California Conservative

Reform is one of the words that make up the acronym ACORN. That’s insulting to anyone who thinks things through. If I played a word association game on ACORN, the last word I’d think is reform. It’d be great if ACORN underwent a series of reforms but that isn’t likely to happen. CNN is reporting that ACORN is being investigated in Indiana:

More than 2,000 voter registration forms filed in northern Indiana’s Lake County by a liberal activist group this week have turned out to be bogus, election officials said Thursday.

The group, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, already faces allegations of filing fraudulent voter registrations in Nevada and faces investigations in other states.

And in Lake County, home to the long-depressed steel town of Gary, the bipartisan Elections Board has stopped processing a stack of about 5,000 applications delivered just before the October 6 registration deadline after the first 2,100 turned out to be phony. (more…)

Last Thursday, Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit reported that St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch were forming an Obama truth squad:

St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch are threatening to bring libel charges against those who speak out falsely against Barack Obama.

KMOV aired a story last night, that stated that St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, both Obama supporters, are threatening to bring criminal libel charges against anyone who levels what turns out to be false criticisms of their chosen candidate for President.

Now, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is running this quote from Jennifer Joyce about the OTS:

As a citizen, I believe that elections should be about issues. I also have enormous respect for our First Amendment and freedom of speech. My sole purpose in participating in this initiative is about getting truthful information to the voters. This has never been or never will be about prosecuting people.

Clearly there are those who are attempting to twist the purpose of this initiative for their own benefit. This attack is a great example of how the truth is distorted in campaigns and what we’re trying to stand up against.

Ms. Joyce’s line that she has “enormous respect for our First Amendment” is downright laughable. (more…)

Since Hurricane Sarah swept the Lower 48, we’ve been hit with a downpour of information and misinformation about Gov. Palin. It’s time we learned with the people of Alaska think of her. That’s why I loved reading this commentary from Butch King, a pilot and guide at Wildman Lake Lodge. It gives us a great look at the Sarah Palin we don’t know about. Here’s the most powerful graph of the entire article:

When Sarah walked into the Governor’s Mansion, she promptly dismissed the State Trooper detachment assigned to the Governor and had her and her husband’s gun case brought in from Wasilla. Then, she got rid of the former Governor’s STATE jet and told legislators that there were no more free rides. They would have to fly Alaska Airlines if they wanted to travel, just like she and her family. Next came the nut cutting (the Barracuda part) and the heads that rolled were too numerous to name. (more…)

John Hinderaker’s post on Powerline is today’s must reading. To say that John is upset with the anarchists is understatement. He’s got a right to be. I’ll let John’s words speak for themselves. Here’s what John said:

The first day of the RNC was fun but muted. One group, though, wasn’t deterred from pursuing its agenda by events in the Gulf. The Communist/anarchist/truther/pro-Obama protesters were out in force, committing various crimes and attempting to disrupt the proceedings.
The most shocking events are described by Jim Hoft, who was on a bus that was attacked from above when a group of protesters dropped sand bags on to the top of the bus. This is attempted murder: if the protesters had succeeded in hitting the windshield, a sand bag would have crashed through and killed the driver. The resulting accident would have killed or injured others on the bus. To my knowledge, the left-wingers/would-be murderers were not caught. (more…)

On the Massachusetts border that joins with Connecticut and Rhode Island, the green woods and blue waters of Lake Chaubunagungamaug shimmer in the summer breeze. Turning northeast along Sutton Road, it’s easy to see why America’s first colonists settled in these gently rolling hills and tilled its fields. In the fall, the thick green forests turn into a kaleidoscope of rusty yellows, reds, and browns before the first snow falls. At Nipmuck Pond, you won’t notice that Sutton Road has become Cliff Road until it changes again to Joe Jenny Road.

Five generations of the Whittier Family have farmed in this part of America. Their prized Holsteins have grown to a herd of 350, and their milk is driven daily a few miles north to their processing plant in Shrewsbury, where it is bottled and sold fresh at their milk store. From cow to cup, the process takes two days, which means “farm fresh milk” to their loyal customers. The fruits, berries, and vegetables from the farm are used to make jams, jellies, and relishes that they sell during the summer months. Todd, Wayne, and Janice Whittier have good reason to be proud. What could be more American?

Last September, Boston doctors found listeria in a woman who arrived to deliver her baby. They notified the state health department, which added her name to a list of four area residents who had also been sickened. Of those listed, two died in June and October and a third died in November. Another pregnant woman miscarried but survived, as did the mother and her new baby.

Once investigators identified Whittier Farms as the source, the health department closed their Shrewsbury operation until investigators could find and remove the source of contamination.

If not for the independence of government funded health departments, it’s not hard to imagine the dangers we would face without them. One can also imagine the risks posed if businesses like these (and their lawyers) policed themselves.

In the case of hospitals, there is no such independent oversight. And unlike Whittier Farms, hospitals actually profit when they injure or kill patients.

In 2005, Harvard Professor Lucian L. Leape, M.D reported:

“In most industries, defects cost money and generate warrantee claims. In healthcare, perversely… physicians and hospitals can bill for the additional services that are needed when patients are injured by their mistakes.”

Harming patients isn’t the only way hospitals profit. The National Center for Policy Analysis estimates that Medicare and Medicaid fraud costs taxpayers $33 billion annually. In 2005, the Florida Attorney General filed civil racketeering charges against Tenet Healthcare to recover $1 billion. Although some individuals have been convicted, legislators are primarily responsible for forcing hospitals to treat indigent, uninsured, and illegal alien patients for votes. And when those hospitals compensate with alternative revenue streams, politicians feign disdain (if they show any interest at all).

In this video, the corporate director of this Florida hospital explains why hospitals must rely on creative ways to keep their hospitals open:

In 2001, we had an illegal alien as a patient in our hospital. He was there from 2001 through 2003. He had over $1.5 million in healthcare services. We forcibly returned him to his home country of Guatemala at our own cost of $30,000… That case is not over. We have spent…$250,000 in legal fees because his family here in the United States is suing us because they think it was inappropriate for us to return this illegal patient to his home country.

(We) have a patient from Mexico who has been in my hospital for 760 days. He has severe brain damage. He has no family, no friends… His charges to date for almost two years is $1.5 million… we have contacted the Mexican Consulate four times, we have contacted immigration and nobody will help us return this patient to Mexico. We’re even willing to spend our own $30,000 to return this patient…

In 2007, the Florida Hospital Association estimates that there was $100 million in costs for illegal patient care… right now I have six patients, illegal, undocumented patients, that we are seeing every three days for renal dialysis, for all of this… we have received no reimbursement… our healthcare costs are severely affected by this… A large percentage of the babies born at our facility are from illegal parents… we have tried repeatedly (to report illegal aliens to the authorities) and have been told they are only interested if a crime has been committed.

While fraud leaves a paper trail, it’s much more difficult to prove that physicians deliberately or recklessly harmed patients.

For example, if Dr. Smith successfully treats you for a small cut, he might legitimately charge your insurance company $500. But if Dr. Smith uses improperly sterilized equipment (like those routinely used at this Tenant hospital), the subsequent infections, IV antibiotics, intensive care, and related costs permit hospitals to charge much more whether the patient survives or not. Essentially, the sicker a well-insured patient gets, the more hospitals can charge.

Tenet Healthcare’s Garden Grove Hospital knowingly used defective sterilizers for many months. “Flash” sterilizers are used to clean surgical instruments soiled during operations. These had repeatedly failed to kill resilient spores during repeated routine test runs. When hospital administrators instructed surgeon Charles Rosen how to explain the situation to federal inspectors, Rosen resigned and went straight to federal authorities.

“This information was being withheld from the very surgeons entrusted with care of the surgical patients,” Rosen complained in a 2000 resignation letter to then-hospital-CEO Mark Meyers. “Such behavior is beyond belief. I feel it is a deliberate attempt at cover-up for financial reasons.”

When LA’s Cedar Sinai Medical Center almost killed Dennis Quaid’s children last year, the hospital’s chief medical officer admitted the “preventable error.” The unprecedented admission had more to do with Quaid’s celebrity than the spokesman’s candor. Had Dennis Smith’s children been injured, the medical records would have likely disappeared into a lawyer’s briefcase until a settlement (with a solid non-disclosure statement attached) had been signed.

Although he has sued the drug company, Quaid has not yet sued Cedars. Whether he sues or not, malpractice lawsuits in California are capped too low to worry most California hospitals. The California Department of Public Health fined Cedars $25,000 which is, coincidentally, what the hospital typically charges insurance companies for two babies who spend one day in intensive care – a pittance designed to make Californians believe the agency performs any oversight.

Quaid has since created The Quaid Foundation to give patients a place to report medical errors. Unfortunately, non-disclosure statements prevent many disclosures. If Quaid partnered with physicians of Semmelweis Society International or the Alliance for Patient Safety, he would team with physicians who aren’t afraid of protecting patient rights.

After reviewing 37 million Medicare patients’ medical records, (e.g. patients over 65), Healthgrades reported that medical errors in hospitals kill 200,000 patients each year. They did not report what happened to patients younger than 65.

HCQIA

When restaurants poison diners, the local or state health department closes the business until the problems are fixed. But when hospitals harm patients, administrators close ranks, investigate themselves, and destroy physicians and nurses who talk.

This isn’t a new problem. When patients sued for unnecessary errors and complications before 1986, many assumed that former patients and their lawyers were maliciously shaking down hospitals for millions of dollars.

To protect healthcare managers, their own lawyers drafted legislation called the Health Care Quality Improvement Act (HCQIA) in 1986. HCQIA’s flaw (pronounced Hick-Wa) stems from the fundamental conflict of interest between the bill’s co-authors, corporate hospital attorneys Horty & Springer, and the patients they ostensibly protect. Predictably, the same lawyers rendered HCQIA unenforceable by inserting this subsection:

42 U.S.C. §11112 (b) (3): A professional review body’s failure to meet the conditions described in this subsection shall not, in itself, constitute failure to meet the standards of subsection (a) (3) of this section. (See page 20)

This section indemnifies hospitals and their own peer review boards from being liable for their own rules. So, for example, when Dr. Gil Mileikowsky agreed to assist a patient whose healthy fallopian tubes were removed by another physician without her consent, the hospital staged what many physicians call a “sham peer review.” By characterizing Dr. Mileikowsky as disruptive, the hospital suspended his clinical privileges and reported their decision to the National Practitioners Data Bank (NPDB), which effectively prevents physicians whose licenses have been suspended in one state from practicing in others.

Regrettably, the Act is ineffective because it relies on corporate hospital executives to report errors and complications that they profit from.

For example, two physicians in one small Tenet facility generated $40 million/year in revenues from patients they subjected to unnecessary cardiac procedures. As in all cases, the protections that patients relied on depended upon; 1) the hospital executives who profit financially from unnecessary procedures, errors and complications, and 2) the physicians who were responsible for such misconduct.

Examples of failures to fulfill HCQIA’s intent by corporate hospital executives have been reported by CBS News, The Street, the Pittsburg Post Gazette and AMA Voice.

Examples of failures to fulfill the HCQIA’s intent by physicians are found in Medical Economics, the Pittsburg Post Gazette, Time, and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Although small businesses and entrepreneurs have been the driving force behind the growth of the US economy, the US healthcare system has regressed into one that does not permit competition.

Because competition tends to reduce consumer costs, Dr. Mileikowsky reports that hospital law firms consider staff physicians who compete as “problem physicians.” Horty Springer’s hostility toward independent private physicians is demonstrated throughout their seminars, courses, and audiotapes that can be purchased on their website.

Hospital lawyers have developed a methodology and vernacular for controlling physicians, patients, and other advocates who report incidents to outside agencies or agree to testify on behalf of patients/victims of medical negligence. Their preferred strategy is to destroy the physician by discrediting him or her as disruptive, crazy, impaired, incompetent, or an imminent danger. Horty Springer also trains hospital administrators how to protect themselves from physicians who report dangerous conditions or patients who are killed or injured by recklessness or incompetence (whistleblowers).

Harvard economist Kip Viscusi estimates that the value of one human life is somewhere between four- and nine million dollars. If multiplied by Healthgrade’s “200,000 patients who die each year”, the loss to the US economy can be estimated somewhere between $800 billion and $1.8 trillion, annually.

Based on 152 published peer review articles, the Nutrition Institute of America, concludes that medical mistakes kill 784,000 people annually.

In 2006, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons unanimously passed resolutions to correct these issues. The time for US legislators to correct these mistakes is long overdue.

If you do not want your hospital to harm you or your loved ones for profit, call your local representatives and demand their support of the Whistleblower Protection Act.

(More info here, here, and here)

Mai Thor’s post at Minnesota Daily would be utterly laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. Thor’s post concludes that requiring photo ID’s before voting is racist. Here’s the scariest part of Thor’s post:

Our Constitution affords us several rights, including the right to vote. It is unfortunate that many people, especially those who run our courts and make our laws, feel that voting is not a right, but minimize it to some sort of privilege, like having a bank account or going to the liquor store, where conditions and technicalities have to be met in order to participate.

There is no denying the race factor in the history of photo ID requirements. After the Civil War, the black vote was suppressed by poll taxes and literacy tests as well as other heinous laws known as Jim Crow. Proponents of photo IDs say it prevents voter fraud, when, in reality, voter fraud is an illusion which originated from an era of racism.

Photo IDs are the poll tax of present day America. Today, the group of individuals that are disenfranchised is much broader. Some of these individuals include seniors, low-income people and those who have disabilities.

Ms. Thor’s grasp of reality is faulty at best. First, let’s consider this article by WSJ’s John Fund:

Take the bill the GOP-controlled Legislature passed, which would require voters show a form of official ID or a utility bill; another bill would end Philadelphia’s bizarre practice of locating over 900 polling places in private venues, including bars, abandoned buildings and even the office of a local state senator. City officials admit their voter rolls are stuffed with phantoms. The city has about as many registered voters as it has adults, and is thus a rich breeding ground for fraud.

Let’s also examine this post by Stefan Sharkansky, in which Sharkansky quotes from a Washington Post op-ed by Michael Waldman and Justin Leavitt of the Brennan Center. Here’s one of Leavitt’s and Waldman’s assertions: (more…)

“I know, Officer - you jus’ stopping’ me ‘cause I’m BLAAACK!”

Cops hear it every day, and although millions of hours and tax dollars are wasted each year to disprove false allegations, many blacks (and guilt-ridden whites) consider the non-existence of racial profiling as proof of an institutional cover-up that corroborates its existence.

Who needs more proof than that?

Trial lawyer Merrick Bobb, who faked portions of the Christopher Commission Report, blames “… the impossibly high burden of proof…” for the exoneration of the falsely accused. While Bobb may have forgotten the need for evidence, he ignores facts that show officers stopping blacks and Latinos at rates that are consistent with (or lower than) high Latino and black crime statistics.

How many innocent white people does he think the LAPD should shake down before LA cops can question these suspects? Because they are overwhelmingly black and Latino, Bobb says these “patterns demand a response” without explaining that taxpayers will waste millions more on trial lawyers like himself who profit by corrupting our police departments.

While most Americans easily dismiss Bobb and Mack’s arguments, we had no idea that millions of black Americans actually believe that our “genocidal government” created the AIDS virus in a laboratory to control black populations – or where such rumors came from – until Barak Obama introduced us to his “spiritual advisor”. Because police officers are the most prominent representatives of America’s “oppressive government,” it’s hard for some criminal suspects to not defend their bad behavior by initiating false complaints when arrested.

Cops who tire of the physical and political risks that come with stopping black suspects often move to safer (and more appreciative) neighborhoods. While those who serve within LA’s toughest areas are rewarded spiritually, they also risk being labeled as problem officers after their third false complaint. And if that complaint arrives during his third year of service, he may spend the next 27 doing everything he can to avoid criminals who might make a fourth (frustrated rookies call them drones). To trial lawyers like Bobb, benchwarmers who generate no complaints make better cops than those who foul out after four quarters of triple-doubles. After a while, cops ask themselves why they don’t simply ignore black criminals - The pay’s the same so why take unnecessary risks?

False allegations don’t hurt cops as much as the communities they try to serve. Some officers learn to avoid contact with black suspects, leaving vulnerable black communities to deal with them alone, unarmed and undefended. Crime and neglect further strain and dispirit these neighborhoods, where locals congregate on Sunday mornings to hear preachers blame white people (e.g., Republicans) for their sorrows.

Forty years after Daniel Moynihan (D-NY) convinced Americans to pay single black girls to have fatherless babies, his neglected offspring continues to join gangs while “locked down” inside Democrat-controlled public schools. After decades of neglect and disillusionment, some seek spiritual comfort. If lucky, they find someone like Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson. If not, someone like Rev. Jeremiah Wright finds them.

Celebrated by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) in 2005, black theology requires pastors to convince their congregants that black people “must struggle daily under the burden of white oppression.” Democrats rely on activists like Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, and Jeremiah Wright to spread this message to foment racial disharmony and distrust to control the black vote. Few Americans considered that until now.

For more than three decades, Jeremiah Wright screamed FIRE in his crowded theater. But when America’s magical Negro introduced us to his spiritual advisor, even liberal Democrats choked on the hypocrisy. Wright backtracked a little at the National Press Club, blunting his government-AIDS fable with a vaguer US Government “is capable of anything.”

After years of sermons that routinely violated the Third and Ninth Commandments before thousands of susceptive parishioners, Wright’s theological and political peers are now expressing frustration not because of Wright’s abhorrent performances, but because of his willingness to enunciate his unrepentant bigotry days before the upcoming primaries. Wright tried to wrap himself in the skirts of “the black church” and found that embarrassed blacks and guilt-ridden whites were unwilling to defend him.

Pastor John of LA’s First AME Church was not hurt or disgusted by Wright’s sermons, but that “one of the most historic political campaigns in the nation’s history could be derailed by this pastor who has been needlessly callous, careless and insensitive in his remarks” – implying that they are true and would’ve been okay AFTER Barak Obama’s undeserved election.

Now that Jeremiah Wright has shown us the inside of black theology churches and how he ignores black-on-black crime to sell the voodoo of white-on-black racism, it’s easier to understand where someone like LAPD Police Commissioner John Mack and Merrick Bobb learned that white LA cops routinely engage in racial profiling. Mack attends the First AME Church.

Because Mack is a major player in LA’s racial politics, we can assume that he’s not subject to customary delusions of his co-parishioners. If so, it’s hard to imagine why he would deliberately spread false tales to his vulnerable constituents – unless to destabilize and influence his constituents in support of LA’s other corrupt political leaders – and trial lawyers like Bobb who profit from these beliefs.

In this effort, Mack and his peers are not unlike the foremen who once managed field slaves. Mack was flummoxed not by the non-existence of racial profiling within the LAPD, but by the fact that he might one day be forced to choose between reality and the witches’ brew of black theology.

This morning, Margaret Carlson weighs in on the Philadelphia Fiasco. After recounting the charges and countercharges, she made this important observation:

Karl Rove was the big winner. His Politics About Nothing lives on. If you aren’t going to help the working man, tell him that the other condescending guy wants to take away his gun. Republicans show respect for all the things not under siege, his guns, his religion, his marriage, his patriotism, and hope no one homes in on jobs, foreclosures or health care.

I’ve never thought of Maggie Carlson as the brightest bulb in the Agenda Media’s chandelier. This observation confirms for me that my initial opinion was right. Why on God’s green earth did Ms. Carlson think about Karl Rove after watching the Democrat debate?

The first thing that popped into my head was that Democrats still fear Karl Rove to the point of being paranoid about him. It isn’t a stretch to say that Karl Rove gets blamed for the misfortunes of Democrats. Never mind the fact that they cast aside a real man of substance in Joe Lieberman because he wasn’t liberal enough. Nevermind the fact that they’re on the verge of picking the most unqualified presidential candidate in the history of the United States.

In Ms. Carlson’s mind, the Fiasco In Philadelphia didn’t happen because two radicals with barely a presidential qualification shared the stage. In Ms. Carlson’s mind, the Philadelphia Fiasco happened because Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos asked questions given them by Mr. Rove.

Ms. Carlson wants people to forget the disastrous answers both candidates gave on the Second Amendment. Here’s the exchange between Charlie Gibson and Barack Obama:

MR. GIBSON: Senator Obama, the District of Columbia has a law, it’s had a law since 1976, it’s now before the United States Supreme Court, that prohibits ownership of handguns, a sawed-off shotgun, a machine gun or a short-barreled rifle. Is that law consistent with an individual’s right to bear arms?
SENATOR OBAMA: Well, Charlie, I confess I obviously haven’t listened to the briefs and looked at all the evidence. As a general principle, I believe that the Constitution confers an individual right to bear arms. But just because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can’t constrain the exercise of that right, and, you know, in the same way that we have a right to private property but local governments can establish zoning ordinances that determine how you can use it. And I think that it is going to be important for us to reconcile what are two realities in this country.

(more…)

Yesterday, Judge Thomas Hogan ordered Rep. Jim McDermott to pay Rep. John Boehner the damages stemming from a 1998 lawsuit. Here’s the gist of Judge Hogan’s ruling:

A federal judge in Washington has ordered Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott to pay more than $1 million in attorney’s fees awarded to Minority Leader John A. Boehner as part of a protracted lawsuit involving an illegally taped cell phone call.

U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Hogan ruled that McDermott, D-Wash., must pay $1,053,181, plus $520,761 in interest to Boehner, R-Ohio.

There’s alot of history behind this ruling. Here’s a nice summarization of that history:

Boehner sued McDermott in 1998, accusing him of leaking the contents of a conference call that a Florida couple had illegally taped from Boehner’s cell phone in 1996.

In the call, Republican leaders, including then-Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia (1979-99), discussed responding to ethics allegations against Gingrich, who served as Speaker from 1995 to 1999.

McDermott at the time was the ranking Democrat on the House ethics panel.

The attorney’s fee payment comes on top of $60,000 in damages that McDermott already has paid Boehner out of his legal expense fund.

In December, McDermott paid Boehner $50,000 in court-ordered punitive damages, $10,000 in statutory damages and another $4,169 in interest, according to public disclosure filings. The payment was made shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review a federal appeals court ruling in Boehner’s favor.

What’s hillarious is McDermott’s statement after being notified of the ruling: (more…)

Robert “CJ” Parry has tipped another cow on LAPD’s command staff.

In this LA Times op-ed from March 16, 2008, Parry exposed how East Coast import William Bratton used this three-year-old shooting as a pretext to push for a series of politically-correct changes within LAPD’s Special Weapons & Tactics Team (SWAT) designed to appoint unqualified female officers. SWAT wives are understandably upset.

A Brief History

Appointing unqualified candidates to LAPD ranks is an old story. When LA politicians decided there weren’t enough women or minorities on the LAPD during the 1980s, then-Mayor Tom Bradley ordered the LAPD to accept more.

Unless each class graduated the correct ratio of black, brown, and female officers, none of the overwhelming number of highly qualified white officers could be hired either. When some women couldn’t vault walls, the walls were lowered. Written tests were made simpler. Some recruits even lacked the finger strength to fire their pistols. Another complained that her heavy badge hurt her shoulder and back and took a desk job.

Officers who questioned the fitness of these useless officers were sternly warned about workplace harassment rules. Some field training officers (FTOs) were forced to pass dangerously incompetent rookies or lose their rank and merit pay. Some rookies stood no more than five feet tall and others were appointed despite known criminal affiliations. And because female officers must use a greater level of force than their male counterparts (to compensate for skinny arms and legs), some have unnecessarily shot and killed unarmed naked teenagers. Despite some outrageous (but secretly settled) excessive force lawsuits, no female officer has ever been charged criminally for using excessive force on the LAPD or in California.

Certain organizations within the LAPD have remained free from LAPD’s affirmative action mediocrity.

Motorcycle Enforcement (Motors), for example, requires officers to be able to straddle a motorcycle without it tipping over. They must also know how to ride. Gravity and physics have a way of weeding out weak riders regardless of race or gender.

The other unit is SWAT. Throughout its 35 year history, SWAT officers have only lost one hostage despite thousands of dangerous incidents. Until recently, no officer was ever lost during an incident.

That’s the good news.

The Bad News

The bad news is that many of the LAPD’s lackluster rookies now comprise the LAPD’s mid- and senior level management today. One of them, Assistant Chief Sharon Papa, was promoted as a commander in 1997 after the LAPD was forced to absorb LA’s former bus police (MTA). Papa was promoted to chief of police there after chasing buses for seven years.

To find a way to shoehorn a female into SWAT, Bratton used this three-year-old shooting as a pretext:

… Police Chief William J. Bratton appointed a board of inquiry to examine the incident. Its mission, he said, was to investigate the officers’ tactics and other factors in the shooting. “For the safety of the public and officers, we need to understand intimately what transpired in that incident,” he said at the time.

In fact, the board did nothing of the sort. None of the SWAT officers from the Peña shooting were even interviewed by the panel, according to multiple sources. Indeed, the board’s eight members included fewer tactical experts (one) than attorneys (three). In its final report, the board acknowledged that it had been “ultimately precluded from gaining a full and complete understanding of what transpired in Peña until after this report was finalized.”

What’s more, Assistant Chief Sharon Papa privately promised the team shortly after the incident that the report would be aired openly, according to officers who were present. That didn’t happen either.

The final report — completed 15 months ago — has not been released. Many senior department officials have never seen it, and Times reporters have repeatedly requested it but have been turned down.

Rumors of the secret report got back to a SWAT wife. In this widely circulated message, she emailed Assistant Chief Sharon Papa on March 10th:

Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:08:57 -0700
From: “LAPD SWAT Wife”
To:”SHARON PAPA” sharon.papa@lapd.lacity.org>
Subject: Re: D TEAM wives

Recently a group of LAPD SWAT wives gathered to learn how to support our husbands and deal with our redefined roles after the death of the first SWAT officer. This has had an enormous ripple effect through the SWAT families. The reality of how easily that could have been our husband. And although it wasn’t we have been consumed with guilt and grief for the family that was affected. Now we have heard there are actions being taken to lower the hiring standard for getting into SWAT. Although I can’t speak for everyone the majority of us are offended that at this time of grieving that anyone would do this to these officers. We are concerned with the safety of our husbands, the father of our children if they are expected to go into these highly dangerous situations with someone who got in under a compromised standard.

Of the 60 men on SWAT 52 are married. It is widely believed this is an attempt to be politically correct and allow a female officer on the team. We do not begrudge a female making it on the team. And from what I understand neither do the men of SWAT. However, she needs to meet the same criteria. The motto of the SWAT team is “Uncompromised Duty Honor and Valor” this is compromising all those. You do not see the NFL, NHL, MLB lowering their standard to allow females to get to play. And those are entertainment organizations for profit. It defies common sense that a life saving organization would be willing to.

The SWAT selection certification process has been tried and tested. It has been in place for 20 years and it was approved by the city. If you watched Randy Simmons funeral or if you know any of the members of this elite division of law enforcement you would know it is working. Their record proves it. It doesn’t require change. Change is only good when something is not working. We will not sit quietly by and allow you to compromise our husbands safety.

Chief Papa responded two hours later:

Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:08:57 -0700
From: “SHARON PAPA” sharon.papa@lapd.lacity.org>
To: “LAPD SWAT Wife”
Subject: Re: D TEAM wives

I am not aware of any actions being taken to lower the standards for getting into SWAT. (BOLD ADDED) I do know that the LASD recently did a validation study of their requirements and our Chief wanted to have ours looked at as well to make sure our standards are still legally valid.

I will forward your inquiry to Chief Paysinger and Chief Roupoli since they would be involved in any review that may currently be underway. I appreciate your e-mail and certainly understand your concerns. Once I have more information, I will get back in touch with you.

When Parry’s op-ed was published a week later, it was clear that Chief Papa and Bratton knew all about the secret inquiry and had lied to the LAPD wives, possibly in violation of LAPD Manual sections 828 , 360, and 115.95, all of which ordinary officers could be suspended immediately without pay or terminated.

Two days later, the Los Angeles Police Protective League LAPPL attacked Bratton for the scheme.

I won’t blame Bratton or Papa, however. Bratton was hired for his East Coast discretion. This kind of politically correct secrecy illustrates why a police agency should never be controlled by a sleazy mayor or a wild band of anti-police lawyers.

Until civil service protections are restored and a real cop is appointed as the chief of police, we can expect more secrecy and mediocrity from the Mayor and Bratton.

Active or former officers or their wives are encouraged to contact me privately here.