Update on LAPD video

DB was on the verge of being appalled yesterday at the sight of LAPD officers using considerable force during an immigration rally. But I reserved judgment because I didn't have all the facts.

Well, it's not looking pretty today. This video does indicate that the police were provoked, but it is hard to watch it without wondering what the heck the police were doing, other than attacking anybody in front of them, even if there was obviously no threat posed by a given individual.

Not good.

UPDATE: DB eagerly awaited Lou Dobbs' program today to see how he would cover the story.

DOBBS: In Los Angeles, the chief of police and other officials promised a full investigation into the violence that broke out at the end of yesterday's otherwise peaceful pro-amnesty rally. Police fired rubber bullets and swung their batons in efforts to disperse elements of the crowd from a city park. Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, in fact, told a local radio station some actions, he said, taken by his officers seemed inappropriate.

Fifteen police officers among those injured in the melee. None of the injuries were believed to be serious and activist organizers of those demonstrations said they believe the people confronting the police were anarchists.

There you go, just a bunch of anarchists. Anarchists with press credentials. Anarchists in elementary school.

UPDATE II: Here's an interesting video from the mess. It indicates that the people were instructed to leave. But it also seems to show that the police were firing indiscriminately into crowds of people.

UPDATE III: Here's Wolf Blizter at the end of the "Situation Room" today:

BLITZER: Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon.

The Los Angeles Police Commission now investigating the melee at yesterday's immigration rally in Los Angeles. Police fired rubber bullets at demonstrators, struck some with batons. Officers say they were targeted with rocks and bottles.

The police chief says some of the officers' tactics were, in his words, inappropriate.

Lou Dobbs is following that story.

He's getting ready for his own prime time "Broken Borders" special that begins right at the top of the hour.

Number of times Dobbs mentioned the story: 0.

Way to go, L.A.

As we look back at the Rodney King riots, which peaked with King's "Can't we all just get along" comments 15 years ago today, it's just amazing to see that the LAPD is still on the news swinging clubs at people and giving them welts with rubber bullets.

Unbelievable.

UPDATE: I just wanted to say that, in general, I am very supportive of the LAPD. I know people on the force and I have the utmost respect for them. Their work is significantly more dangerous than mine, not to mention the disparity in contributions to the general welfare between our jobs.

This graphic and disturbing YouTube video of Peter Jennings with the LAPD pretty much says it all.

I just get extremely disappointed when things like this happen, especially with the riots on my mind.

Also, I am still waiting to read (and I've been looking for) some sort of conclusive statement from the people investigating the tasing of that student at UCLA last year. (That was the UCPD, operating under the authority of LAPD)

Can't we all just get along?

It was 15 years ago today that Rodney King asked that question. DB was at a friend's house.

The first night of the riots, the local news was showing maps of Los Angeles with little fire icons slowly moving towards my location. I called my future roommate to ask what was happening at the apartment in Koreatown where I would soon be living. Buildings were blazing out the window. I ended up staying with a friend in Highland Park for a few nights. Between the carnage and the curfew, where you were was where you ended up.

Eventually, we had to get used to seeing tanks parked at the 7/11 instead of cops. Store owners walking on their roofs with rifles. Strange days.

I went down to Florence and Normandie a couple years ago and it looked alright. I don't have much occasion to go there, but I had a work assignment that brought me nearby. It was hard to picture so much violence in that neighborhood at that point. I guess Los Angeles has come a ways, if not a long way.

I hadn't been in Los Angeles for very long when the riots happened. I had been living someplace where you knew just about everybody. The riots were an eye-opener for me in a lot of ways. The complete breakdown of order, now all too familiar, had previously been beyond my imagination.

Looking back, other than the heroes who saved Reginald Denny and whatever other acts of bravery took place over those insane days, nobody at all came out looking good.

President George H.W. Bush looked clueless, especially when he insensitively stated flatly that the system worked.

Mayor Tom Bradley was outraged at the verdict. But when the choke hold was banned, the police ended up with those steel batons and Bradley saw the injury rates steadily increasing during his tenure. He didn't act when he could have (and he was asked to).

Chief Gates presided over a department that allowed the officer seen flailing over King to remain on duty even though he failed a baton test only two hours earlier. And his department's relationship to its community was obviously beyond substandard.

Unless that community was someplace like Simi Valley, which brings us to the justice system. As bad as it was for the jury to let the cops off completely, it was the mindboggling decision of a couple judges to move the trial to an extremely cop-friendly town with an all-White jury. They almost couldn't have put the trial in a place more likely to return an acquittal.

The way the media edited the footage of the beating also set up false expectations in the minds of the jury.

And then there were the people of Los Angeles. As I wrote above, some were heroes. But many were not. Fifty-four were killed. Hundreds of buildings burned to the ground.

A decade later a friend called me from another state. He had been my next door neighbor and we were actually together when we saw the verdict handed down. I hadn't spoken to him in years. What he told me was shocking to me.

He said that he moved out of California because during the riots, while I was asleep in Highland Park, he was out breaking curfew. He was walking around looking to contribute to the carnage. He was a college graduate, out of steady work (the first Bush presidency was not friendly to the L.A. economy) and ready to explode. The riots pushed him to act out.

He didn't tell me what, if anything, he did while roaming. But when the fever finally broke, it left him wondering what kind of person he was and what living in Los Angeles had done to him. I can tell you what kind of person he was; he was good. It was all just too much for him and soon he was back in his home state, living at his parents' house.

The riots changed my world views as well. They certainly changed my life. The career path I had laid out for myself was shattered by the lack of faith I suddenly had in all these institutions.

Sometimes you look back and say "I can't believe it's been 15 years..." but this time, it seems like a lifetime ago for me. I remember thinking that the Bush presidency was a disaster. I had no idea that his offspring would eventually reach new depths.

UPDATE: Just found this excellent look at key figures in the riots and where they are today at TIME Magazine.

U-C-L-A Fight, Fight, Fight

What happened Tuesday at UCLA is simply nauseating.

From the Daily Bruin:

[Mostafa] Tabatabainejad was also stunned with the Taser when he was already handcuffed, said Carlos Zaragoza, a third-year English and history student who witnessed the incident.

"(He was) no possible danger to any of the police," Zaragoza said. "(He was) getting shocked and Tasered as he was handcuffed."

DB finds it hard to believe that UCPD officers were given Tasers to use on library users who can not produce a BruinCard. Outrageous.

Let's face it: Not to diminish the threats that these officers must occasionally face and definitely train to handle, these guys aren't living like Ethan Hawke in Training Day. Although it has a history of activism, UCLA is hardly teeming with armed and dangerous criminals, ready to kill officers and staff who challenge them in the library.

But even if these officers are on the front lines of the GWOT: Powell Library Edition, this was basically a case of non-violent civil disobedience. Going limp and refusing to move is not a reason for officers to inflict pain on someone. Especially someone who is already handcuffed.

Inexcusable.

UPDATE: Just to be clear... the thing that really rattles this blogger is the fact that this kid was Tased when he was limp and cuffed.

UCLA's policy about ID's in the library: Whatever.
UCPD confronting this kid: Sure, fine.
The cops Tasing him: Don't know enough about the crucial first moment when they made that decision.
The kid's yelling and swearing: DB would have said even worse. Much worse.
Tasing a kid who's cuffed: Unacceptable.

Two other points:

1) It is understandable for cops to worry about protecting themselves (and their own service revolvers, Tasers, clubs) from potentially violent people.

2) Going limp is what young people are taught to do when they expect to be arrested at a protest -- older activists, including lawyers, instruct college kids to go limp when arrested. Cops know this.

If they start Tasing anybody who goes limp on a college campus, they will either strike a severe blow against young people's right to feel free to peacefully protest (yeah, sure the UCPD cares about that one) or they will make it more likely that passionate young people will expect a physical confrontation at future protests and will not go easy (which the cops should care about). Either way, Tasing kids who are cuffed and limp cannot be tolerated.