to rescue an 19-month-old little girl named Suzie Pena, who was with her drunk, drugged out dad in a car dealership while the dad shot (and shot back) at the cops.

After several hours of this, the SWAT team did an entry into the back gate of the dealership, crept through the dealership building itself, sent a “flash-bang” into the tiny interior office where the dad was holed up. They thought the flash-bang would stun him. It didn’t. He shot back. So they blew into the room firing, and killed the crazy, messed-up, murderous dad….and the little girl. She died in her father’s arms.

So now the little girl’s mother, Lorena Lopez, is suing the LAPD for her daughter’s wrongful death and negligence. (I wrote about this case for the Weekly, so in case you’re curious about the back story you can find it here…and here.)

As part of the suit, her attorney, Luis Carrillo is asking for the internal police reports from the department’s investigation into the gun battle. Not surprisingly, the department doesn’t want to fork them over. The Deputy City Attorney, a woman named Kelly Kades, insists that the police officers’ statements are for internal use only and are protected by the right against self-incrimination.

It’s kind of an interesting dilemma. Kades says that, unlike in civilian employment, the department can make officers testify against their wills and so the info that results should be kept confidential.

According to the AP, Carrillo argued that “there is no danger of self-incrimination because the district attorney’s office said in 2006 that none of the 57 officers and supervisors involved in the standoff and shooting would face criminal charges.”

Carrillo says he only wants to compare what the officers involved in the shooting told their supervisors with what they stated in their depositions given for this civil case.

On Tuesday, the judge, who clearly would prefer not to touch this one, ruled that…..somebody else can decide it. He’s ordered the two side to make their respective pitches to an impartial referee who will then advise the judge was to whether he ought to release the documents or not.

Okay, attorneys and arm chair attorneys out there, what do you think the referee will decide?

One thing I’d bet the ranch on: if the cops have to fork over the internal info, the department is toast in terms of this lawsuit. (Not that there was any ill intent. The SWAT guys were devastated by by the outcome.)

They may be toast anyway if Carrillo the attorney can, in any way, accurately reconstruct the way the tiny interior office looked after the shooting.

When I was reporting, I spent a long, long time in that office looking at the walls and at all those bullet holes. (The photo below only shows a small section.) And frankly I still can’t understand how those genuinely good officers could have gone into that little room, guns firing, and imagined the outcome would be any different than the tragic scene that resulted
.

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Snubbing Devin’s memory: Legislators fail to learn the lessons of a 13-year-old’s fatal shooting by police.

Today we award Badges of Cowardice to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief Bill Bratton, and six key state lawmakers, for failing to stand up to California’s powerful police unions and take the first baby steps toward reopening police disciplinary records and proceedings that had been public since at least the 1970s.

Our L.A. leaders, along with the six-member Assembly Public Safety Committee, cowered in the face of cop bully-tactics and the secrecy lobby that brought down a modest bill to reopen public access to what had been an historically open process.

We give extra large, doublesided badges to the mayor and police chief because they are trying to have it both ways. They professed to be in favor of State Sen. Gloria Romero’s SB 1019, dubbed here the Anti-Secret Police bill, but they failed to show up at Tuesday’s committee meeting and fight for its survival.

Come on, guys, don’t you remember how adamant you seemed on the issue when an enraged community demanded answers after a secret police Board of Rights hearing exonerated the police officer who fatally shot 13-year-old Devin Brown? Look what Antonio and Bill told the L.A. Times’ Patrick McGreevy in January, when the issue was hot and the public demanded action.

“I am in support of change. I am very frustrated by [the current process],” Bratton said… “The public has no access to it. The media has no access to it. That’s crazy, absolutely crazy. We have nothing to hide in the Los Angeles Police Department.”
Hours later, Villaraigosa issued a concurring statement .
“The mayor would enthusiastically support legislation or other measures to open the board of rights process to the public,” the statement said. “Transparency … would benefit both the public and the officers facing disciplinary action.”

But that was six months ago. Will there be a similar outcry when the results of secret investigations into the MacArthur Park melee are released? Let’s hope the chief doesn’t black out the names of officers disciplined and withhold key details. And, if voters grow restless and the chief and mayor renew their calls for reform, will we take them seriously?

By the time the Anti-Secret Police bill made it to the committee, the unions watered down the bill to mollify cops and win the so-called support of Bill and Antonio. The bill even gave the police chief the power to withhold records if he deemed an officer’s safety would be put at risk.

The bill would merely allow local governments to vote on whether to restore public access to the same narrow category of police disciplinary records and proceedings that had been open in Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Bay Area for decades until the California Supreme Court closed the records in its intellectually dishonest and unintelligible decision last year, Copley Press v. Superior Court of San Diego. In that decision, the Supreme Court held that California’s statutes aimed at controlling the discovery of police personnel records in civil lawsuits prohibits the disclosure of records that arise from the officer’s administrative appeal to an oversight body such as a civil service commission. Police agencies, taking the decision one more step, said if the records were off-limits to the public, so must be the proceedings.

The bill failed to win a solitary vote in the Assembly Public Safety Committee after passing out of the Senate a few weeks ago. The Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPD’s cop labor union), a representative of Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona, and Assemblyman Jose Solorio, a Santa Ana Democrat and chairman of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, all made the same bogus claim that the bill would have opened up personal information about police officers and their families to criminals and “endangered” the lives of officers and their families.

Antonio and Bill were nowhere to be seen in Sacramento Tuesday to counter this false alarm. If they had truly “supported” the bill, they would have flown to Sacramento and explained that this process has been open to the public for decades in Los Angeles without any reported endangerment of officer safety. If our leaders actually backed the bill, they would have explained that no information about an officer’s family is released in disciplinary records.

Rather, the Anti-Secret Police measure would have allowed local agencies to vote on whether to create a policy of public access to police officer disciplinary files – but only if the local agency had previously had open records and only in instances where an officer had filed an administrative appeal of their discipline with a local civil service commission or police board of rights. If the local agency adopted the access policy, then the only records available to the public would be the records filed with the civil service commission or police board of rights relating to the specific incident and discipline. Like why should that be such a big deal?

The unions built their propaganda campaign on lies and threats. Under the Anti-Secret Police bill, a police agency would not have been allowed to release a police officer’s entire personnel file, home address, or medical records. Nor would the bill allow a police agency to release all citizen complaints or internal affairs investigations. Rather, public access would have been allowed only after a police officer filed an administrative appeal of a particular disciplinary sanction with an oversight body.

One union leader, John Stites, sent an e-mail to intimidate Senate members before their vote on the measure, saying that police unions “adamantly oppose this legislation to the point that if it is passed we will move quickly to oppose any term-limit reform legislation publicly. There is no compromise on this. Ensure that it be understood that this will only be the beginning.” Romero denounced this “bully tactic” and the Senate approved the bill, 22-10 earlier this month.

Also receiving Badges of Cowardice are the members of the Public Safety Committee. These scared legislators wouldn’t even let the measure come up for a vote. They are:

Two Republicans: Joel Anderson of El Cajon and Greg Aghazarian, Stockton

Four Democrats: Chairman Jose Solorio of Santa Ana, Anthony J. Portantino of La Canada, Hector De La Torre of South Gate, Fiona Ma of San Francisco

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So, Chief Bill Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa both testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning on that Feinstein gang bill…..(Here’s the LA Times story.)

Antonio said:

“Gangs are no longer a local issue and they are no longer isolated to urban cities. They operate sophisticated multi-state and multi-national networks that cannot be contained by municipal police alone. That is why we need a sustained partnership with the federal government if we are going to turn our neighborhoods around. Cities need the federal government to make an investment and play its part.”

ROUGH TRANSLATION: “We need money—or else our gangs are coming to your cities. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

Bratton said:

“This bill recognizes what cops already know, that we can’t arrest our way out of a gang crime problem. The police alone can’t own the gang problem. Society must step up to address intervention and prevention…”

ROUGH TRANSLATION: “We need money. We’re sick of the whole problem being dumped on cops and cops alone. What do we look like, social workers?”

It’s not my intention to make light of the situation. Beyond the political rhetoric, the mayor and the chief are pleading for essential resources. This month gang crime is down in Los Angeles. But if our city is to truly do something permanent about the violence that blows irreparable holes in too many LA families, it’s going to take a big infusion of cash.

In this year’s State of the City speech, Villaraigosa proposed targeting certain high crime areas of the city and flooding them with services in the form of a wrap around system of enforcement, prevention, intervention and community support. His plan was a sort of pilot version of the kind of all-hands-on-deck approach that Connie Rice had already proposed with her Advancement Project gang report.

But thus far the money needed to accomplish even the mayor’s mini version, just ain’t there.. It would be nice if Feinstein’s lock-’em-up gang bill provided a healthy share of the needed help, but it doesn’t. Out of its $1 billion budget, it allocates $50 million a year for prevention and intervention—for the whole country. Let’s say LA got a reasonable chunk, like maybe a full tenth of it—that’s $5 million. Split that five mil between law enforcement and prevention/intervention programs, and you can buy……not a hell of a lot.

Instead the bill turns petty crimes into Federal offenses, and puts its biggest bucks -behind an interweave of high profile Federal strike forces and multi-agency enforcement teams.

IN OTHER WORDS….the bill does nothing to keep the disaffected fool of a 15-year-old from blasting at an “enemy”—AKA another disaffected teenager—-and maybe hitting a toddler instead, which is what the heart of LA’s gang violence problem really looks like.

[MORE GANGS AND POLITICIANS AFTER THE JUMP]

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They’re trying to act all bad. They live in fear of being called weak. They cultivate simplistic external symbols of “toughness” to mask insecurity. They confuse surface toughness with real strength.

No, I’m not talking about gang members. I’m talking about the Democrats.

Here’s the deal:

This morning senate committee hearings will begin on the so-called Gang Abatement and Prevention Act of 2007—or S. 456. The proposed legislation is Diane Feinstein’s special baby, and is being co-sponsored by Orrin Hatch, Elizabeth Dole, plus a string of people who ought to know better, Hilary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden among them.

The bill has appeared in slightly different guises in 2003 and 2005 but has always (thankfully) been shot down, mainly because its a lousy, damaging piece of legislation that is made up primarily of over-the-top new penalties and sentencing enhancements—which, if passed, are likely to make exactly zero gang members “think twice” about violence, but may easily result in lengthy prison sentences for young men and women at the outer edges of gangs.

In its latest incarnation, S. 456 has done away with a couple of its worst previous elements (turning certain gang crimes into new death penalty cases, and trying yet more kids as adults if gang allegations can be “proven”). As a result, hoards of eager democratic senators have given themselves permission to flock to it, including such former opponents as Ted Kennedy.

But has the bill really gotten any better or more necessary than the last time around?

Nope.

Q: So why are these people supporting the thing?

A: Because right now Senate and House democrats are desperate for a way to elevate their bad ass quotient without having to do anything thats…you know…..HARD. I mean, nobody likes gangsters, right? So, hell—what’s to lose?

In the reality-based world we call this pandering.

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Yesterday, several members of the LAPD’s command staff were worriedly blackberrying each other regarding the “Outside the Tent” Op Ed in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times by Bernard Parks, LA’s former police chief and present day City Council member. In the column-in-question, Parks takes the paper to task for having a “pro-Bratton bias”—saying also that it repeatedly slams Chief Bratton’s predecessors while giving the chief himself a pass.

Since the beginning of the chief’s tenure in 2002, The Times has steadfastly painted his administration as a crime-reducing, reform-minded, public-relations-savvy machine. In tirelessly making this point, the paper is not above dredging up the tenures of previous chiefs.

(Well, yes. And your point would be?)

Parks is particularly upset with the way the Times wrote about the May Day mess.

Confronted with a possible credibility crisis, The Times did what the LAPD did when it was faced with the May Day chaos — it panicked. Honesty and generally accepted journalistic standards would have required it to aggressively question the leadership of a department whose officers went out of control in the park. You’d think the head of the department would have to be included in that analysis, but he is the same guy The Times has bent over backward to praise since he arrived in L.A.

So instead, in the May 12 article, McGreevy and Lait drew comparisons between the current chief and his three immediate predecessors — again! — for no other apparent purpose than to praise the current chief’s response to the May Day incident. For instance, they stated that in contrast to his predecessors, Bratton doesn’t deny the seriousness of policing problems and is quick to launch investigations of wrongdoing and holding officers accountable.

He goes on to say, in essence, that he, Bernard Parks, was much tougher, more forthright, and had better poll numbers, and certainly better hair, or whatever, than Bill Bratton. (Okay, no, Parks really didn’t say anything about his hair versus Bratton’s, but that’s about the only thing he didn’t harp on.)

Command staff types were nervously asking each other if the Times folks would feel it necessary to suddenly be far harder on the department and/or the chief as a consequence of Parks’ writing. Here’s the answer: Nope. Not likely. Nor should they be.

Just today the Times ran an editorial saying that the Police Commission can’t rubber stamp a Bratton contract re-up, that Commission members must ask the chief some hard questions, and do a serious long-view examination of his five-year tenure. Certainly, they’re right. There needs to be a rigorous performance review—no just waving the guy through. But, frankly, this isn’t anything the Times hasn’t said before.

Yet, neither the Times editorial board, nor anyone else with any sense is seriously suggesting Bratton’s contract shouldn’t be renewed—no matter how many hostile op eds Bernard Parks writes.

The truth is that Parks’ repeated and near-pathological criticism of Bratton (often through proxies) comes off like the worst kind of sour grapes. And people see through it. That’s why LAPD’s command staff needn’t worry. (At least not about the op eds of former chiefs. They do, however, have one or two other little worries with which to occupy their time.)

Ironically, Bernard Parks is very well liked as a council member and, by nearly all accounts, quite good at his job. But when he does the ankle-biting routine with Chief Bratton, his motives appear unseemly and transparent.

How transparent, you might ask? I’ll give you a very recent example: Best-selling mystery writer Michael Connelly sets all his police procedurals in Los Angeles, his protagonist, Harry Bosch, a detective for the LAPD. In Connelly’s newest book, The Overlook, released just two weeks ago, one of the characters is a fictional police chief who was chosen from outside the department and who speaks with a pronounced (wink, wink) Boston accent. In this book, the author also writes about a former LAPD Deputy Chief turned City Council member who is the vengeful nemesis of the well-liked Boston-accented chief.

(I know all this because I’m a secret mystery junkie and was reading the new book on Saturday night, thus happened upon the relevant passages. They were so startlingly on-the-nose, I laughed out loud. Then, to open the paper on Sunday morning and find Parks’ op ed…. sent my irony-meter spinning into the red zone.)

GENTLE SUGGESTION TO BERNARD PARKS: if even the pulp fiction guys are making fun of your irrational fixation with Bill Bratton, it’s time to give it a rest.

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