No Accountability; the Root of Police Misconduct in the LAPD

Police enforcement is one of the most dangerous yet admirable professions in the world. Brave men and women make the ultimately sacrifice daily by placing their lives on the line in the most dangerous situations to ensure the safety of the public. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is the second largest police department in the nation and is known to have a great deal of dedicated and trained officers to protect the public. Unfortunately, the LAPD is also known to have a great deal of officers that do not protect the public. LAPD’s history shows more than almost any other police department that it is in need of major reform to better serve the people of Los Angeles. The city has attempted to address this problem for nearly 20 years yet has been unsuccessful in improving the quality of the department. Time and time again the department has attempted reform and it has achieved little to no progress in doing so. The LAPD is unequipped to handle the culture of police misconduct that is firmly apart of the department and will only be able to reform through the aggressive legal actions of an independent agency that is given the powers necessary to police the department.
For many years, the LAPD has represented the worst aspects of what is wrong with police enforcement in the United States. It has a long history of insufficient training, police misconduct, evidence planting and vigilante apprehension tactics. Up until the 1990’s there was absolutely nothing being done about LAPD’s illegal activities, and only 2% of all claims of police misconduct were validated by the department (Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States). In most cases the officers participating in police misconduct were the same officers receiving promotions to higher ranking positions.
In 1991 it took the graphic video of the Rodney King beating to be seen worldwide, 54 deaths from rioting in South Los Angeles, and $700 million in damages for the city to finally take action against the LAPD. 4 months later, the Christopher Commission Report was created to conduct a full analysis of the complete structure and operation of the LAPD over a 5 year period. Like Los Angeles residents had known for years, the Christopher Commission Report found widespread evidence of systemic police brutality, a nearly non-existent disciplinary structure, and a “code of silence” that discouraged other officers from reporting police misconduct. Among other recommendations for department reform, the Commission report suggested the importance of a new form of Officer accountability. “Ugly incidents will not diminish until ranking officers know they will be held responsible for what happens in their sector, whether or not they personally participate.” (Shielded from justice: Police brutality and Accountability in the United States). The report’s suggestion would have made ranking officers responsible for any instances of misconduct in their sector and gave them greater incentive to discourage police misconduct amongst the officers they command, helping to stem the pattern of misconduct from within the department as opposed to external investigations and prosecutions.
Not surprisingly, this idea was never put to practice, and in 1996 the special counsel to the Los Angeles Police Commission published a report finding that there had only been minimal progress towards reform in the department and that the progress observed was attributed only to the acts of dedicated individuals rather than a coordinated plan of effort (Shielded from justice: Police brutality and Accountability in the United States). This proved that the department was incapable of policing itself and investigating bad conduct of its employees. As a result, there persisted records of instances where the LAPD used disproportionate force and seemingly illegal tactics against the public, and in most of cases the officers involved were only minimally reprimanded if at all.
An example of publicly viewed police misconduct was the shooting of Margaret Mitchell. Margaret Mitchell was an elderly, mentally ill African American, homeless women when she was shot and killed by an LAPD officer in front of 11 eye witnesses. The officers attempted to confiscate her grocery basket--which held all her belongings—for not having permission from the supermarket to take the basket. The police claim that she had a weapon in her hand, a screw driver, and that she threatened to kill them. She lunged and slashed at the male cop causing him to “fear for his life”. He fired one shot and killed Margaret Mitchell (L.A.—The Police Murder of Margaret Mitchell). She was 5 foot 1, weighed 102 pounds and died at the age of 55 (Cooley’s Office Declines to Charge Officer in Mitchell Shooting). Police officers are intensively trained to handle the most dangerous situations in their line of duty, and more importantly to act with appropriate force. This Officer reacted to an old woman threatening him with a screw driver by using lethal force. He shot and killed her with his department issued firearm, when that same department issues officers pepper spray, batons, and hand cuffs, yet the officer still maintained shooting was appropriate force in that situation. Even the public outcry that followed did nothing to bring the officer to justice. Officer Edward Larrigan was never charged, and Bernard Parks, police chief at the time of the shooting aggressively defended the decision by Officer Larrigan (“Cooley’s Office Declines to Charge Officer in Mitchell Shooting”).
The officer’s actions against Margaret Mitchell and the LAPD’s subsequent response exemplified the lack of accountability in the department that had remained in tact even through the Christopher Commission Investigation. The department was still incapable of investigating its own employees and was aiding to the culture of police brutality. In even the most extreme cases where police have unlawfully killed suspects, officers are rarely held accountable for their actions within the department and under almost no circumstance are the officers ever criminally charged for their on-duty actions. This lack of discipline within the department perpetuates the amount of police misconduct against suspects and innocent civilians. If officers are able to avoid criminal charges in cases so egregious and blatantly excessive as the Rodney King beating or the Margaret Mitchell murder, there is nothing to stop officers from fearing punishment of less shocking instances of civil rights violations.
This practice of has continued with minor progress up until the present. In 2006 there were several videos posted on popular sites, such as youtube.com, showing blatant acts of police brutality by the LAPD captured on camera. 2 of the most popular videos showed Hollywood division officers beating suspects while they were detained on the ground. The first video shows officers repeatedly hitting an individual with their batons after the man has already been subdued on the ground. This occurred during a peaceful protest against a Minuteman march in July of 2006 (LAPD brutality targets immigrant rights movement). The next video shows two officers punching a suspect, William Cardenas, in the face while he is completely subdued on the ground by the officers in August of 2006. Unknown to the officers at the time, a civilian captures the police on camera beating William Cardenas while pinning him to the ground with a knee pressed against Cardenas’ neck, and the other officer sitting on his stomach (Man Seen Being Punched By Cops On Tape, Speaks Out).
The third, and possibly most shocking video exhibiting police brutality, happened on the campus of UCLA in a library. The University Campus Police Department, a division of the LAPD, tasered a civilian multiple times for refusing to leave the library. It was obvious that after the first or second time the person was tasered, he was unable to leave on his own power, but instead of carrying out the subdued suspect, they continued to taser him to try and force him to leave on his own power (UCLA Police Taser Student in Powell).
These acts that have shocked thousands on the internet are common tactics used by LAPD. Even capturing these instances on video, rarely lead to any action taken against the officers by neither the D.A. nor the Internal Affairs Department (IAD) of the LAPD. Civilian complaints of police brutality are overwhelmingly ignored because of the IAD procedure to give more weight to the accused officer’s story than to witness accounts. Most civilian complaints are even filed by the department on miscellaneous letterhead, making the allegation essentially non-existent because it is not an official document (California: Update on Police Brutality). Misconduct claims submitted by other officers are given more merit, but are rarely reported because of the officer “code of silence”, an unwritten code in the LAPD that disallows police to report misconduct of other officers (Feldmen). The 1997 report by a police task force on LAPD Rampart division Detective Mark Fuhrman provided insight into the code of silence when he informed the task force that his superiors knew that he and other officers committed misconducts, but chose not to investigate. The report stated that Det. Fuhrman “knew exactly where the disciplinary line was, and he avoided creating any significant pattern of misconduct” What this statement assumes is that there is a line of discipline that is not to be crossed in the department, but based on the record of Det. Fuhrman and other officers in the division, there was a high level of abuse permitted in the department by the officers before that line was ever reached.
The culture of excessive violence that has persisted through investigations, reports, and even public outcry has yet to be stemmed by any type of reform the department has implemented. There has no been significant change in the police department’s tactics and police misconduct claims from civilians have continued to rise, although payouts for civil suits have decreased compared to the 1990s. The only way to stop the systemic police brutality in the department is to create an external department responsible for policing the LAPD. Instead of submitting police misconduct claims through the very department the claim is against, the claims will be submitted directly to the judicial agency, and reviewed by an independent board with knowledge of police activities and procedures. The officers will be investigated wholly by the independent agency and subject to the disciplinary measures decided by the agency. By creating an agency not governed by the LAPD, it creates enough space to increase objectivity when dealing with officers, and will be able to give a fair determination of the facts without fear of officer bias. This system would also do better to protect officers that wish to break the ‘code of silence” because the officer will be able to submit a misconduct report anonymously to the agency without fear of being discovered and ostracized from the police community.
In order to promote internal reform as well, this agency would take the suggestion made by the Christopher Commission report 15 years ago and hold ranking officers responsible for systemic misconduct within their sectors, with the hope that the ranking members will pay closer attention to the conduct of the officers they govern discouraging widespread misconduct. The web of misconduct often spreads up to some of the highest ranking officers, if the judicial agency is able to expose some high ranking officials it may be able to disrupt the pattern that is firmly established in the department.
The Judicial committee will also work closely with the D.A. office to criminally prosecute officers for cases of criminal activity, as in the case with the officer who shot Margaret Mitchell. This will send a firm message to everyone within the police department that they will be held just as accountable as civilians for actions outside police protocol and end the stigma that police are above the law. What this policy will also achieve, is protection of the public from the police department. It is the duty of every officer in the LAPD to protect the public, but not at the expense of the public’s freedoms guaranteed by the constitution. Far too long in Los Angeles, have many citizens had their civil rights violated in the name of public safety. This reform will restore a long absent trust in the LAPD in the Los Angeles community, even in minority communities who have historically conflicted with LAPD and have been victims to some of the most publicly egregious acts committed by LAPD. Holding officers to a high standard of accountability is the only way to ensure their duties will be performed in a manner that will protect as opposed to terrorizing the public.
It is clear that the history of the LAPD is among the worst in the country, and the present shows that we are still battling the same problems with little to no progress. What has led to the cities inability to rid the LAPD of corruption and police misconduct has been the city’s irrational faith in the LAPD to reform itself. There have been too many examples that show the police department has to be publicly forced to investigate its own officers in even the most obvious cases. It has been proven that even individual commitments from officers to reform the department is not enough to end the policy in the LAPD. There has to be an independent agency that will enforce accountability in the department, and restore nobility to being an officer. The decisions the officers make everyday on the streets, often times are the decisions between our lives and our deaths, and for that reason we must hold them to the highest accountability to perform their trained duties.
Works Cited

"California: Update on Police Brutality." Amnesty International; Working to Protect
Human Rights Worldwide. 01 September 1999. Amnesty International. 14 Feb 2007 .
"Cooley's Office Declines to Charge Officer in Mitchell Shooting." Metropolitan News-
Enterprise. 08 August 2001. Metropolitan News-Enterprise. 10 Feb 2007 .
Feldmen, Charles. "Officer Breaks LAPD." CNN.com. 21 September 2000. CNN. 14 Feb
2007 .
"L.A.--The Police Murder of Margaret Mitchell." Revolutionary Worker. 13 June 1999.
Revolutionary Worker. 11 Feb 2007 .
"LAPD Brutality Targets Immigrant Rights Movement." Act Now to Stop War and End
Racism. A.N.S.W.E.R.. 11 Feb 2007 .
"Man Seen Being Punched By Cops On Tape, Speaks Out." CBS2.com. 13 November
2006. A.N.S.W.E.R.. 11 Feb 2007 .
"Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States." Human
Rights Watch. June 1998. Human Rights Watch. 14 Feb 2007 .
"UCLA Police Taser Student in Powell." Youtube.com. 15 November 2006. Youtube. 14 Feb 2007 .

Common sense...it just isn't so common anymore

“The Privilege of the Writ of habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public safety may require it.”

I know I'm not the smartest guy in the world, and although I do wish to go to law school and someday become an attorney, at this time I by no means consider myself an expert in law or in legal interpretation. But when the Constitution of the United States clearly states that the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus can NOT be suspended, that seems pretty clear to me that the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus can NOT be suspended!!! No, you didn’t read the same sentence twice by mistake (something I personally do all the time), I wrote the same words again, because frankly, it can’t get any simpler than that. For this reason I was curious as to how Attorney General Gonzales would respond to a seemingly iron clad statement codified in our nation’s written constitution. I really wanted to know how he was going to look Senator Specter and the rest of the Senate Judiciary Committee in their eyes and make a cohesive and logical argument that the rights of the Guantanamo detainees should be, and more importantly, could be taken away from these individuals without violating the Constitution.

Don’t get me wrong, I knew anything that would come out of his mouth couldn’t possibly justify the deprivation of the detainees rights, but I realize that there are many interpretations to the law, and that one of the beauties (but sometimes the beast) of our law, is that it changes. Words, no matter how long ago they were written, can have two very different meanings in two different periods of time, which means most things argued in law are mainly subjective and based wholly on context. I expected an argument nothing short of excellence (but still wrong) from the Attorney General of these United States, a Harvard Law man, and the highest ranking Hispanic official in our government…I was disappointed.

Apparently Attorney General Gonzales’ game plan was to disregard common sense completely…it went off without a hitch. Although the Constitution expressly states the right cannot be taken away except in specific situations, and the United States Supreme Court stated that this right also applies to non-citizens, Attorney General Gonzales decided to justify the government’s actions by attacking the idea of the right applying to detainees andcc telling the Judicial Affairs committee that it never says the words “Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas.”, within the Constitution. His claim is that since the Constitution does not specify who exactly has the right to writ of habeas corpus, it means that these individuals in Guantanamo never had the right to begin with. Well, using Attorney General Gonzales’ same logic, wouldn’t that mean no one in the United States has the right to writ of habeas corpus? No one particular people, citizen or non citizen, was ever expressly included in the right to writ of habeas, so wouldn’t that mean according to the Attorney General, that none of us have the right to begin with? In that case, why would the Constitution expressly prohibit the suspension of a right that no one is even guaranteed in the first place? As was stated so eloquently by Samuel L. Jackson in the film Pulp Fiction, “the absence of evidence, is not the evidence of absence.” Just because no one is specified as to having the right to writ of habeas corpus, does not mean that no one has the right to begin with. In fact, just the opposite is being asserted in the statement in the Constitution. By only stating when the privilege can be taken away, the Constitution creates a basic and logical assumption that the privilege is present in all other occasions without further exception.

Attorney General Gonzales’ testimony in front of the Senate Judicial Committee further solidifies my belief that this administration will assertively attack any type of constitutional privilege that will disallow the regime from doing what it wants. If you did not read the definition of writ of habeas corpus, it is the legal action detainees can take to seek relief from unlawful imprisonment. Now why would the government want to take that away? Wait, unless….no, they can’t possibly want to…. want to unlawfully detain someone. Bingo! Unless the people as a whole realize what is going on, I wouldn’t be surprised if this regime goes so far as to start a war with Iran, North Korea, etc. just to declare a state of emergency and maintain power. Mark my words Big Brother’s coming, then we’ll see how much people start caring about protecting their civil rights.

"Accusations fly, like bullets do"

The police profession is one of the most valiant professions in this country. There aren’t many careers that force people to sacrifice their individual safety on a daily basis to protect the lives of others and preserve the moral fabric of the surrounding community. This is exactly the reason why not everyone can be an officer. In order to properly fulfill his/her duty to the public, an officer must necessarily hold values and skills that the rest of us can conveniently and routinely ignore. Officers must genuinely care for the safety as well as the rights of those whom they protect. They must also have responsibility—responsibility to know when to use force and have the logic to quickly gage the level of force appropriate for each unique situation they may find themselves in. Some may think this is an impossibly high standard for someone who is essentially no different than you and I, but I ask, would you hold someone to a lower standard if the merit of their decision is the difference between your life, or your death? These are the chosen few men and women whose split second decisions carry the heavy burden of our safety, our rights, and our livelihood. Because their burden is so heavy, because their mistakes are so costly, I hold their integrity to a higher standard.

In this police shooting video http://www.filecabi.net/video/goddammit30.html, the officers that killed the unarmed man were completely unjustified in their actions and are wholly responsible for the man’s death. I have no idea what this man did before he was killed that night, nor do I care. What I do draw concern with however, are the officers that used their government issued uniforms, government issued badges, and government issued firearms, summarily meaning they used the authority of the government, to unjustly deny a man of his most basic right as a human being, his right to live. It is incomprehensible for me to believe that officers; with bullet proof vests, automatic weapons, attack dogs, and riot gear, not to mention at least 21 weeks of police academy training and the common sense they were born with; would find it reasonable to use lethal force and shoot an unarmed man in that situation over 80 times, then leave him to die on his porch.

Unfortunately, what I can comprehend is what is far too common the case, that these officers acted without reason at all but more on an instinctual level not more developed or trained than a young boy with a water gun, eager to soak up anything that moves. They completely disregarded their responsibility to protect the rights of everyone around them and abused their privileges that come with being an officer, and made a decision without thinking, a bad a decision. We all make bad decisions, I am guilty of a few (only a few) in my lifetime, but the difference between my bad decisions and the bad decision of those officers, is that in their case someone’s life was at stake, and so many others lives have been affected as a result of their bad decision. It affects the man’s child to be born, his girlfriend who has to raise a baby alone, and his parents who now have to find the money to have a funeral for their son. But guess who it doesn’t affect? It doesn’t affect those officers who shot the bullets. Through their qualified immunity and the low standard of reasonableness for an officer to use force, chances are these officers will not be reprimanded in any form by their department, and they certainly will not face any type of criminal charges for the murder they committed.

So why isn’t this a big issue? Why don’t we hear debates over police misconduct reform alongside more popular issues on a national scale? The sad answer to that question is that cases of excessive violence and police brutality are overwhelmingly minority problems. White cops shoot and kill Black/Latino suspect. White cops beat Black/Latino suspect. These physical displays of violence that graze the 10:00 o’clock news every so often but occur every day are visual reminders that racism is still prevalent in American society. Unjustified shootings like the one in this video will continue as long as officers go unpunished for their actions. Officers will continue to treat suspects, especially Black suspects, as lives less than human and will act accordingly unless police policy addresses the problem. Not everyone possesses the skills and principles to become an officer and most officers are some of the most admirable people you will ever meet, but academies seem to let anyone through their programs and give them free reign to protect some, and terrorize the rest. It only takes one bad cop, to kill one person, what we don’t know is who that one person can be, and as long as it can be me, my family, or the children I plan to have, I will fight these injustices and binge the law enforcement profession of its imperfections until it shines crystal like my vision of what police policy should be.