The Los Angeles Police Department must just be a happy, fun place these days, really.
Take the Rampart corruption probe. After 70 officers were accused of some degree of involvement, only 8 were charged, and only 2 were convicted of anything, and THOSE convictions were overturned. And now, with 45 cases still under investigation, the Los Angeles district attorney says that there won't be any more charges. Apparently, the LAPD obstructionist tactics worked; the investigations dragged on so long that they're running into statutes of limitations problems.
Then there was the consent decree agreed to by the city and federal government in 2000 as one result of the investigation. The LAPD already faces a backlog of unrelated but unresolved citizen complaints, is understrength and already in violation of the consent decree. In fact, not only does the LAPD oppose the consent decree, but as the federal monitor discovered in a survey of officers and attitudes that many of the officers think the Rodney King arrest was handled "properly". (Oh, I'll bet that news just does wonders for the department's relationship with the city's minorities, doesn't it? Warms the cockles of their hearts, I expect.)
In the meantime, the police commissioner declared that the problems at Rampart were all the L.A. Times' fault. (Apparently the power of the media is such that they reached out and forced those men -- FORCED them, do you hear?! -- to lie, cheat, steal, shoot a few people, beat up a few more. The Times did all that. Who knew that the media was that powerful?)
Speaking of the commissioner, the police officers' union is making moves to make sure he doesn't serve a second term. Nothing like a public declaration of war against your boss to make for a warm and fuzzy work environment, is there?
And to cap it all off, three of the officers prosecuted as a result of the Rampart investigation are suing for malicious prosecution. They complain that they were treated as "common criminals." Yes. Right. Well. I don't know ... somehow, I can't see that a lawsuit arguing that they were treated like everyone else arrested and put into the legal system is the sort of thing that's going to go anywhere. You don't get any sort of privilege because you're a cop. Whether the suit succeeds will depend on the venue; if the case is tried in Simi Valley, then of course they'll win.
Yep. Lovely place, Los Angeles.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
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12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!