To Protect and To Serve

The Los Angeles Police Department has once again brought national headlines to LA, and, once again, not in a good way. The police response to a bottle-throwing melee at the site of an immigration rally on Tuesday certainly appears to have been a brutal over-reaction by all accounts. An editorial in yesterday's Los Angeles Times came to the same conclusion and points to some of the evidence:

Police Chief William J. Bratton said it appeared that a dispersal order was issued to the crowd, in English only, from a helicopter hovering overhead, rather than from sound trucks on the scene. That's simply astounding. It seems ludicrous to have to point out that if police expect a crowd order in today's L.A. to be obeyed, they need to issue it in Spanish as well as English. That is only more true at a long-planned immigration rally. And from a helicopter? Expecting a dispersal order to be heard and understood over the sound of rotor blades, in the midst of a crowd, is absurd.

There may well have been cause for gun-wielding officers in riot gear to shoot nonlethal bullets at troublemakers who left the permitted area and began hurling bottles and other dangerous objects at them. But it's hard to see how it became appropriate for police to shoot at people trying to leave the scene. It's hard to see how it's proper policy to shoot at, push or baton reporters who are trying to document the events. It was hard for Bratton — who expressed "grave concern" — to see why it was appropriate for officers to fire 240 times while arresting none of their targets.

Hard, indeed: in fact, so hard that LAPD Chief William Bratton made it clear that he welcomed an announced FBI investigation into the incident. Chief Bratton also added an unusual twist to the investigation when he asserted that he wants that investigation to include more than the line officers involved. He wants the actions of the brass in charge examined as well. That indicates to me that he, unlike some of his predecessors, is not going to be toting out the shopworn excuse of "just a few rogue officers."

In an article in today's LA Times, which also revealed that the police units who have been specially trained for these kind of protest events had been pulled from the site and either sent home or sent to other locations unrelated to the event, Chief Bratton reiterated his concerns in pretty blunt language.

On Thursday, Bratton offered a more detailed and pointed critique of the police actions, particularly those involving Telemundo anchor Pedro Sevcec, who was broadcasting from under a canopy. He was pushed to the ground while on live television as police shoved through.

"Here you have a tent clearly [for the] news media," Bratton said. The anchor "wears a suit and tie and there is clearly cameras … and the knocking over of cameras in the tent — that behavior is not under any circumstances justified."

He also said he was troubled by reports that police used force on women and children who had gone to the park to play.

"The idea that officers would be firing — some of these devices send out five or six projectiles with one shot — that is a concern," Bratton said. [Emphasis added]

If Chief Bratton is a man of his word (and he has given evidence that he is such a man in the past few years) he will cooperate with the FBI investigation and then act on the findings, even if those findings reach into the command structure of the LAPD.