Reasons to Believe

The LAPD's Assault on SWAT

My latest OpEd for the Los Angeles Times was published this morning. Entitled "The LAPD's Assault on SWAT," it details some very significant changes that are being made to the LAPD's SWAT team, in the name of one thing only: Political Correctness.

The results can have no positive outcome.  Many thanks to the current and former LAPD officers who provided me information, as well as to the Times' Nick Goldberg and company who, as always, did a highly professional, honest job of editing the piece.

THE LAPD'S ASSAULT ON SWAT

On a Sunday afternoon in the summer of 2005, Jose Peña fueled himself with cocaine and grabbed a 9-millimeter pistol. Waving the gun at the head of his 19-month-old daughter, Suzie, he told the LAPD officers who arrived at the scene that he was Tony Montana -- the character played by Al Pacino in "Scarface" -- and that he was going to kill his daughter and himself. He'd already shot at her sister and at the police, so the threat was believable.

The situation was straightforward: If an LAPD SWAT crisis negotiator couldn't dispel Peña's narcotic fantasies, the little girl's life would rest with a SWAT rescue team's ability to cross a 50-foot alley, access the building, find and enter the room he was in and save Suzie before Peña pulled the trigger.

Now imagine for a moment that you were in Suzie Peña's position. Would you want the police SWAT team coming through the door to be the best of the best -- the toughest, most highly trained, most elite tacticians in the Los Angeles Police Department -- or would you want the team to "look like L.A."? Would you want rescuers who had not lost a hostage in three decades, or would you want a team with heartwarming, multicultural diversity?

A Good Man Gone

LAPD Officer Randy Simmons was killed in the line of duty this morning.

This tribute to him first appeared on the LA Daily News Friendly Fire Blog.

A GOOD MAN GONE

The first time I set eyes on Los Angeles Police Department Officer Randy Simmons, he was lifting a 200-pound man off the ground. In an enthusiastic bear hug.

Simmons, a large, gregarious rock of a man was warmly embracing a long-time friend, and fellow LAPD SWAT officer, who had graciously invited me to take a peek inside their fraternity, at the annual SWAT Dinner. 

That was barely 10 days ago, No one in that room at the Police Academy, no matter how tactically cynical, could anticipate that less than two weeks later, Simmons would be the first man from the Metropolitan Divisions D Platoon, as SWAT is officially known, to die in a gun fight.

On The Monrovia Racist Gang War

The following is from a lengthy comment I recently posted on the SGV Tribune Crime Scene Blog.

On Monrovia:

Neighborhood Watch and community unity are good things. We have strongly advocated such things in the North Primrose Neighborhood. But, much the same as with our speeding issue, the community can only do so much.

The bottom line is, the racist thugs who are behind these killings only understand the law of the street - bigger and badder wins.

We can hold hands and hum, but until the cops find these thugs and put them in jail for whatever charge they can, nothing will change.

First Friendly Fire Post

My first post on the Los Angeles Daily News' Friendly fire blog, entitled "Welcome, Commissioner Saltzman. Please Read Your Business Card." has been posted.  Thanks again to Chris Weinkopf for making it happen.

New Los Angeles Times OpEd: The Blue You Don't See

My latest OpEd in the Los Angeles Times has been published this morning.  Published as an "Outside the Tent" piece, it covers the long littany of the Times' biased reporting against the LAPD.  This piece required a lot of professionalism from the Times' Nick Goldberg, who very fairly editted the piece with an eye to accuracy. "I don't want to have to publish a correction on a piece like this," he said more than once.  As it should be with any piece.  Nick's edits made it a stronger work.

THE BLUE YOU DON'T SEE

In its most recent editorial about the May Day demonstrations at MacArthur Park, The Times again showed its historic disregard for facts and history in its coverage of the Los Angeles Police Department and in its slavish devotion to the concept of police "reform," regardless of cost, consequences or wisdom.

The editorial, published in response to the Oct. 9 release of the LAPD's report on the MacArthur Park disturbance, described the scene at the park as "chaos" resulting from "missteps" by the department.

How did this terrible situation come to pass? Well, the editorial noted, among other things, that training "seems to have lapsed perilously -- the Metropolitan Division's basic training course was cut in 2005." It also described Chief William Bratton's ongoing struggles with the department's "cultural and institutional defects" connected to this lapse.

Yet, astonishingly, the paper failed to point out that it was Bratton's own decision to eliminate that training. Instead, the editorial praised the chief's "deserved" second term and his "impressive response" to the events of May 1. It seems that publicly condemning your subordinates for problems you helped cause impresses The Times.

Sadly, this intellectual dissonance is true to form. Looking back at The Times' coverage of the LAPD, it's easy to see decades of factual omissions, routine second-guessing of police officers and a consistent support of activist agendas.

What If The Activists Lied?

From the Los Angeles Daily News

ANTI-POLICE BRUTALITY: What if everything the activists said was a lie?

By Robert C. J. Parry

LAST week on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, two LAPD officers chased a theft suspect before tackling and wrestling him to the ground. When dust settled, crime-scene tape cordoned the area as detectives scoured for evidence.

Their investigation was unrelated to the theft. The alleged thief wasn't even the suspect. Rather, their focus was Officer Ivana Gallegos, who, for all intents and purposes, is the suspect in an assault. The possible crime: During the struggle, Gallegos' radio struck the suspect's head. Accidentally.

Why did this innocuous incident require such fanfare? Why was this cop treated like a criminal? Short answer: The federal consent decree.

When The Last Hero Leaves LA... Will Anybody Notice?

Graciously Posted on Patterico's blog.

[Update and full disclosure:  In the process of fact-checking another OpEd, the 60% statistic cited below became very questionable.  In fact, it was ultimately removed from the OpEd that has since been published.  The LAPD has stated that the correct figure is 24.6 (which seems impossible in a departmnet which should cycle its force more than once every 20 years, with quittings, firings, and medical retirements figured in.)  However, the LAPPL, which published 60% in is own newsletter, said the correct figure is 50%, but admitted it was unable to substantiate it.  Because it is integral to the writing, if not the entire arguement below, I have left it in.  But, now you know]

Despite the tenor of news reports surrounding last week’s violence in MacArthur Park, many officers in the Los Angeles Police Department are valorous and dedicated. In fact, this morning, 17 current police officers will receive the LAPD Medal of Valor. Notably, three of them now serve in other communities.

In fact, according to the L.A. Police Protective League, fully 60% of LAPD officers have been with the department less than five years. At that rate, almost the entire department could have been replaced twice since the 1992 riots. Notably, officers who leave the LAPD in their first five years have to repay the City for their academy training.

If you want to understand why the LAPD can’t retain officers, don’t look to the Los Angeles Times. The story below was first told to five of their top staff writers. Each deemed it interesting, but none reported it. In fact, this very column was presented to their OpEd section, and was rejected because a vaguely similar piece ran last year, addressing a less compelling set of facts. Apparently, only limited space is allotted to critical local issues in Los Angeles’s newspaper of record.

So, instead of looking to the Times, look to two other certified heroes: officers Troy Zeeman and Bryan Gregson. Last November, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger presented them with California Medals of Valor, for engaging a suspected killer in a running gunfight through a South L.A. apartment building.

The LAPD, by contrast, ruled them tactically deficient, worthy only of retraining.

If that’s confusing to you, it wasn’t to Zeeman and Gregson. They’d both spent a decade in the LAPD hall of mirrors.

But to get the details, you’d have to drive to Newport Beach. That’s where both cops moved months after the shooting.