LAPD’s Chief Demands More Mediocrity
When I trained rookie officers at LAPD’s Foothill Division twenty years ago, it was hard to ignore the low standards that the civilian LA Personnel Department was forcing onto the street:
- After eight months on the street, a rookie couldn’t read a Thomas Map.
- A rookie couldn’t hop a block wall to assist her partner “because her breasts were too big.”
- Another rookie left his training officer alone with gang members when called to the station.
- Another rookie didn’t have enough strength to fire her pistol.
Regardless of how America’s mediocrity deniers think these stories are, they are real. What’s worse – area captains forced training officers to pass minority and female recruits regardless of how dysfunctional they were as officers. As a result, LAPD standards plummeted:
- One obese affirmative action sergeant demanded free food from local eateries. He would return on weekends with his family, show his badge and demand free food for all of them.
- Another black officer boasted of on-duty sex and credit card fraud, threatening officers who objected.
- A female helicopter pilot disabled herself and partner when she lost control of a $2 million helicopter
- Other affirmative action cops raped women, stole narcotics, planted evidence, and shot innocent people.
But even after the Rampart scandal, white officers knew better than to complain of questionable behavior by some of their black counterparts. The only refuge for quality-conscious officers was SWAT and Motors - until now.
Robert C.J. Parry describes how Antonio Villaraigosa’s favorite lap dog is forcing the same mediocrity into SWAT:
Would you want the police SWAT team coming through the door to be the best of the best — the toughest, most highly trained, most elite tacticians in the Los Angeles Police Department — or would you want the team to “look like L.A.”? Would you want rescuers who had not lost a hostage in three decades, or would you want a team with heartwarming, multicultural diversity?