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-Caveat Lector-
Fwd this post by written by Michael Novack [MN] in response to Marc Cooper's
most recent article printed in the LA "Weakly" -- (mc's remarks wrt lapd has
uncanny similarity to remarks made wrt Pacifica struggle. ~hlc)
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Subj: [freekpfk] Apologia for LAPD chief Bratton by 'alternative
journalist' Marc Cooper
Date: 11/18/2002 9:56:29 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: <A
HREF="mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]";>[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
Dissonance
Bill, We Hardly Know You
Cut Chief Bratton some slack for a good start
by Marc Cooper
[photo] Bratton
LA Weekly Nov. 14-21
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/52/dissonance-cooper.php
[Note from MN: What follows is Cooper's LA Weekly pontifications on why
people are unnecessarily upset about LA's new police chief, interpolated
with my comments citing chapter and verse about why Cooper is a horse's
ass. With "alternative" "journalism" -- each word in separate quotes
-- like this, who needs mainstream journalism?--MN]
CALM DOWN, EVERYONE. CALM DOWN. THE LAPD'S new chief, Bill Bratton, has
barely been in office two weeks and already a chorus of Cassandras out
there prophesy that instead of promised police reform, Bratton's about to
unleash a wave of blind repression. These early critics suggest we are only
days, maybe only minutes, away from the dark ages of Daryl Gates: Operation
Hammer crackdowns on the hood, thousands of black and Latino kinds [sic, I
hope, unless Cooper is simply betraying his racism about the "others."--MN]
being jacked up and proned out by out-of-control cops from rogue special
units.
[Note from MN: Cooper managed to pen this crap to appear on the Thursday
night before the LAPD went on a shooting spree, with 5 officer-involved
shootings in two days, 4 fatalities. Talk about prophesying!--MN]
Bratton has to take some responsibility for these hellish predictions.
Since winning his post from Mayor Hahn, most of the new chief's public
pronouncements have been repeated vows to lower the crime rate by
relentlessly stamping out "quality of life" transgressions, including a
promised war against graffiti. Hence the fears that police reform will
languish while legions of kids with paint on their fingers are dumped into
our already overcrowded jails.
[Note from MN: Pity the foolish Cassandras, taking Bratton at his word,
based only on the evidence of his performance in Boston and New York, and
his decision to scrap the LAPD's computer system, replacing it with the
system he installed in NY to make sure every cop and commander was cracking
down hard enough on fare-beaters and taggers.--MN]
I have a one-word response to these nightmarish predictions. Please.
Do you really think the mayor and the new chief are that stupid? That they
have learned nothing from the last two decades of the LAPD's sordid
history? That neither man realizes the urgent need for reform and that
neither knows this is the most propitious moment in recent history to carry
it out? Have we become so demoralized that we can longer even imagine
reform taking place? Can we no longer distinguish between expedient
political rhetoric and actual policy?
[Note from MN: I have a one-word response to this fatuous aggrandizing of
the mayor and chief and attribution of demoralization to those who still
retain their moral compass. Bullshit! Have we learned nothing from every
police chief and mayor for the past 50+ years in Los Angeles, who have
blown every opportunity for ending police abuse of power, aided and abetted
by craven 'liberal' apologists who counsel concession to the prevailing
political rhetoric of support for the police? Do we really believe that
absent an aroused, organized resistance movement of outrage and community
self-defense, that any police chief or mayor will do anything other than
further strengthen and enlarge one of the most militarized police forces in
the US? Can we no longer distinguish between rhetorical promises of
"reform" and real increases in repressive power and police impunity,
designed to terrorize and subdue any resistance to the extraction of wealth
from poor people of color to maintain the lifestyles of the super-rich?]
"What did some of my friends expect the new police chief to say?" asks a
frustrated civil rights attorney, a longtime fighter for police reform.
"That he was going to come in and hold Kumbaya sessions? Any new police
chief has to come in like gangbusters, talking tough. But I'm much more
interested in what Bratton does, rather than what he says. And so far I
like what I see." So do I.
[Note from MN: Holy Toledo. Is the crescendo of crying Cassandras so
powerful, so dominant, so politicaklly correct, that this frustrated civil
rights attorney fears to speak for attribution? Or is this a Marc Cooper
fabrication? Perish the thought! The fact that this convenient attorney
expresses the same views as Cooper himself must be sheer coincidence. Right
down to the racialized reference to 'Kumbaya' sessions! What does Cooper
NOT expect a new chief to say -- that he would hold officers accountable
for abuse? that he would use his position to lobby for elected civilian
community control of the police? that he would seek the establishment of a
special prosecutor, so the DA was not responsible for bringing charges
against the cops he was beholden to for making all his other cases? that he
would seek the abolition of state laws which deny the public the same
access to the records of cops that we have to doctors and lawyers?]
Bratton has swiftly moved on the first prerequisite of real reform,
radically reshaping the department's command structure. Within his first
two weeks he has staged a literal coup d'�tat at Parker Center, appointing
a trio of the most reform-friendly commanders as his top staff,
simultaneously pushing aside a boatload of crustaceans who have inhabited
the high floors of the Glass House for way too long.
[Note from MN: Oh, so the mark of real reform is that a new chief brings in
his own people, indebted to him for their elevation, in order to replace
the people who owed their allegiance to the old chief? How naive and
sycophantic is Cooper?]
Bratton has appointed the respected Jim McDonnell, head of the department's
community policing unit, as his second-in-command. He's also promoted
commanders Sharon Papa and George Gascon to the ranking positions of deputy
chiefs. All three are 40-something members of a new generation of LAPD,
untainted by the reign of Daryl Gates and all distinguished as independent,
innovative thinkers during the just-concluded administration of Bernie
"Captain Queeg" Parks. Attentive readers will remember the Weekly's recent
profile of Gascon, [Note from MN: A flack piece in a snow-job special issue
edited by Cooper himself previously dissected by yours truly. Email if you
want the long version.--MN] a man who has actually introduced ethics-based
training into the LAPD academy and who promotes in-depth classes on why the
Rampart scandal was not an isolated case. "Any one of these three
appointees is who we would have preferred as the actual chief," says the
reform-minded attorney. "But look at it this way: With Bratton in, we got
all three now up at the top. Not bad."
Even more importantly, Bratton seems to be taking the counsel of his new
advisers seriously. On their recommendation he moved this week to dismantle
the department's notoriously inefficient and incomplete FASTRAC
computerized crime-fighting system. It was an open secret that the system,
which started three years ago with good intentions, just didn't work. LAPD
software specialists are now rushing to install Bratton's preferred
CompStat system.
[Note from MN: Wait, Bratton is taking his advisers' counsel seriously when
he accepts their recommendation that he replace the LAPD computer system
with HIS computer system from NY? Oh, those daring advisers, willing to
face their new boss's wrath by bringing him the bad news he doesn't want to
hear! This certainly bodes well for continued reform within the department.]
And in this case, we should listen very carefully to Bratton's rhetoric.
He claims the old system didn't provide enough scrutiny over department
managers and that the new program will allow him to hold division captains
responsible for their performance and effectiveness.
[Note from MN: Is Bratton doing anything to track problem officers,
complaints of police abuse and disrespect, or use of force? Is he doing
anything to make such records public? The LAPD is operating under a consent
decree which requires it to implement promised reforms that would enable
the department to clean out the alleged "bad apples" rather than letting
them rot and fester in the barrel, setting the standard for the whole
department. Such reforms were promised ELEVEN YEARS, three mayors and FOUR
--count 'em -- police chiefs ago, and have yet to be implemented! But not
on Bratton's radar. He wants to make sure captains are riding their
officers to write more tickets and make more arrests.]
Not only is this necessary. It's also very smart. Blame the handiwork of
former Chief Parks for the vastly demoralized rank-and-file Bratton
inherits. Early reviews suggest that the new chief is on the verge of a
minor miracle: pulling the department toward reform while actually raising
the morale of a very grumpy and recalcitrant rank and file. He's doing so
precisely by reversing the dynamic of the Parks era. Instead of an
unswerving defense of the brass and a scapegoating of the field troops,
Bratton is shaking up and replacing the brass, promising to hold managers
and commanders accountable before blaming regular officers.
[Note from MN: The question Cooper assiduously avoids is, blaming whom for
what? Hahn and Bratton are not just rhetorically but practically reshaping
the LAPD -- including a proposed 33% increase in the number of officers,
unmentioned by Cooper in this article -- to deliver the goods to businesses
and homeowners who want a crackdown on and reduction in crime during a
worsening economic situation, rising unemployment, near-genocidal cutbacks
in safety-net social services such as health care, and a generalized
draconian increase in police state powers. They want to incorporate the LAX
police into the LAPD when LAX is one of the flashpoints of the Bush
administration's anti-immigrant crackdown. They want to increase
incarceration rates in a city and state that already have some of the
highest in the world. All of Bratton's administrative and computer-tracking
reforms are aimed at making the LAPD a more well-oiled repressive machine.
Any niche carved out for so-called "community policing" (the police reform
philosophy always supposedly opposite to Bratton's "broken windows" tough
on quality of life crimes crack-down approach will only further illustrate
and expose that so-called community policing is a form of psychological
operations and a part of the militarization of the police. Nobody is being
blamed for police killings, and never has been -- not the cops, not the
brass. Through many mayors and chiefs, LAPD has shot about a person a week
and killed about a person a month. The powers-that-be consider this not
merely acceptable, but desirable, and are willing to shell out millions of
dollars annually as a 'cost of doing business' to settle with the victims
and families of victims. If Bratton and Hahn change this, it will only be
to increase the shootings and killings by the same 33% they want to
increase the force. And what programs and services will be scrapped to
finance such a massive increase in the number of cops?]
Sometime soon we will see just how Bratton carries out his promised crime
crackdowns. And it will be immediately obvious if we are witnessing
something new and inspiring or just the same old same old. In the meantime,
the only hammering Bratton has unleashed so far has been right on target:
starting to smash up the old LAPD.
[Note from MN: Hopeless to think that Bratton's hammer might bang-bang some
sense into Cooper's head. None are so blind as those who will not see. Of
course what will see is not the same-old same-old, but some new and
"inspiring" transformations of the LAPD as a 21st Century force of
repression and social control. This will include real-time tracking of
stops, busts, and "crime reduction," but little attention to police
criminality, immigrants rights or racial profiling. Unless we get up and do
something about it, of course, but that is an outcome Cooper continues to
do his best to derail.--MN]
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New Pacifica Working Group
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