In his column in Wednesday’s LA Times, Steve Lopez reports that the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department—presumably with the okay of Sheriff Lee Baca—has instructed its deputies not to talk to reporters from LA County’s main news outlet, namely the Los Angeles Times.
Or something like that.
Here’s the relevant section on Lopez’s column:
The latest [LASD/Lee Baca] head-smacker involves an e-mail from one of Baca’s captains ordering deputies not to speak to the L.A. Times. As my colleague Robert Faturechi reported Tuesday, the captain’s directive came just a few days after the paper ran Faturechi’s story on the fact that Baca had launched a criminal investigation in Beverly Hills — which has its own presumably competent Police Department — on behalf of a political donor.
It was outrageous enough that Baca took the unusual step of sticking his nose into a case Beverly Hills police had already decided was a civil matter. But then his department puts out the word to punish The Times for doing its job?
Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore claimed the e-mail had nothing to do with The Times’ Beverly Hills story.
Yeah, OK.
Whitmore also claimed The Times wasn’t being singled out.
Hmmmm. Then why did the e-mail instruct deputies to forward media requests to headquarters, “Specifically any LA Times requests.”
“It’s vernacular,” Whitmore told me. “It’s shorthand. I know it sounds silly.”
Um, yeah. Really, really silly. And really disingenuous.
But, hey, we’re living through a month in which the US Air Force just announced on Tuesday that it is barring its personnel from using work computers to view the Web sites of The New York Times and more than 25 other news organizations and blogs.
Why? Take a wild guess.
Yep. You got it. Wikileaks.
I’d say all this madness was due to some new contaminant in the water, but the east coast/west coast nature of these dismayingly wrong-headed occurrences pretty much leaves that out.
Dunno. Bad moon rising.
Lopez’s piece on Baca has him in good form and smacks of the truth, especially as he actually knows Baca over the years – but whatever’s in Baca’s water long precedes and has nothing to do with WikiLeaks! (Personally I don’t equate the two – the extent of the damage that Assange did in the name of “freedom of information” and by many reports, with intent to harm the U. S.’s foreign policy and international standing, as well as sabotage by his supporters, is quite substantial. I think Assange has been overly lionized by people particularly of the 60’s generation who think any exposure of a (by definition corrupt and evil) military establishment is a good thing. HOwEVER I don’t support any government agency or branch of the military banning specific sites from its employees, EXCEPT THAT insofar as employees are using company time and equipment to do so, hence costing money and productivity – which as I understand it, is the perogative of ANY company.)
Lopez makes the obvious contrast between how Gibson was treated vs. Matrice Richardson the non-celebrity who really NEEDED help (Gibson could have easily paid for a cab), but there are a number of other serious incidents involving his deputies as well. The last paragraph about accepting more gifts than all the other Sheriffs in CA put together, because heck, what can he do if people want to give him stuff, cuts to the heart of allegations of entitlement.
And while he complains about budget restrictions, his multi-million dollar budget is still huge and very generous compared to the LAPD – which gets a LOT more scrutiny overall, including on the matter of rape kit backlogs. It seemed very unseemly when Baca refused to test the large backlog a year or two ago, despite the attention heaped on the issue vis-a-vis LAPD, as a way to protest his budget, until a poignant plea by a woman from Human Rights Watch in HuffPo embarrassed Zev Yaroslavsky into sitting Baca down to “find” the money. He may well be a well-intentioned, reformist-type Sheriff, but his intentions seem overwhelmed by poor management decisions or inadequate training of deputies, and sense of “being special,” as Lopez suggests.
SBL, I wasn’t meaning to relate the Baca story to WikiLeaks, only shoved the two together because they happened both in close proximity and both involve the press and stupidly restricting access. AND I wanted to note both of the stories.
The Martrice Richardson situation continues to freak me out. It cries out for further investigation.
It’s probably time to vote out Baca before he becomes another dinosaur like his predecessor Sherman Block.
I wonder if Baca is investigating the Sheriff Deputies Christmas party/brawl?
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/12/7-la-county-deputies-on-leave-after-christmas-party-brawl.html
What further investigation is needed on Richardson? Should they have transported her to a more public area, I think it would have been smart and right to do it but doubt any law was broken by them not doing it. Her cause of death been determined yet? I hadn’t seen anything on it.
I’m not a fan of Baca’s style, never have been as I was a fan of Block’s and the two are way different.
Unreal about that brawl, what a bunch of idiots. One other thing, Baca had no business getting involved in the Beverly Hills matter.
SEVEN deputies were brawling stupidly enough to be relieved of duty???
Oh-kay.
Wonder if it was over a woman? Worse yet is the story about the former chief of Huntington Park whose apparently nuts.
I doubt it was over a woman if seven of them we’re brawling. Sounds more like “workplace issues” to me.
On another note…there’s one way and one way only to stop the Sheriff from gaining so much power. TERM LIMITS. These guys that are Sheriff for years and years seem to me to lose touch with reality. They quit concentrating on LE and instead solely concentrate on building a political power base.
If eight years is good enough for the POTUS, why not the LA CO Sheriff?
I agree with ATQ on his last point, but go one step further: Sheriff should be appointed, not elected, so he would be accountable to the Board of Supervisors. As should the DA. Because the two in the office currently, Baca and Cooley, respectively, have shown just how much they DO build a political power base instead of concentrating on the office.
These two routinely also make endorsements for other offices and in Cooley’s case especially, he actively recruited and twisted arms, throwing his weight around (and quite some weight it is, speaking of his being the most powerful DA in CA, not about his personal heft), to select his replacement down the line. By all accounts the plan was, that his protege who long used his connections to Cooley to get clients, would get his feet wet in the CA’s office then run for HIS slot as DA when he moved up to AG.
That plot has been foiled, and his image tarnished by exposing the sheer naked ambition and shameless use of his office, but as he admits in his candid interview to the L A Weekly, he still wants to take an active role in finding what he calls “a worthy” successor.
Baca has been somewhat more low-key, but weighs in on all sorts of endorsements as well, and even on issues like who he’d like to see get the golf cart concession on County golf courses (a friend and supporter, natch).
Unlike the way the LAPD Chief of Police is accountable to his bosses, the mayor who appoints him and the City Council which oversees him (and in some cases, micromanages him to death), these two are only nominally accountable to the Board of Supervisors, and arguably have an even more powerful bully pulpit, with access to thousands of lawyers and/ or cops on our payroll. To do with as they pretty much please. They have secret dossiers on everyone and who knows if rumors are true, that they’re not afraid to use them if they don’t get their way.
It is because they are elected while the LAPD Chief is appointed, that the Republicans meddling in the CA race on behalf of Cooley (and L A Times’ Newton, Greene formerly of the Republican-owned and skewing MetNews Enterprise, etc.) felt entitled to blatantly go as far as they did, especially Cooley, while attacking Chief Bratton just for making a passive (not active arm-twisting) endorsement of someone he knew and worked with over 8 years. The hypocrisy was unbelievable.
So to keep them focused on their jobs, instead of political fund-raising and schmoozing up the rich and powerful, and/ or showering them with perks like box seats, the Sheriff and DA should also be elected.
This would also disincentivize the DA from going after high profile, but low-threat, targets like Roman Polanski, who he hoped would bolster his campaign – but fortunately, the Swiss foiled that show trial. He managed to get Bell fall into his lap, with no more made to order cast of characters that couldn’t be hoped for, and these people deserved it – but what about numerous other allegations that people are prosecuted selectively or, if they’re big donors, not at all. And Baca (the Gibson case being noted) is not immune from this sort of thing either.
Make them appointed by the BOS who should have clear and actively used authority over them, with certain exemptions for dealing with THEM, where a third party, would step in.
Oops, I misspoke above in the third from last para, saying “…to keep them focused on their jobs, instead of political fund-raising and schmoozing up the rich and powerful…(even to actively trying to select C’s own replacement, I might add!), the Sheriff and DA should also be (NOT elected as I misstate) but APPOINTED.” Like the Chief of LAPD they so hypocritically took to task, as did the rightwing-skewing (under Jill Stewart’s editorial hand, I don’t think this is arguable) L A Weekly, concurring with the rightwing blogs like Kaye, Mayor Sam, all of which played upon each other and came to be taken as gospel.
UNTIL a few people noticed and spoke up: and you did a yoeman’s job in taking apart the downright anti-Bratton bias in the Weekly, both in their tone and number of articles on the same theme (which they have done with others as well), which reflected all this double standard (and the Times shamefully did the same as well).
This was probably clear in context but just to be sure.
Oh please SBL, appointed? No way, and than what do we create just another yes man for the board? That should never happen though I like the idea of term limits, There have been good people run against Baca but beating an incumbent is never easy. No Dems that have put us in the middle of the situation the states in I guess, they’ve only been running the show for how long? Nope it’s not Dems, it’s chubby pasty white guys with the token Latino cop.
I like that SBL thinks a child rapsit is a “low profile target” what bullshit. Maybe SBL is French. The blatant hypocrisy of both posts have made me ill and I need to go to the bathroom. What a pitiful bunch of leftist crap, nothing in either posts taht shows any type of true political smarts.