We frequently criticize our Los Angeles law officers—the police and the sheriffs. It is our job to do so. We hold up mirrors to their behavior, figuratively speaking, and demand that they always listen to their better angels. Sometimes they don’t. Most times they do.
Police deal too often in extremes of human behavior. Because of this fact, the rest of us must never forget that, in fulfilling their sworn duties—To Protect and Serve—it is inherent in their job description that they will, on certain days, put their lives on the line and, to protect the general good, roll the dice with all their own individual tomorrows.
The LAPD’s SWAT officers are considered the best trained in the world. They nearly always get a hostage out alive. On good days, they get the perpetrator out alive too. Always in the past, they have come out alive themselves. But today was not one of the good days.
The gunman who was holed up at a house on a side street in the West San Fernando Valley claimed he had already killed three in his family. After hours of a standoff, thinking there might be hostages still alive in the house, some of the SWAT guys went in. The gunman blasted and shot two veteran SWAT officers, Officer James Veenstra and Randy Simmons. Simmons died at Northridge Trauma Center Veenstra, who is married to an LAPD captain in South Bureau, is still alive but gravely wounded. Later this morning, the suspect was finally killed, or killed himself, that isn’t as yet clear. Three other men, presumed to be the gunman’s relatives, were also dead.
Randy Simmons is the first SWAT team member killed in the line of duty in nearly 40 years, since SWAT’s creation in 1967.
As for the rest of us, all we can do, at least for now, is to salute, honor and grieve.
Very nice tribute. The police seem quite different when one of their lives ends tragically.
And a second one has had his face shattered and will need a series of major reconstructive surgeries. Both 27-year vets and friends, what a shame. Ironically, this comes as their union the Protective League continues to fight the draconian financial disclosure laws required by the Police Commission — and which neither they nor its head, Mack, nor Chief Bratton, or anyone, actually believes will do a thing to catch rogue cops. No one but presiding Judge Fress, that is, who just last week sentenced a couple of “bad cop” brothers, one formerly on the LAPD force, one working for Long Beach, for intimidating suspects into shaking them down.
Fress said very publicly that those two cases were exactly the proof of why these disclosure laws are needed. To the contrary, those two were caught by colleagues who got suspicious by certain actions (like signing out cops cars when not on duty) and cocky, invincible behavior. It had nothing to do with their financial records. But with many citing worries that this Judge would “get mad,” a likely event considering his obvious ego and determination to justify his ruling no matter what, the City has dropped its efforts to seek a compromise and the League is on its own.
Hope that doesn’t result in many anti-gang cops following through on their threats to resign or transfer out of the unit — that would be financially devastating given the huge costs of recruitment and training, as well as leave big gaps in providing public safety on the streets, maybe for years. And that would be especially ironic given the hard-fought battle over Prop S, to tax cell phones to maintain the level of public services we have now.
Ofc. Simmons was a former anti-gang cop from South L A, and still spent his private time mentoring youths he’d met during that period of service. The guy who shot him as a long-time gang member with some screws loose, and the house an habitual source of related problems. It sounds trite, but what would we do as a city without guys like these? I can’t imagine the guts it takes for them to take on those low-lifes every day. And yet, this guy clearly still had hope for the future.
Did any of you hear the mayor’s remarks?
I wonder how many cops would like to use their billy-clubs and beat Mayor V. like a pinata, when he shows up for a press conference, and offers his support for the cops.
Who was the reporter who wrote about the cops being too aggresive/zealous in breaking up a bunch of drunk college students?
Celeste, what a wonderful post for you to have done. My late grandfather was the last police commissioner in San Antonio when they changed the form of city government from commissioners to city manager but he always said no one loves a cop until someone is in trouble, and when a cop buy’s the farm, even those who say bad things about them will usually come across with a kind word or two.
Cops lay it on the line for all of us every day they put on a badge. Sometimes they are bullies, sometimes they are power hungry, but even those folk have been killed in the line of duty trying to help someone.
Pinata. Clever.
ay yi yi
Everyday a person wakes up kissing his wife, his children, but never for once does he think that maybe its going to be his last kiss – the last touch of his love ones. You look into your daughter’s little eyes, hoping she will at least remember that you held her. You grab your son and fly him around the livingroom, hoping he remembers a faint image of his beloved father. Its a job, a respectful one, where as law enforcement officers you devote and dedicate your entire life of not only serving and protecting, but to transpire all the good qualities taught by your parents, neighbors, and teachers. The objective is always to make our American society into a better and happier place to live and work no matter what color or race………
This we take for granted.
The financial disclosure is a slap in the face of every LAPD officer’s integrity.
The financial disclosure is a slap in the face of every LAPD officer’s integrity.
Yep, it surely is. And, when you set the bar at this level, no one should be surprised when the pool is comprised of folks who can barely meet the bar. Expectations matter.
PopLock and Listener, you should state this opinion about the “slap in the face of every LAPD officer’s integrity” in the reader comments of the provincial and braindead Daily News, in ITS opinion section — where they posted an Opinion accusing Councilman Weiss, who took up the cause of the rank and file at their behest to modify this, “political pandering” in the nastiest terms. You may or may not like Weiss or know anything about him, but he’s the only one who had the guts to try to do the right thing and this is such a hypocritical stance by the Daily News — they play up Ofc. Simmons death and what a hero he and his colleagues are, to sell their paper, then put this slanderous Op Ed out at the same time.
They owe an apology to Simmons’ family and all of them on SWAT and anti-gang detail.
As for Listener’s comment that by blowing off these dedicated and experienced cops and just saying, “Fine, let them quit and we’ll get new ones,” as Reyes said in so many words, will indeed leave “a pool comprised of folks who can barely meet the bar,” and at the cost of millions lost in training and recruiting (when we just approved Prop S as an “emergency measure” to keep the cops we have) and priceless morale. The incredible stupidity of people like Reyes and the blowhards at Daily News is appalling.