I am encouraged to learn that the Los Angeles police chief believes that his premier elite squad acted in an ‘indefensible’ manner when they shot rubber bullets into a peaceably assembled group of immigration policy protesters on May Day.
Police Chief William Bratton said Sunday that up to 60 members of an elite squad that swarmed into a park and fired rubber bullets during a May Day immigration rally are no longer on the street.
Bratton said he spent the weekend viewing video of the MacArthur Park incident and he said LAPD failures were widespread with officers from the top on down culpable.
“I’m not going to defend the indefensible,” Bratton told journalists groups during a meeting at a television studio in Hollywood. “Things were done that shouldn’t have been done.”
Journalists were among those roughed up as Metropolitan Division’s B Platoon moved through MacArthur and fired 148 rubber bullets to break up what had been a peaceful and lawful immigration rally.
Police said they moved in after rocks and bottles were thrown at them by 30 to 40 agitators, he said.
The Metropolitan Division is the city’s premier police squad, made up of experienced officers who have extensive training in crowd control.
I’m even more encouraged to learn that Bratton is taking disciplinary action.
Bratton said up to 60 members of the Metro’s B Platoon are no longer in the field. Additionally, he said, some officers will “in all likelihood” not return to the Metropolitan Division.
“Some of this will be career-impacting,” Bratton said, adding that imposition of permanent discipline will await completion of the Police Department investigation
Bratton is somewhat famous on the east coast for his work as police commissioner under Rudy Guiliani. When crime rates began to plummet people started paying a lot of attention to Bratton and studying his methods. Guiliani, wanting all the credit for himself, fired Bratton in 1996. In 2000, Guiliani hired Bernie Kerik and thereby destroyed whatever credit he might have enjoyed for running a tip-top police department. That credit, as it was, was already marred by heavy handed tactics in the minority community. This can be seen clearly by a 1999 Quinnipiac poll:
A total of 82 percent of all voters say police brutality is a very serious or somewhat serious problem in the city: 73 percent of white voters and 94 percent of black voters share this opinion…
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s approval rating among New York City voters is a negative 40 – 51 percent, his lowest ever, despite credit from black and white voters for his efforts to reduce crime, according to a Quinnipiac College Poll released today.
White voters approve of the Mayor 57 – 34 percent, while black approval is a negative 12 – 76 percent.
This was the legacy of Guiliani’s term…or would have been, if not for 9/11. In goes to the different perceptions of white people and people of color.
Among white voters, 76 percent say the Mayor’s policies caused crime to drop while 17 percent say the had no impact; 44 percent of black voters say these policies caused crime to drop, while 32 percent say they had no impact…
A total of 86 percent of New York City voters say crime is a very serious or somewhat serious problem. Among white voters, 24 percent say it is very serious, while 62 percent say it is somewhat serious. Among black voters, 49 percent say it is very serious, while 38 percent say it is somewhat serious.
White voters saw crime as a problem…blacks saw crime as an even more serious problem. Both groups gave Guiliani credit for reducing crime, but blacks gave Guiliani less credit.
Here is, essentially, what happened. A real reduction in crime benefited the black community more than the white community because crime had a disproportionate effect in the black community. But the black community had to pay a direct price in harrassment (stop and frisk, e.g.) for a reduction in crime. The white community got their reduction in crime for free. For this reason, the white community gave Guiliani much higher marks. In the abstract, New Yorkers did not support Guiliani’s tactics.
To make the City safer, police might have to interfere with some freedoms and rights, 24 percent of New Yorkers say, while 68 percent say crime-fighting can be done without interfering with freedoms and rights.
By a 62 – 27 percent margin, New Yorkers do not think a safer city is worth the cost of losing some freedoms or rights.
That’s what they said, but the reality is that the white community did not suffer any diminution of freedoms or rights. The black community did. Most, but by no means all, of the worst police excesses occurred under the commissionership of Howard Safir (1996-2000), including the Amadou Diallo and Abner Louima incidents. In comparison, William Bratton’s tenure was a genuine success. Bratton has asked the FBI to investigate last week’s brutality in MacArthur Park. He’s taken the cops that participated off the streets, called their actions ‘indefensible’, and plans disciplinary action. That’s a good start.
But this incident brings forward another debate. Just as progressives are less willing than conservatives to give up rights in exchange for greater protection from terrorism, people of color are less willing to give up rights in exchange for less crime. It’s easy to give up other people’s rights when you get a benefit. The white progressive community needs to see the immigration issue in the same light that it sees the issues of NSA spying, suspension of habeas corpus, and the military commissions act.
