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Community Policing, LACP and the LAPD
letter from Everett Littlefield, LACP Board of Directors
September 10, 2005
Dear Bill,
Checked out LACP and many "kudos to you" for changing the front page. It gives a more thorough meaning of the word "policing" and better represents the mission of LACP. This gives a much needed expansion of the meaning of "policing" than it had before, because it appeared to be only about the LAPD and the suppression of crime.
I have always thought that community policing meant not only the suppression of crime, but the intervention and prevention of it as well. Your mission statement implies this, but it could be spelled out more clearly with references to some of those groups who are involved in these activities. Your examples of LACP's support and participation in the Citywide Issues Group and the UScorps are good examples.
There have been some responses in the LA Times Editorial Page, Letters, to an article that Jack Dunphy recently wrote. You might want to check out "Betrayal, Not Bullets, Is What Cops Fear."
Here's the article:
Betrayal, Not Bullets, Is What Cops Fear
They've drained the fairness from the system.
LA Times
September 4, 2005
By Jack Dunphy
Jack Dunphy is the pseudonym of a Los Angeles police officer who writes a column for National Review Online.
IT HAS NEVER BEEN more dangerous to be a Los Angeles police officer. The danger lies not only in the risk of being shot, stabbed or otherwise injured. We train and mentally prepare for those times when we are called to put our lives on the line. But there is a danger, more difficult to prepare for, and it is more evident today than at any time in my two decades with the LAPD.
Chances are that as you read this, I am riding in a police car through one of Los Angeles' rougher neighborhoods. At any moment I may be assigned to a violent crime in progress, and I will go there as quickly as I can and try to arrest the perpetrator, placing myself between predator and prey if necessary. Or I may turn a corner and find myself in the middle of a gang shootout. The participants would just as soon shoot at me as at their rivals. I accept these risks each day as I put on the uniform of my profession. What is much more difficult to accept, and all but impossible to prepare for, is the risk to my family's security if I survive an encounter by means that deviate even slightly from the way things are taught in the controlled environment of the Police Academy. The decisions I make in the blink of an eye, decisions that will either save my life or get me killed, will be scrutinized by people with no understanding of what it feels like to be attacked, to suddenly have your pants on the pavement as you wonder if you're going to make it home.
Worse, the decision to prosecute me or to fire me from the LAPD may rest in the hands of people whose allegiances to political constituencies outweigh their commitment to fairness. And from the point of view of the city's police officers, the fairness has been all but drained from the department's disciplinary system.
Consider the fate of John Hatfield, the Southeast Division officer who in June 2004 was shown on television hitting car thief Stanley Miller with a flashlight at the end of a vehicle pursuit and foot chase. Hatfield was fired last month despite the fact that Miller suffered only minor injuries when he was arrested. It would be hard to find a cop on the street today who didn't believe that Hatfield was sacrificed to appease those elements in the city who threaten "unrest" if their wishes are ignored.
Next to find his head on the block was Officer Steven Garcia, who last February shot and killed 13-year-old Devin Brown at the end of another high-speed chase. Brown was driving a stolen car when he attempted to evade arrest. But while Miller chose to flee on foot when he was cornered, Brown elected to ram a police car. John Mack, at the time the president of the Los Angeles Urban League, spoke with reporters after the Brown shooting. "It's sickening," he said. "This shooting represents another tragedy inflicted on our community by an LAPD officer…. " On Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor," Mack stated flatly that Garcia should not have shot Brown. "[The officers] were out of the car and in no danger whatsoever, and Officer Garcia unloaded 10 rounds, three, four into the car, into young Devin Brown…. "
Despite Mack's long history of hostility toward the LAPD, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa appointed him to the Police Commission, where he now sits as president. Will Garcia get a fair hearing from this man when the commission examines the Brown shooting? I doubt it.
And now we have Tony Muhammad, a man who came to South Los Angeles looking for a confrontation with police and got one, thereby raising his profile and presumably his chances of succeeding the ailing Louis Farrakhan as leader of the Nation of Islam. When Muhammad was taken to the 77th Street Division police station, a deputy chief spent more than an hour consoling him in his cell. The officers who witnessed this say they took it as an ominous sign.
The rise in officer morale that accompanied William J. Bratton's appointment as chief of the LAPD has now ebbed. Officers are again beginning to follow a "drive-and-wave" policy as they did under former Chief Bernard C. Parks. They are again avoiding confrontations with those who most deserve to be confronted. As John Hatfield and Steven Garcia discovered too late, sometimes fighting crime doesn't pay.
http://feeds.losangelesnews.net/?rid=97cbe563ff45b038&cat=a7d0846f876c8187&f=1 |
You more than likely saw this article and I'm curious whether you have made any comment about it on the LACP site or have directed readers to it. I think Dunphy gives a clear picture on how some of the LAPD brass decisions are made to appease the politicians and public, and how it effects the rank and file officers. I know that you do not like to deal with controversial issues or take sides, so you might not be interested.
One of the criticisms of LACP that I have gotten from other persons is that the site gives the appearance of supporting the LAPD brass and the political bureaucrats more so than the LAPD line officers and the public as well.
There is a disconnect between the LAPD policies (that are not that clearly spelled out in the first place) and practice. At least from my observation policies are not uniformly implemented and enforced, and that really hampers the ability of the line officers to do their jobs. Also when the LAPD brass makes decisions to appease the residents for an officer's behavior, (right or wrong), it does not really help the community solve it's social and conomic problems. It just puts a band aid on it.
As long at the LAPD brass does not have enough officers to help prevent crime in the first place, their polices are not going to be clearly spelled out, uniformally implemented and enforced. At best all they can do is have the line officers react/respond to crime, or just ride around in their cars as it is claimed, and "wave" as they drive by. If they do get out of their cars there are not enough officers around or close by to back them up, if needed. It's like "dammed if you do" and "dammed if you don't" ... and it's certainly not a very clear signal to do their jobs or help the community to feel that they're going to be kept safe.
Hope all is well and take care,
Everett
EDITOR'S NOTE: While LACP cooperates freely with LAPD, the Sheriff, all members of regional government and many other groups, we are a grassroots effort and are not directly affiliated with any of them. We welcome community input and participation. Please feel free to write an article, send a Letter to the Editor, or suggest how we can better serve the resident.
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