LAPD Officers Get No Criminal Charges In 2007 May Day Melee

News You Might Have Missed: The Los Angeles Times reported on Hallloween that the Los Angeles County District Attorney has decided not to press criminal charges against any of the thirty or so officers it had investigated in the wake of the now-infamous 2007 May Day melee in Mcarthur Park.

They described the incident as "unfortunate and preventable" but said that the office was "closing our file and will take no further action in this matter."

Last year, Police Chief William J. Bratton said he planned to discipline 11 officers and called for the termination of four others for their roles in the melee in which police were accused of using excessive force to clear immigration rights demonstrators and journalists.

LAPD officers were videotaped wielding batons and shooting rubber bullets in an attempt to disperse a largely peaceful crowd. A scathing internal investigation into the incident blamed poor leadership and overly aggressive tactics by officers in the field.

Earlier this year, the Los Angeles City Council agreed to pay nearly $13 million to people injured or mistreated in the melee.

Under the settlement, the department must submit to court oversight of its crowd-control procedures -- another layer of federal involvement that comes as LAPD leaders are impatient to be free of a longstanding and more onerous monitoring program imposed after the Rampart Division corruption scandal.

Curiously, the original L.A. Now report on the D.A. decision which included the previous graphs has been modified ("updated") when the story was moved to the front page of the paper and became:

After a lengthy review, prosecutors said there is insufficient evidence to prove that any of the 30 officers who were investigated violated the law when using force, although some might have used "questionable tactics."

The melee, which occurred at the conclusion of a pro- immigration rally and received national attention, resulted from poor police training, leadership and communication, prosecutors said. Their finding echoed the Los Angeles Police Department's own scathing report on the officers' actions.

Officers were videotaped wielding batons and shooting less-than-lethal rubberized bullets in an attempt to disperse the mostly peaceful crowd after a small group of agitators confronted police. Dozens of protesters and journalists were injured as officers cleared the park.

The department's "planning, tactical and command failures" were the backdrop for the officers' actions against "both violent protesters and nonviolent protesters and media personnel," prosecutors said in their report. "The media had innocently and unwittingly positioned themselves in an area directly in the path of officers attempting to clear the park."

In the immediate aftermath, Police Chief William J. Bratton removed a deputy chief and commander from their posts. Deputy Chief Caylor "Lee" Carter retired shortly thereafter.

Bratton also said he planned to discipline several officers and called for the termination of others for their roles in the melee.

But internal disciplinary panels gave no officer more than a 20-day suspension. Some officers, however, were demoted, according to their attorney.

Earlier this year, the Los Angeles City Council agreed to pay nearly $13 million to people injured or mistreated in the May Day melee.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League is happy with the result that no more officers will be punished for their actions that day.

The LAPPL is pleased that District Attorney Steve Cooley exercised his prosecutorial independence and made the right decision to not prosecute any officers involved the May Day incident. His review sought only truth and justice, and was not influenced by any political agenda.

As the LAPPL has said all along, there needs to be a thorough review of the facts about what happened on May Day 2007 before passing judgment about officers’ actions. We are pleased and relieved at the outcome of the District Attorney’s investigation, as we were with the Board of Rights hearings in July.

We also said that the public should not be surprised by the final outcome. Removed from the political and media spotlight, the District Attorney and the Board of Rights, which included a civilian member, objectively reviewed the facts and rendered opinions of the officers’ actions based on long- standing Department policy.

The Department’s 2007 May Day report presented to the Police Commission acknowledged that the events that transpired primarily resulted from breakdowns in command structure, planning and communications, as well as training deficiencies.

The League went on record immediately after the incident pointing out the lack of continuous and updated training that partially contributed to the incident. Training is the backbone of good police work – ensuring that officers know not only what to do, but can properly implement the Department’s policies, procedures and expectations in any situation. As a result of the 2007 report, revealing the Department's ill-advised decision to abandon introductory training for new Metropolitan Division officers and to not train all officers for large tactical missions, the Department reinstated training as a fundamental priority.

We would like to point out that that there were many positive actions by officers on that day, as the Department itself has acknowledged. We commend those officers for their professionalism and restraint under difficult circumstances.

We'll see if this is really the last we hear about this incident (I doubt it).

Winner of the LAPD Chiefstakes: Charlie Beck

Multiple media sources are reporting that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has selected Deputy Chief Charlie Beck to be his nominee for the next Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Beck, 56, was previously reported to be on the Mayor's short list of three finalists (all white and male) to replace outgoing LAPD head William Bratton, who left his post on October 31st. The other two finalists were Deputy Chief Michel Moore and First Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell.

The Mayor will appear at three public forums with his nominee this week. The LGBT community is explicitly invited:

Tuesday, November 3, 2009
at the EXPO Center 3980 South Menlo Ave.,
Los Angeles CA 90037
at 4:00 PM Doors Open at 3:00 PM

Wed. November 4, 2009
6:00 - 7 :30 PM
Van Nuys City Hall
14410 Sylvan Street
Van Nuys, CA

Thursday November 5, 2009
6:00 - 7:30 PM
El Sereno Senior Center at
4818 Klamath Place
Los Angeles, CA

You might want to ask the Mayor and Chief Charlie Beck about whether they will cut ties with the Boy Scouts-linked, anti-gay Explorers program once and for all.

LAPD Chief Short List Revealed: All White, All-Male

Same as it ever was....

Despite having heard from several potential candidates for the LAPD top job who were Black (Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger), Latino (Deputy Chief Sergio Diaz) and female (Assistant Chief Sharon Papa), the Los Angeles Police Commission chose three white men for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to select his choice of the new LAPD Chief from.

According to the Los Angeles Times they are:

Deputy Chief Michel Moore, 49, is a 28-year veteran of the LAPD and is widely credited with helping to push down crime rates in the San Fernando Valley during his more than four years in charge of the bureau. As a captain in 2000, Moore was assigned the difficult task of helping to run the department's notorious Rampart Division in the wake of accusations of widespread corruption and abuses.

Deputy Chief Charles Beck, 56, is a 32-year veteran of the force and the son of a retired LAPD deputy chief. As commander of the Detective Bureau, he is a popular figure with the rank-and-file, who generally view him as a serious crime-fighter, and with the city's civil rights leaders, who hold him up as a progressive thinker on community relations and police conduct.

First Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell, 50, has served in the department for 28 years and, in addition to Bratton, has been the public face of the LAPD for several years in his role as chief of staff. Widely respected in the department and beyond, he was a candidate for chief in 2002 and Bratton went on to use an extensive plan developed by McDonnell as a blueprint for reshaping the department. With Bratton's frequent trips out of town, McDonnell has often been called to stand in as chief.

Villaraigosa will interview them all and make a decision over the weekend, which needs to be ratified by a majority of the Los Angeles City Council.

LAPD Chief Bratton Announces Shock Exit

Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton shocked the city when he announced on Wednesday that he intended to leave his position by the end of October 2009. Kevin Roderick at LA Observed has the best coverage (including the full text of his resignation announcement)

Earlier today, Wednesday, August 5th, I met with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to inform him of my intention to resign my position as Chief of our great Department effective October 31st, so that I may pursue new professionalization of policing opportunities in the private sector. There is never a good time to leave a job and a Department that you love and enjoy, but there is always a right time. That time has now come for me professionally and personally to seek new career challenges.

Since my appointment as Chief of this extraordinary Department in October 2002, by then Mayor James Hahn, we have travelled together on an exciting and successful journey - through good times and bad - meeting crises, challenge and opportunity with consistent optimism, confidence and resolve.

You and I committed to five overarching goals in 2002, and as of today, we can all take justifiable pride and satisfaction in knowing that we have in large measure met and continued to expand their impact in our ultimate purpose for being: to protect and to serve all the residents of this great City. We committed to reduce crime, fear, and disorder, and we have done that. We committed to keeping the City safer from terrorism and we have done that while establishing national best practices and initiatives. We committed to full implementation of the Federal Consent Decree, and while it took longer than originally anticipated, we have done that. We campaigned to grow the Department by 1,000 officers and with the focused leadership of Mayor Villaraigosa and the support of the City Council and voters we are doing that. We also committed to Bias-Free Policing, to ensure that all the residents and visitors to our City of Angels would be the benefactors of constitutional, compassionate, consistent policing in every neighborhood. The recent Harvard Study and Los Angeles Times poll have conclusively shown that a significant majority of all Angelinos feel that you are succeeding. It will not be easy to leave because, while much has been done, there is still much more that can be done. But having met the personal and professional challenges that I set for myself, I feel that this is an appropriate time for new leadership to move the Department forward and meet the challenges that lie ahead.

Thank you for the honor, the privilege and the enjoyment of working with you, and for the opportunity to tell your story during these past seven years. I hope that each of you in some way, no matter what your position, felt that you were part of what I believe will be a very special time in the history of the Department – our Department – a Department that is without question second to none. It has truly been an honor and a privilege to be your chief.

All the best,
WJB

Dude! He pulled a Palin! (Bratton's term did not end until 2012.)

LAPD May Day Melee Costs City $12.85 million

The ramifications of the "May Day Melee" on May 1, 2007 when the LAPD nearly caused a riot by acting inappropriately at a peaceful immigrants rights march in Los Angeles continue, with the City of Los Angeles agreeing to a settlement of nine lawsuits at a total cost nearly $13 million.

Los Angeles Times reporters Maeve Reston and Joel Rubin posted the following to the LA Now blog:

The settlement is another blow to the city’s treasury related to LAPD misconduct in the midst of serious budgetary problems. The settlement of the May Day cases comes on the heels of the council’s approval last week of a $20.5-million payout to four current and former police officers who claimed they were falsely arrested and mistreated in the wake of the scandal involving the police department's Rampart Division.

The council still faces other legal troubles related to the May Day incident--there were 27 pending cases related to the demonstration before today’s settlement, according to officials with the city attorney. Only one case involving a broken camera had been settled.

Forty-two people, including nine journalists, were injured as a pro-immigration march wound down in MacArthur Park on May 1. LAPD officials said the scuffle was set off by a group of agitators who threw bottles and other objects at police. The department’s Metro Division used batons and fired rubber bullets to disperse what was a predominantly peaceful gathering.

Chief William J. Bratton said the fracas was an aberration for the department, but promised it would lead to changes in policy and training. He called the decision of his officers to use that level of force a “command and control breakdown.”

In response to the incident, Bratton announced that he was disciplining 11 officers and calling for the termination of four. In another step toward preventing a recurrence, Bratton set up a new bureau known as the Critical Incident Management Bureau that overseas major events and protests.

WTF? I want to hear more about the $20.5 million to the four LAPD officers who were falsely charged and mistreated. Why are they getting paid more than the other nine lawsuits by civilians that was settled for $13 million?

Another Statistical Study Indicates LAPD Racial Profiling

Last Thursday's Los Angeles Times printed an op-ed by Yale Law Professor Ian Ayres that presents the details of a statistical analysis of more than 700,000 interactions between LAPD officers and pedestrians and motorists between June 2003 and June 2004. The results of the study were revealed at a press conference by the ACLU of Southern California on Monday.

We found persistent and statistically significant racial disparities in policing that raise grave concerns that African Americans and Latinos in Los Angeles are, as we put it in the report, "over-stopped, over-frisked, over-searched and over-arrested." After controlling for violent crime rates and property crime rates in specific neighborhoods, as well as a host of other variables, we found the following:

For every 10,000 residents, about 3,400 more black people are stopped than whites, and 360 more Latinos are stopped than whites. Stopped blacks are 127% more likely to be frisked -- and stopped Latinos are 43% more likely to be frisked -- than stopped whites.

Stopped blacks are 76% more likely to be searched, and stopped Latinos are 16% more likely to be searched than stopped whites.

Stopped blacks are 29% more likely to be arrested, and stopped Latinos are 32% more likely to be arrested than stopped whites.

Now consider this: Although stopped blacks were 127% more likely to be frisked than stopped whites, they were 42.3% less likely to be found with a weapon after they were frisked, 25% less likely to be found with drugs and 33% less likely to be found with other contraband. We found similar patterns for Latinos.

Not only did we find that African Americans and Latinos were subjected to more stops, frisks, searches and arrests than whites, we also found that these additional police actions aren't because of the fact that people of color live in higher-crime areas or because they more often carry drugs or weapons, or any other legitimate reason that we can discern from the rich set of data we examined.

The LAPD's response was typically weak. Police Chief Bill Bratton complained that the study used data that was more than four years old, but the LAPD itself has not made the latest data of its traffic stops available. Bratton also complained that the study hadn't considered the effect of the race of the officers involved. But Professor Ayres had a reply:

When testing for unjustified racial disparities in who is stopped by the police in cars and on the street, it's inappropriate to control for the race of either of the officers. The likelihood of being stopped, frisked or arrested shouldn't turn on whether a black, Latino or white officer was involved.

As an ancillary test -- after we'd calculated the general disparities -- we did look at the officers involved, and we found that the racial disparities in the likelihood of arrest were substantially lower when at least one of the stopping officers was the same race as the suspect.

For example, we found that the black arrest disparity was 9 percentage points lower when at least one of the stopping officers was black. Bratton should be troubled that there is less disparity when the officer is the same race as the person stopped, as that result adds credibility to the idea that the disparities in different-race interactions may be because of racial bias.

The Los Angeles Times editorial board noticed Bratton's smackdown and came to his rescue on Saturday, gingerly.

That being said, the LAPD does have a history of profiling, but it is in statistical denial of that fact. Not one of the 320 profiling complaints filed last year was validated by the department, nor were any of those filed in the five previous years. Blacks and Latinos are stopped and searched more frequently than whites, and few would deny the probability that some of those stops are unwarranted. After all, this is a relationship on the mend, not one that has fully healed.

The real problem seems to be that for all its efforts, the LAPD does not yet know how to detect and quantify disparate treatment. Ian Ayres, the professor who prepared the ACLU report, says he can help, and the department should take him up on his offer. The truth surely lies somewhere between the spotless image claimed by the department and the sullied one implied by the report.

Ball's in your court, Bill.

LA Police Chief Comes Out Against Prop 8

According to Tina Daunt's gossip column at the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton (and his wife Rikki Kleinman) have come out strongly and publicly against Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment that would ban and possibly annul marriages of gay and lesbian couples. They have also heartily endorsed marriage equality.

"The Constitution guarantees life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," Bratton said this week. "I see no reason why gays can't pursue happiness through marriage."

After learning of the union [between celebrity publicist Howard Bragman and his longtime partner Chuck O'Donnell] a few days ago, Bratton and Kleiman asked the couple what they would like as a wedding present. Bragman was direct: No gifts -- instead, make a donation to Equality California to help stop Prop. 8. And please make it public.

Other friends of Bragman and O'Donnell -- who was USC's Tommy Trojan for 10 years -- have done the same. They include tennis star Martina Navratilova and former "Grey's Anatomy" actor Isaiah Washington. (He's been trying to make amends with the gay community since he was caught uttering an antigay slur backstage at the Golden Globes in January 2007; Bragman is his PR rep.)

You can also help promote fairness and equality for gay and lesbian couples by donating to VOW TO VOTE NO ON PROPOSITION 8 / Equality for All campaign.

Currently the bad guys have raised $2.367 million while the good guys have raised $2.280 million as of July 16th.