Robert   Los Angeles

Posted: 10:09 am [PST] on October 19 2007

I am convinced that this whole event was planned in advance to make law-enforcement entities look bad, and to generate sympathy for an illegal class of people at the same time that Congress was considering legalizing their status. So they decided to trump out another saga on police brutality. But the police made the best out of a difficult situation that day. They had to deal with a crowd that intentionally made their jobs as difficult as possible. The crowd knew that they had a Mayor who would back them up no matter what. When the police saw that a lot of the crowd was too slow in leaving the park, they reacted with some aggression, hoping the crowd would get the message. If they were to react with any less of force, it's possible a full-scale riot would have started, with the burning of cars, and the destruction of property. Besides, what is the correct amount of force to use against illegal immigrants? Don't forget that the police had already made the decision to clear out the park. The mainstream news media would have put the police in a bad light no matter how the police would have reacted. Because Mayor Villar loves illegal immigrants, he is going to wind up costing the city tens of millions of dollars, because of alleged abuse claims of some demonstrators in the park. If we had another Mayor, for example, Hahn, Riordan, or Bradley, we probably wouldn't have had a risky "immigrants rights" rally in the first place, thereby saving LA tens of millions of dollars.

dick cleverley   sacramento

Posted: 07:56 am [PST] on October 19 2007

Good interview

abe   Los Angeles

Posted: 04:41 pm [PST] on October 13 2007

Chief Bratton is more interested in promulgating his invention--Compstat--then he is in making sure officers are well trained . Crowd Control training hasn't been done for 2 years prior to May 1. New officers assigned to Metro did not receive the type of training they deserved. Instead, Chief Bratton sent them to fight crime so his Compstat statistics showed a decline. Numbers and statistics were more important than adequate training--which means reduced liability for the city--and the safety of offices.

ONE officer used a flashlight in the wrong manner and the solution is spending millions on new flashlights. Wouldn't it be cheaper to RETRAIN that ONE officer? The chief's policy here is L.A. is to punish 9,400 officers every time ONE or TWO officers do something wrong. Deal with the actual problem and stop attacking the what-if and other potential problems that may never come up.

Crowd Control training is a perishable skill. If the chief thinks sending the whole department to a ONE DAY training class on Crowd Control Tactics will fix what happened on May 1, he is mistaken.

The officers involved in the May 1st use of force were abandoned in the park while hoodlums threw rocks, bottles, chunks of concrete, and other items at them. No one answered the radio request for additional officers. When you are in teh middle of a mob that is attacking you, there is no more time for understanding, for cultural sensitivity, and for talk. The only thing left for officers to survive the attack is brute force.

Unfortunately, police managers, the media, and pundits like Xavier Hermosillo still don't get that.