Bill Bratton met with journalists from all over the city on Sunday and issued a rather remarkable apology, then announced that around 60 Metro officers have been asked to stand down. The LA Times’ Richard Winton has a good write up of the meeting. Here are a few clips:
“Some of them in all likelihood won’t be returning to the Metropolitan Division as a result of our findings,” he said.
Any disciplinary action won’t come until the LAPD issues a May 30 report to the City Council. “Some of this will be career-impacting,” Bratton added.
The chief made it clear that incident commanders would be just as accountable.
That last, about the incident commanders, is particularly significant, since a big complaint is that, when there’s a problem, the rank and file takes the hit, while the higher-ups skate free.
Bratton said commanders know they must keep order among the officers. “One thing I know about them [police] is you have to control them, because they go out of control faster than any human being in the world” because of the traumatic circumstances of the work, he said.
Well, yeah. Very nicely said, Chief.
Chief Bratton is kicking his own men to the curb just to appease whiney journalists and opportunists. That should really help morale with his force. Rather than fire the officers, perhaps more training is required–adequate training that the Chief was responsible to see that they obtained.
If a teacher has a class that is out of control, I usually blame the teacher not the class.
Um, Pokey, I’m not sure I’d compare a quasi-professional employee to a kid in a classroom. One is expected to have some internal controls fully installed when you hire them. Most teachers I know make only tentative age-appropriate assumptions about the kids in their classrooms.
Celeste my dear friend, good stuff, and here is a topic for further research. In Texas (where I live) police officers are required to be evaluated by a psychologist who has to then report to the hiring police department/police academy whether or not there are some lurking mental problems. Is that required of officers in California or Los Angeles? If not, why not and if so, how do some of these folks slip through the net?
Bill Bratton’s “Problem” is that he came here after careers in Boston and New York where Law Enforcement is a CIVIL operation whereas in LA, ever since the days of Bill Parker, the ethos has been that of a quasi military force that sees it job as one of “Occupying forces” over a recalcitrant population. In Parker’s department (and in Bernie Park’s Dept for that matter) the question of excessive force just didn’t come up as a reason for disclipline. Parker was concerned with corruption – he should have been, the LAPD of the thrites was a film noir bad dream but wonderful for writers like Raymond Chandler. You don’t hear of cops on the take here which is why the Rampart Division scandal was such a shock to the system. In NYC I suspect they’d react but expect something like that.
But, as I saidearlier, the real test now will be the reaction of the rank and file to all this. They are not used to the Chief not backing them up “1000%” when these things occur. It will be intersting to see how the PPL deals with this. What’s Dennis Zine saying?
It’s about time that the “higher ups” be brought to justice. Much police abuse occurs because of the “code of silence,” and that code sometimes involves management.
Richard’s got it completely right. When I interviewed Bratton during his first couple of weeks on the job, he was very articulate in describing the various phases the department had been through in its history, it’s present use of the “command and control” model, how that was the right model at one time, but needed to change now. But it’s turning a supertanker.
Honestly, he’s made a lot of progress. But so much of it is under-the-hood work that isn’t readily apparent from the outside.
As for the union’s response, I meant to post some of that but it was getting late and I already had a lot up. Answer, they are freaking out.
But I’ll put some of it up tonight.
BRATTON THE BASTARD
Once again Bill Bratton will dupe the media–and the public–into thinking he’s got their best interests at heart. If he did, he would take on the powerful police union and support Gloria Romero’s bill that would open up disciplinary hearings against these criminal cops. But he won’t. He’s too afraid of taking on the police union. Bratton is a special-interest puppet. Bring back Bernard Parks. You may disagree with Parks, and if you’re a rational person you most certainly will, but at least he wasn’t a duplicitous fraud like this eastern transplant. But who can blame Bratton; without the union, his contract would never be renewed. Don’t you progressives want to know the names of the indictable cops? Sheesh. Enough of this politician’s apologies already. Send the guy with the funny accent back to the Charles River.
Anybody ask Bill Bratton for the video shot by police the day his well-trained elite squad showed off all their neat moves in MacArthur Park? Didn’t think so. Where’s the media on this story when we really need them? Bratton is more transparent than he is a fighter for transparency
Blame Game
When we try to establish any blame for the fiasco at MacArthur Park, we should be looking at:
1) Who gave the command to the squad to disperse the demonstrators from the park and was there proper justification for the command?
2) Who approved this command (management) and what was the justification for the approval?
3) What training and protocols were provided for officers involved?
3) Once the order was given did the squad members follow standard protocols in their dispersal of the demonstrators and reporters from the park?
Protocol/Training:
I would argue that standard training/protocol would be to NEVER let anyone (including reporters) get behind your picket line. This would tend to explain why the police were pushing/poking the reporters who had refused to move as was seen on the video.
I would argue that standard training/protocol would be to fire foam bullets at and of the demonstrators who seemed to be confronting the picket line, to MINIMIZE PHYSICAL CONTACT with the demonstrators.
I would argue that the police had been trained for “counter-terrorismâ€Â, not stupid kids, and reacted as trained.
— No officer who performed according to their training should be blamed.
— Management (police commissioners?) who approved the protocols for crowd dispersal.
— On site management who issued the command to disperse the crowd.
— Central management who likely approved the command.