This is now in general the great art of legislation at this place: To do a thing by assuming the appearance of preventing it (and to) prevent a thing by assuming that of doing it.

A few years ago, LAPD patrol officers responded to the report of a man who was “disturbing the peace.” When they arrived a few minutes later, they spotted the man standing on the porch of his single family home. As the officers stepped from their car, the driver-officer withdrew her service pistol, aimed, and fired at the man on the porch. The man fell.

Her shocked partner turned and asked, “What did you do that for?”

She replied, “I don’t know, I don’t know!”

A neighbor witnessed the incident from across the street.

The man died. Investigators found his plastic dinner knife. They later learned that he suffered from polio.

A few months after LAPD and DA completed their investigations, the Los Angeles City Council, in secret session, settled the case with the dead man’s family for several million tax dollars. The payment was used to 1) settle the wrongful death suit, and 2) to compensate family members for their silence. No charges were filed against the officer and, as far as I know, she’s still armed and handling radio calls for the LAPD.

I received the information from a reliable source. If I were to disclose that source, she would be fired for releasing confidential information. If detectives and DA investigators disclosed portions of the investigation, they would also be fired or disbarred. The secrecy that pervades routine County Supervisor and Police Commission hearings prevents anyone from independently confirming incidents like these with other sources.

This story isn’t surprising. After LAPD Officer Karen Tiffault shot and killed a naked 16-year-old boy in 1999, the City Council secretly awarded the boy’s family millions of dollars as well. A large chunk of that money bought their silence.

Because secrets are nothing new in Los Angeles, its laughable how so many of LA’s usual suspects are shocked – shocked to find secrets behind the closed doors of the LAPD. Those lefties doth protest too much.

LA County Prosecutor Patterico writes:

… in the recent articles on the Board of Rights’decision, the (LA Times) never explains that the contrary Police Commission findings were made in a process every bit as secret as that of the Board of Rights. (The only difference I can see is that the Police Commission’s results were officially announced and released by the Commission, whereas the Board’s were released by the officer, because of the necessity for a privacy waiver.

This is not a meaningful distinction, as the public has learned the results and reasoning in both cases. But the process — the proceedings, taking of evidence, and deliberations — was secret in both cases.) And when the paper initially reported the Police Commission’s findings, the secrecy of the Commission’s proceedings was barely mentioned, and was given no prominence whatsoever…

Patterico (well worth the read) singles out the Police Commission and political gossip columnist Erwin Chemerinsky (who has never let notions of consistency bother him before), but doesn’t mention the secret decisions that are routinely made by the Los Angeles City Council, the County Board of Supervisors, the City Attorney – offices that have, since the 1970s, helped squander hundreds of millions of tax dollars in liability settlements and confidentiality agreements. This is why the contrived tantrums by LA’s Times and conjoined politicians mean nothing.

LA’s Broken Democracy

As voters and taxpayers, we depend on the integrity that comes from independent executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government. Those branches, however, are presently infested by conjoined ideologues that now control the only watchdog of political power: the media. The LAPD is controlled by the mayor through the Police Commission, and the Los Angeles Times kills stories that expose leftist corruption, while amplifying the most inconsequential allegations of LAPD abuse.

And by doing so, LA’s politicians and gossips leave many taxpayers with the impression that crucifying this cop or questioning that LAPD decision gets to the bottom of all of LA’s problems. LA’s lefties want us to believe that if only we can finally rid ourselves of bad cops (and Republicans) Los Angeles will be the shining city on the hill… What their secret meetings won’t disclose is how their political interference created the problems they now want us to believe they can cure. (sigh)

NOTE: If you still have doubts about LA Times bias, Patterico’s definitive expose (2003-2006) is an important read.

The premier guardians of LA’s secrets are the hundreds of lawyers from firms like O’Melveny & Meyers who, under the pretext of attorney-client confidentiality, are prevented from telling taxpayers the truth about anything. If LA’s mayor appoints a “blue ribbon commission” or demands LAPD oversight, you can rest assured that their independence ends at the Mayor’s office. And because the LA Times and LAPD Chief Bratton are in bed with the Mayor and his friends, it’s not likely that taxpayers will see any transparency beyond Villaraigosa’s toothy grin.

This arrangement wasn’t always the case. When President Johnson appointed Dan Walker to investigate the so-called Chicago police riots in 1968, the Walker Commission found Mayor Daly at fault for creating the policies used by the Chicago Police to quell violent demonstrations. Warren Christopher knew this – he was there. And by another coincidence, Mayor Daly had followed the advice of the McCone Commission Report to quell riots. Coincidentally, that highly criticized report was written largely by Warren Christopher.

With the arrest of Rodney King in 1991, it’s unlikely that Christopher, now Mayor Bradley’s attorney and friend, was willing to wait for Republican President George (H.W.) Bush to appoint an “independent commission,” and Christopher got his client (Mayor Bradley) to appoint him. Of course, neither Christopher nor the hundred personally-selected lawyers found any conflict.

The Christopher Commission skewed and omitted facts that would have implicated Bradley and his police commissioners, just as the jury did in their acquittal of the King defendants in 1992. But attorney-client privilege made any such disclosure by Christopher a violation of attorney-client privilege – an act that would get Christopher and his lawyers disbarred.

Although LA politicians ostensibly serve voters, the lawyers they hire (and we pay for) serve those politicians. And until transparency exists throughout all of Los Angeles and the media, and the LAPD regains their operational and ideological independence, a selected handful LAPD trial boards will offer us nothing more than uniformed piñatas for voters to vent their anger.

—

Clark Baker is a senior contributor to CaliforniaConservative.org. He is an author, filmaker, father and retired LAPD officer. You may read more of his work here and here.

1. […] Original post by reenforce and software by Elliott Back […]

   Pingback by LA’s Dirty Little Secret of LA’s Dirty Little Secrets at Conservative Times--Republican GOP news source. — January 17, 2007 @ 4:41 pm

1. Has any police officer, anywhere, ever been tried and convicted of killing an innocent person?

   Related question: Why is that two border patrol agents, who shot and wounded an illegal alien drug smugger, are starting 11-year jail sentences (the illegal wasn’t even seriously wounded)?

   Comment by ZZMike — January 18, 2007 @ 11:16 am

2. 1) Yes, of course, many times. Two examples - LAPD detectives Ford and Von Villas were convicted as for-hire killers during the 1980s. LAPD detectives captured them during the course of a second murder. They’re doing life. More recently, two NYPD detectives were convicted of doing the same thing for the mob. You can probably Google many more incidents.

   2) According to reports I’ve read, they were convicted of shooting a fleeing suspect and failing to report it. Had the officers reported the event as they should have, I doubt charges would have been filed. But because they failed to report it AND removed evidence (shell casings), jurors may have believed that the agents’ act showed “consciousness of guilt.”

   I personally beleive the agents should be pardoned and fired. Yes, they defended our borders BUT our guardians are required to report incursions and applications of force - even when the suspect is an enemy of the United States.

   I pray that the smuggler’s civil rights lawsuit results in a verdict for all of the defendants (agents and USA).

   Comment by reenforce — January 18, 2007 @ 6:36 pm