(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.
I love the look of telephone poles and wires framed with the rainbow. There has to be a deep, symbolic meaning to it.
I’ll look forward to hearing the video clips – are they up yet? – anyway won’t have time til later at night. But as for the endorsement thing, that Bratton “was criticized for,” well, he was criticized for lots of things and was generally proven right: like he said, “I have earned the right” to make endorsements or speak his mind in general.
While I have the greatest support for Chief Beck and know he’s earned his position by working his way up from the trenches, I think Chf Bratton was right and brave to endorse where he did on the WHOLE e.g. for Weiss who he worked with for 7 years vs. the other guy, ahem (tho agree he shouldn’t spread it too thin), but would agree to NO ONE making endorsements, starting with the County DA and County Sheriff who meddled and twisted arms first in a CITY election to have us end up in the debacle we’re in now. Bratton was responding only in a positive way to their very negative (downright bizarrely inflammatory and false, even aptly seen as the law enforcement wing of the L A Weekly but with a strong bully pulpit and access to lots of money) behavior. DA Cooley’s widely known to have wanted someone he controls to take over for him as DA, unless his ambition has now gotten bigger than that – another election cycle we must beware of.
This whole current CD2 election, with the amazing amount of money some unions mainly the Police Protective League are spending to elect a total novice over someone they admit has a solid record supporting law enforcement, is disturbing in its nastiness with shades of the City Attorney election. (John Shallman being the manager for both Trutanich and Cooley and Essel, is being cites all over even by the Daily News, as no coincidence.) The PPL’s opposition to Chf. Bratton was also well-known, and PPL- “bought” or beholden candidates like Smith, Parks, Rosendahl, Zine etc. insist that the trash fees which wee tripled specifically FOR “1000 cops” were never meant for that but just to offset real cost of trash pickup (after they used Chief Bratton and his credibility to “sell it” to the public in ads and mailers) while Weiss, Garcetti, the Mayor and certain others supported the Chief on his goal to maintain 10,000 cops as “a floor” and shoot for 12,000. This is a position Chf. Beck has reiterated, but having come up through the local ranks, I can see he’d be reticent to endorse anyone against the PPL (even though they don’t actually represent the real rank & file but just a clique, by many accounts). So really, it’s a case-sensitive issue on many levels.
As you note, SO40 is another sensitive issue where Beck says he supports it – but does that mean AS interpreted now, as Chf. Bratton did, or as “Jack Dunphy” and certain conservative cops and officials like Zine and Trutanich and especially his right hand Berger the Walter Moore running mate, have said they do, which is to be more aggressive in looking for illegals as a prime directive, apart from committing other crimes? Saying “he supports SO40” is actually a lot more of a potential gray area than it sounds. But I have confidence that Beck can navigate it in a way that appeases both the ACLU types and the Jack Dunphies.
Isn’t that amazing. I posted a while back that law enforcement groups in general made endorsements, not based on true cop issues like stances on gangs, crime and punishment but on opening purses to them as dems love to do and was ridiculed. Here’s WBC stating exactly that but will there be an attack on this post by the boards liberal elite, no way.
Smaller police associations usually do represent well the feelings of their members, the larger ones in many ways don’t. The bigger ones giving an endorsement to a politician, be it the PPL, ALADS or PORAC mean little to their membership.
Yes it’s amazing…that your sense of injury and your whining quotient is so over-the-top. Make your point without the cry-baby bullshit and you might get some respect. At this rate, your commentary here is embarrassing to police officers from every possible angle.
I don’t want respect from you Reg. Anybody with the least bit of respect for themselves could care less what a miserable geriatric nobody like you thinks.
Pointing out the bs that liberal ladies like you post is easy, and it looks like it stings a bit.
You’ve got no sting. Sorry, Whiny One.
Your only game is simple filth Reg, the refuge of all morons and gutter types. You cry like a little kid and your miserbale life shines through all that you write.
I relish that you’re so unhappy.
Ouch ! You’re tough, Big Man ! That was like getting hit with a purse.
” That was like getting hit with a purse”. That something that happens to you a lot?
“That something that happens to you a lot?”
Stale.
The troops still feel as though they’ve been kicked in the gut by the demotions of Charlie Beck. They aren’t happy and aren’t too trusting of the new Chief especially in light of the negative media of his selection. Charlie hasn’t really mentioned community policing at all and heard the forums that were held with Bratton have been wiped out. Charlie isn’t a community policing type of guy and friends he’s promoted may know about the area they were in but overall don’t know the city like McDonnell does. His demotion is leaving a huge hole in community policing and partnerships. One of the bike guys who attended this meeting said no one showed up. so it would be interesting to see the video.