Wow. With disgust, outrage and rhetorical blowhardery spawning over the LAPD's slaying of 13-year-old car thief Devin Brown like flies around a corpse, it's hard to tell what's scarier:
Case A saw our own police Chief William Bratton using the justifiably angry reactions over the Brown shooting as a lever, and somewhat cynically (or desperately, it's hard to say which) raising the specter of rioting in his attempt yesterday to win City Council approval for putting the half-cent tax-for-cops measure on the May ballot.
Case B saw U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters and Urban League President John Mack helping to bolster their constituents' impression that Devin Brown died because he was black:
"We have a pattern here where some police officers don't value the lives of young African American males (said Mack). There's a frustration here that's building up and makes it difficult to build a partnership with police."
And Case C tonight has one Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson telling everyone to simmer down:
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder and president of BOND, the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, today charged Los Angeles black leaders with attempting to incite another L.A. riot. This week, black leaders have sponsored marches with protesters holding signs with messages such as "death to pigs." Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) is urging the community to "demand justice." She said the incident "was reminiscent of the Rodney King beating." John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League, said of the shooting, "We have a pattern here where some police officers don't value the lives of young African American males." On a local radio program, Mack also said, "Heads should roll on this one."
Rev. Peterson said: "Blacks should be outraged by the irresponsible actions of black criminals, Maxine 'No Justice—No Peace' Waters, John Mack and black ministers—not at police. The police officers are not the problem. The corrupt black leadership and irresponsible black parents are the problem."
I'm going to go out on a limb here and project how all this will shake down.
Devin Brown's death - a senseless, horrible tragedy - will be found to have been "within policy." LAPD officers will be exonerated by both Internal Affairs and D.A. Steve Cooley's office: whether you agree with them or not, there is a good deal of precedent essentially allowing cops to use deadly force to defend themselves against a ramming attempt, which is usually classified as "assault with a deadly weapon."
If the peace holds - and it should, provided everybody can calm the f*ck down in the next few months and vent their frustrations directly and non-physically at the people responsible instead of L.A.'s innocent shopkeepers, pedestrians, strip malls and other random bystanders - there will then be a civil suit filed by Devin Brown's family.
Litigation on that will stretch on for a good year and a half - unless the LAPD does the right thing and settles out of court for whatever it takes to admit enough fault and accept enough punitive damages to soothe the public's rage.
And then a verdict will come up short of the sort of total vindication that the public - not versed in the intricacies of tort law and the subtleties of use-of-force policies demands.
And then we shall see whether Los Angeles remains smart enough not to repeat the horrible, self-destructive lapse of clarity that caused us all so much pain and loss in 1965 and 1992. UPDATE:
The Times has smartly fanned out on the issue:
The people of South Los Angeles are justifiably angry and conflicted. While most of the city gives LAPD a higher-than-usual 65% approval rating, South Los Angeles citizens give it only 40% in the latest survey.
And Chief Bratton announced a policy change: Cops can no longer shoot at unarmed drivers. His rather clinical announcement of it was a helluva lot less empathetic than it should have been:
The change in departmental policy "is not going to be a cure-all. All of a sudden these incidents aren't going to go away," Bratton said in an interview. "There will always be exigent circumstances where an officer will have to fire on a vehicle."
But the policy shift is the right thing to do.
"Firearms should not be discharged at a moving or fleeing vehicle unless the officer or another person is currently being threatened with deadly force by means other than a moving vehicle," the document says.
But the draft will continue to allow police to shoot at vehicles in some cases - if doing so is the only way to save lives, for example.
Posted by: mack_reed on Thursday, February 10, 2005 - 11:50 PM
