WHAT IS BERNIE PARKS THINKING???
City Council Member Bernard Parks thinks that the new LAPD Headquarters ought to be named once again for William H. Parker, the guy who was Los Angeles police chief for 16 years and, in the eyes of many, the father of modern policing.
Last week, Parks introduced a motion at the City Council regarding his Parker Center sequel and got it passed out of committee. (Tony Cardenas was the only other committee member present and he voted YES too.)
The name would be fine were it not for the pesky fact that Parker was something of a notorious racist. True, he cleaned up the graft in the LAPD. In doing so, he turned the department into a paramilitary organization, urged police to set themselves apart from the community. He also coined the term “thin blue line,” implying that all that stood between the citizenry and chaos was the police. Parker’s strategies, as Bill Bratton has said, came at the expense of the city’s minority communities.
Commenter/blogger Jasmyn Cannick writes, “As much community relations work that today’s L.A.P.D. is doing to turn around its very tattered image, it makes no sense to want to hold onto the name of one if its most notoriously racist leaders.”
(She has posted a very good video on the issue, which I’ve embedded above).
LAPD Chief Bratton is not for keeping the name of Parker Center either. Nor is police commission member, John Mack—and a long list of other critics of the idea.
“I agree with Bill Bratton,” said Father Greg Boyle. “[We should call it] Police Administration Bldg.”
(NOTE TO CITY COUNCIL: Do not, I repeat, do not, open this up for a citywide vote or we’ll end up naming the new headquarters after Stephen Colbert.)
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INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY—UNLESS YOU’RE AN IMMIGRANT
The AP has an excellent story on the people whose rights—and lives—are being trampled by the immigration system—even when they are in the US legally or, as with some of the cases, US citizens.
Here’s a clip:
The American judicial system deems everyone innocent until proven guilty and guarantees a fair hearing with a lawyer – but not when it comes to immigration. Then there are far fewer rights. And as the system comes under pressure from a flood of new cases, the strain is showing.
One result is that U.S. citizens arrested as illegal immigrants or deportable residents cannot count on the legal system as a safety net. The odds are stacked against them. On the basis of interviews, lawsuits and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, The Associated Press has documented more than 55 such cases since 2000, and immigration lawyers count hundreds more.
I am aware of several such cases-–one in particular in which a man I know spent over a year in lock-up while he fought to get the immigration court to believe that he was an American citizen. (His father was a citizen meaning he is too.) He was finally released a couple of weeks ago.
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LAUSD’S CORTINES PULLS 1900 ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS OFF THE FIRING LIST
On Monday, LAUSD Sup Ray Cortines said that 1900 out of the 3500 teachers slated for layoffs, will not have to be given the boot. All 1900 are elementary school teachers.
Also, yesterday, Mayor Antonio Villaraisgosa pushed for shaving teacher salaries and some work “furloughs” in place of the layoffs.
According to the City News Service, Antonio said that “…laying off more than 3,000 teachers is not an acceptable option. These extraordinary circumstances demand an approach of shared responsibility and shared sacrifice. I’m asking everyone to come together, pitch in and be a small part of a bigger solution.”
If every employee took a 3 percent pay cut this year, about 2,280 school-based jobs could be saved, said AV.
The mayor is right. But there is only one teensy weensy problem with that plan: The district cannot simply unilaterally make those pay cuts. The union will have to go along with it and so far the union has said, Fat chance! Don’t even think about it, bud! (Or words to that effect.)
Today the LAUSD board will have to vote on what to do about the remaining teacher layoffs.
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SHOOTING IN FRONT OF LOCKE HIGH
Just before 8 a.m. on Monday morning, a guy walked up and shot a 17-year-old Locke High School student in the chest right in front of the school He survived after he walked into the school to get help. Police are searching for the shooter.
Locke is the Green Dot conversion school.
As the press showed up on the scene, Green Dot’s Steve Barr, looked grim. The campus is a safe, calm place, he said. But “we can’t control what goes on outside the school.”
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R.I.P. JUDITH KRUG……GLORIOUS WARRIOR QUEEN FOR FREE SPEECH
You have likely never heard of her, but the American Library Association’s Judith Krug, who has just died of cancer, was a remarkable woman who, for forty years, fought righteously and ferociously for Americans’ freedom to read.
She was the director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, and the executive director of the Freedom to Read Foundation, the First Amendment legal defense arm of the ALA.
She was the founder Banned Books Week, which brought to the attention of US readers what works of literature were being banned and challenged—both present and past.
She led the charge to have section 215 of the US Patriot Act repealed-–a statute she believe invaded a reader’s privacy intolerably.
Her life’s passion was doing anything and everything she could to protect the Constitutional rights of citizens granted under the First Amendment.
It was a battle she fought hard and well.
She modeled a commitment to the principles of intellectual freedom for an entire generation of librarians.
She will be sorely missed.
I think it’s creepy that the teachers union won’t consider an act of solidarity and negotiate a temporary 3% pay cut in order to save thousands of their co-workers jobs. Obviously this has to be seen as an inter-rim solution and there’s a longer discussion moving forward to budget for the schools effectively, but it would seem that the immediate burden of losing several thousand teachers – just from a self-interest perspective – isn’t worth hanging on to that 3% when you factor in the increased workload it will inevitably throw on the teachers who are left.
When you consider the pain to the system, to the individual teachers and to the students who are going to be crammed into fewer classrooms, this just strikes me as a counter-productive, short-sighted, selfish position. I would also suggest that the 3% in teachers payback be matched by a 5% voluntary pay cut by higher-salaried administrative people. And if Villagarosa is going to be credible in suggesting this, he should chip in a pay cut of his own – one that he’ll feel as much as the average teacher would feel losing 3% of their paycheck – toward the school budget as a gesture of good faith.
It’s not entirely fair to hold someone who served honorably for deacades with the prevailing views during his time to the changed social expectations of today. After seeing the evolution in society, Gov. Wallace of Alabama apologized for his 1960’s stances against integration. Today, William Parker would likely be no different.
When Parker led the LAPD during the black riots in Watts, Parker probably handled that as best that he could. He was trying to maintain law and order then, but “law and order” to many is racist, as though blacks don’t have to obey laws.
You people hold grudges longer than almost anyone else that I know.
What do you think about naming so many projects after KKK member Robert Byrd (Democrat-WV)? Roosevelt’s army was mostly segregated. Former Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, a liberal on the bench, had been in the KKK. People change and adjust to the times. Don’t hold people of the past to new standards of today.
On Judith Krug, “banning” of books to some is the same as parents monitoring what their kids read. Liberals make challenging of any book sound as if Nazis are in coming. Some books available to young people are not age appropriate and others are simpy trash, which shows a lack of discretion and lack of stewardship of the library when they buy them. The term “banning books” is no different than “politcally correct” speech today. It’s a way for liberals to act superior and to shove more of their nonsense down our throats while trying to demean honest and concerned parents and taxpayers. We should ban liberals.
No Woody, they were not the “prevailing views” of his time. Plenty of people were not racist like Parker was.
Evan, I lived in the deep South at the time. How could I tell the difference between Parker’s and prevailing views?
However, Parker seemed to state plainly what he saw without the politically correct crowd running him off. He had enough approval to remain Chief for 16 years. It would be helpful to see a list of everyone who attacked his “racism” at that time. I bet that it’s a short one.
Celeste, you lived in L.A. when Parker was Chief. Did you or any of your family feel about him then the way that you feel about him now?
No Woody, the list would be very long indeed. Chief Parker and his Nazi Storm Trooper LAPD were brutal and racist to the core. Parker, that old alcoholic racist went to his grave as a facist who still believed in what he said, (Blacks), “we’re on top, they’re on the bottom”, (Mexican Americans), “those Mexicans are wild Indians from the hills of Mexico, they will always pull a knife”, (On African Americans during the Watts rebellion “Negro’s during a full moon run around like monkeys”, make a suspect talk quickly especially if they were black or Mexican, and if that meant a blackjack to the head all the better.
Good riddance to that old racist alcoholic, the quicker he’s forgotten the better off we’ll all be.
What a surprise Don Quixote still angry about events which happended back in 1960. I wonder if DQ’s abuelita ever met Chief Parker.
I wonder who DQ is going to call whan a cholo is out shooting his cuete in the barrio?
We know DQ would not be caught dead calling the racist, xenophobes from the LAPD.
I thought Bull Connor was bad….
Celeste, Parker was a guest on the television program What’s My Line? back on August 21, 1955. Doesn’t that count for anything?
After seeing the evolution in society, Gov. Wallace of Alabama apologized for his 1960’s stances against integration.
Surely you know that Wallace was the rankest of opportunists. After losing the 1958 gubernatorial election (in which he had the endorsement of the NAACP), Wallace decided, according to Seymore Trammell, his campaign finance director, that he would not be “out-niggered again” when he ran again. The 1958 Wallace was in the Jim Folsom camp; the 1962 George Wallace was in the Orval Faubus/Lester Maddox camp.
Yes, Randy, Gov. Wallace was a Democrat and acted like one. However, after he was shot making him an invalid and he was no longer in the political realm, he apologized, and I believe that it was real and for no purpose other than to confess his wrong decisions and perhaps make it up to his Maker. (I never thought that I would ever defend Wallace.)
BTW, Lester Maddox actually turned out to be a pretty decent governor, probably because he was a businessman. He also integrated the Georgia State Troopers and was responsible for much reform in prisons and mental health facilities. Sometimes people change or perceptions of them change.
I actually got to speak to both of them.
Oh, funny story short…our maid took my little sister, who was about six or seven at the time, and her slightly younger little boy, Michael, to a Veterans Day parade. Wallace was riding in a convertible and his car temporarily stopped for him to shake hands with some people and give out autographs. My little sister said, “I have to tell the governor something,” and then took Michael by the hand and went up to Wallace. Wallace looked at the two of them, probably wondered who was behind it, and gave her an autograph. Our maid said that she was scared and hid in the crowd when this was happening. I don’t know what my sister had to say to the governor, but we still have his autograph and a lot of laughs from this.
Thanks Celeste for starting the dialogue at least. You have to question why in the hell would Parks and Perry both blacks want to name a new building after a racist who was the worst Chief towards minorities. Back in those days people didn’t speak out like they do today because you would get beat up under Chief Parker. Fact is he disliked Mexican and Blacks. LAPD was mostly white and that says a lot. Its a new LAPD and more miniorities then in its history. You don’t recognize a person by naming a building after him for being a racist. The people who named a building after KKK leader shows their ignornance
BTW, Lester Maddox actually turned out to be a pretty decent governor, probably because he was a businessman
I’m sure you have an autgraphed axe handle from him.