{"article":{"id":198441,"heading":"Bratton's history in Boston, NY and LA","author":"Michael Novick","created":"2007-05-09 02:56:25","modified":"2013-11-11 00:48:27","last_modified":"Mon, 11 Nov 2013 07:48:27","article":"\n

Here's material on Bratton's record in Boston, NY

and here in LA -- this was developed by Michael

Zinzun and myself in 2002; followed by stories about Bratton in Boston.

Ends with a critique of a defense of Bratton by

Marc Cooper (I note that the LA Times just ran

brief op eds by Cooper crony Joe Domanick, as

well as by Ramona Ripston of the ACLU and Connie

Rice of the NAACP LDEF, calling for 5 more years

for Bratton. Hopefully some of them are eating

their words (hopefully penned before May 1) --

but with LA's 'liberal' opinion makers, who knows?--MN

PEACE IN THE HOOD -- WHO CAN DELIVER?

YOUTH, YOUNG ADULTS, OG's: PEACEMAKERS SPEAK OUT!

In December 1991, over a decade ago, another

serious effort was made among the many gangs in

Watts and South Los Angeles to devise a truce and

peace movement in the 'hood. On April 28, 1992,

a truce was achieved and cosigned by a number of OG leaders and their homies.

Many of these youth and young adults saw that the

keys to open the door to any meaningful change in

society must be rooted in a social movement. That

movement, in order to grow and flourish, must

keep faith with the hopes and aspirations of

those who are attached to it, with the peace

effort it represents, its programs, goals, and

objectives for justice and social well being. In

1992, the aim of the young people involved in the

truce was to help create jobs, and to end

violence by Black people against Black people and

constant police abuse, both of which seemed to be

a part of their everyday lives. They called for

rumor-control hot lines to counteract

misinformation, and demanded an end to the mass

criminalization of Black youth. Despite efforts

by the police to disrupt the truce, it took root,

and spread to every major city in the country.

Long before anybody else was even talking about

globalization, truce activists and peace-makers

reached out to their counterparts in street gangs

in Brazil, London, France and elsewhere. As the

truce developed, it was transformed into a peace

movement by peace activists from many sets.

It's time to include the next generation of

youth, young adults and gang leaders into this

movement for justice and peace in the 'hood. Any

brush fires or personal conflicts between

individuals from different sets can be resolved.

If peace is going to be restored in LA, we are

going to have to rely on young people like those

who put the peace movement together in the first

place. The city didn't do it; the police couldn't

do it, or stop it! Future success lies in the

many years of effort by peacemakers in the 'hood.

But to make it happen, we need to divert money

and jobs from the war machine and the

prison-industrial complex to the real heroes, our youth.

WHY BRATTON? WHY L.A.? WHY NOW?

Unfortunately, the city has a different plan.

LA's new police Chief Bill Bratton is beating the

drums about an upsurge in killings in LA, but

it's not the increase in shootings by police he's

talking about; it's so-called \"gang violence.\"

Yet LA is silencing or firing the peacemakers - -

activists with street credibility who are trying

to re-establish the truce that once dramatically

cut killings among Blacks and Latinos\/Chicanos.

Instead, Bratton wants a \"war on gangs\" as part

of Bush's \"war on terror.\" Mayor Hahn calls

street crime a threat to the city's economic

recovery. Bratton calls it a national security

threat. They want federal forces to come to LA to

help wage 'war on gangs.' They've opened a window

of opportunity for LAPD to use deadly force,

increase racial profiling and arbitrary stops and

arrests of Blacks and Latinos of all ages.

Bratton says he wants people in L.A. to get

angry. At whom? He's targeting poor Black and

Latino youth. He lets off the hook the rich,

powerful politicians and big businessmen who

destroy health care, bleed the schools, cut jobs

and force people into prison to work for nothing,

and who allow criminal elements like those in

Enron or Arthur Anderson to go free after

stealing billions. Bratton said, at his first

press conference in October: \"Where you have

guns, you have drugs. Where you have drugs, you

have youth. Where you have youth, you have gangs.

Why treat them like four different diseases?\"

He's fueling the hopelessness that burns as

self-destructive violence! What's his \"treatment?\" Bratton has:

· Proposed increasing the LAPD by more than 30%

from 9,000 to over 12,000 sworn officers.

· Planned to rebuild Parker Center, which would

mean taking even more money from health care,

after-school programs and other services.

· called for reinstating the old CRASH units

under a new name. But it will be with the same

foot soldiers and culture that led to the

CRASH\/Rampart scandal and the hidden atrocities

of 77th, Hollenbeck, and Southeast.

· Swept the growing ranks of the homeless on Skid

Row. He identifies panhandlers and graffiti as

high priority targets for aggressive police action.

· Gone to Israel and consulted with \"counter-terror\" experts.

· Appointed a cop from the political espionage

\"Anti-Terrorist Division\" to be his \"gang czar.

· Manipulated statistics to produce a sense of

fear and hysteria to build support for his get-tough policies.

In January 1995, as NY City police commissioner,

Bratton admitted to a group of business

executives in Boston that, while crime is

declining, fear of crime is up. \"Fear far

surpasses the reality of crime,\" he said,

according to the Boston Globe. Crime statistics

are manipulated in the interests of the profit

motive -- high crime rates mean high expenditures

on police, on public and private prison

construction and staffing. California prisons

swelled even with low and falling crime rates

through the use of \"Three Strikes,\" mandatory

minimums and denial of parole. Despite the fear

Bratton is trying to create, when you compare

November and early December 2002 to the same

period a year ago, it actually shows a very

similar pattern and number of shootings and

killings. They're related less to gangs, and more

to despair at economic and social conditions

getting worse every day. The holiday season

increases self-destructive, criminal activity

because society rubs people's faces in their

inability to buy the goodies and material

possessions that are supposed to measure human

worth. A further year of war and economic

devastation thanks to George Bush more than

accounts for any minor differences.

Peace activists trying to win young people to a

program of positive social development find they

can't compete with unemployment. In LA, it's

still easier to get drugs and guns than a job.

Another generation is having its dreams blighted

by the cold steel of prison bars. As Twilight

Bey, a peacemaker and community activist says of

Bush and Bratton, \"They're camouflaging the

problem of poverty by calling it crime.\" Crime is

actually committed by all sectors of society,

including police, yet law enforcement targets the

poor. Bratton and Bush have no answers for

growing poverty, and no interest in uprooting the

real causes of crime and violence. That's why

they have singled out Black youth! Gov. Davis has

stated that even though California is billions in

the red, we should still come up with $220

million for a \"state of the art death row\" at San

Quentin. Racially stigmatized in the media,

racially profiled by the police, Black and Latino

young men are an easy target. Gang members have

turned alienation into a badge of honor and of

belonging to their set. They seek to obtain the

necessities of survival and the markers of

success by any means necessary, and become

scapegoats for the very social and economic

problems that plague them and the rest of

society. These real problems, government

officials can't deal with, because they continue

to be part of the problem themselves!

Repressive new laws and procedures are not only

racist, but are needed by the super-rich, who get

their wealth and power from the people they hold

down and rip off. White supremacy requires the

kind of crackdown and fear-mongering that Bratton

is a proven expert at, in order to keep people

down. These police-state measures violate

everyone's civil and human rights, not just gang

members or immigrants. Lackluster city officials

want youth of color to choose between going to

prison or being swept up into the military.

Don't buy their lies. We have to regain our own

political initiative, to liberate ourselves

through our own efforts. It was the urban peace

movement that drastically cut killings among

young Blacks and Latinos\/Chicanos. It was the LA

uprising in 1992 that helped to galvanize the

initial gang truce and cut back on the scourge of

liquor stores in the Black and Latino

communities. Today, we need to develop a campaign

that targets the real culprits and criminals;

that puts responsibility on the greedy, not the

needy. That movement is growing up again. A

recent example, according to brother Stutterbox,

is the unity football games and after-parties

between the five-deuce Pueblo Bishop Bloods,

Broadway five-deuce Gangster Crips and the

five-trey Avalon Gangster Crips. The desire for

peace on all fronts is strong. At the January 11

\"Stop the War Against Iraq\" rally in Los Angeles,

a prominent image of the struggle was the

appearance of Bloodhound, a truce activist in his

red colors, holding signs saying \"Bloods Against Bloodshed\" and \"No to War.\"

But these efforts need wider support. Bobby

Brougham from the organization Exodus, who lost

his own son to street violence, recently resigned

from a city-funded gang intervention program

rather than be silenced or forced to support the

political line being promoted by both the city

and police. He says, \"The system expects us to

step through a door that was never meant for us.

We have to create our own opening.\"

We have to find our own solution to the peril we

are in. Many families in our community are all

too familiar with the pain and suffering of

losing a loved one, whether through crime, the

drug culture, drive-by shootings of innocent

bystanders by uncaring, fearful individuals

living in our communities, or by a police bullet.

The community is looking to the truce activists.

As Bobby Brougham says, \"We have not abandoned

you all. We are not scared, just tired. Many of

us have grown up to accept this life-style -- that was wrong on our part.\"

We cannot change society without also changing

ourselves. The correct direction to move now is

to set up urban black unity, empowerment, and

accountability councils, with principles of

cooperation that have proven successful, such as:

1) Mutual respect for all participants; 2)

Principled and peaceful struggle of all issues,

from full and frank discussion, before decisions

are made; 3) Collective work and responsibility

in all activities. There, all the sets can come to the table,

be a part of the decision making process, and

join in the process of reconciliation and

reintegration into the community and family.

We need a program of community self-defense and

self-determination, not more police. We need to

demand an independent investigation of the recent

barrage of police killings and shootings. We need

to revive the call for community control of the

police, a special prosecutor and elected civilian

review board. And this must be linked to a

program to take the money that's now wasted on

the police, the prisons and the military and use

it to provide decent housing and health care,

quality training and jobs, and meaningful

education for all poor and working people.

Crime is crime; it's anti-social no matter who

perpetrates it. We must hold ourselves to a

higher standard than the media that glorify

criminality and violence in films like \"Gangs of

New York\" or self-hating, woman-hating music.

Young people have a sense of invulnerability that

can lead to arrogance. We need to temper energy

with wisdom; youth don't have to solve all their

problems alone. Together, we can create a new

ethic to put the community's best interests above

selfish, uncaring individuals, whether in the

White House, the LAPD's \"Glass House,\" the

corporate boardrooms or other criminal

enterprises. \"True peace is not the absence of

conflict, but the presence of justice.\"

No Set Trippin'! Build a United Front that all

Sets will support! Increase the Peace!

Contact Information: Michael Zinzun,

323-733-2107, LA Area Urban Council for Peace &

Justice, 2824 S. Western, Los Angeles CA 90018-3032

We urge youth, young adults, families, prisoners

and OG-peacemakers who want to build peace and

justice in their 'hoods, to make use of and sign

on to this call, by faxing your endorsement to

323-733-2750 or e-mailing it to <travong@pacbell.net<\/a>>

'GLOWING' BACKGROUND CHECK IGNORED TESTIMONY

Author(s): Thomas Palmer, Globe Staff Date: May

17, 1986 Page: 17 Section: METRO

A background check on William J. Bratton,

designated to become chief of the Metropolitan

Police, has been completed and yielded \"nothing

but glowing reports from all concerned,\"

according to MDC Commissioner William J. Geary.

But the routine background investigation,

conducted by the State Office of Investigations,

did not include an examination of Bratton's

testimony before a Suffolk County grand jury in a

criminal case in which Bratton has been subpoenaed as a witness.

Bratton has indicated he will not appear

voluntarily in the case, citing plans to be away

after he is married on May 24. The attorney for

the defense in the case said this week he would

ask the judge to compel Bratton to testify. The

case, scheduled for trial on May 27, involves

William J. Sweeney, 38, of Hanson, a former

Boston police officer who is accused of illegally

receiving pay for an outside job for three years

while he was on full-salaried injury leave from the department.

Bratton, formerly a superintendent in the Boston

Police Department, was questioned before a grand

jury late last year concerning a telephone

recommendation he allegedly gave -- and a written

one he allegedly arranged -- for Sweeney, who was

applying to Whitman-Hanson Community Regional School District.

Sweeney, who spent 15 years as a Boston policeman

before being injured in a scuffle at Columbia

Point while on duty, was hired and is now

safety-security coordinator at the high school.

Bratton is scheduled to be sworn in for the MDC

job on July 1. Sweeney's attorney, Robert L.

Jubinville Jr. of Milton, said Bratton told him

he would be honeymooning in Hawaii.

Bratton was subpoenaed late last month.

Jubinville said he told Bratton \"that I would

have to go to court and get an order or attempt

to get an order to have him there . . .. He said,

'Do what you have to do,' which I have to take to mean, 'Forget it.' \"

Asked by the Globe this week whether he would

testify in the case, Bratton said, \"I don't know.

I don't know if it would be as much use.\"

Jubinville seeks Bratton's testimony because he

believes it will show Sweeney had official,

high-level approval from the department to apply for the school security post.

However, Bratton's testimony about the

circumstances surrounding his apparent

recommendation of Sweeney is much less precise

than is the testimony of others who were involved.

Paul F. Evans, Boston Police deputy

superintendent, testified before the grand jury

that Bratton in January 1982 had asked him to

write a recommendation for Sweeney and that he

had done so. The letter, on his personal

stationery, recommended Sweeney \"wholeheartedly and without reservation.\"

And Luis Perullo, Whitman-Hanson schools

superintendent, testified Bratton recommended Sweeney in a telephone call.

Bratton did not recall either action specifically. He was asked:

Q. Do you recall ever having given a recommendation in that regard, sir?

A. I do not.

And later:

Q. Sir, do you have any memory of asking

then-Deputy Superintendent Paul Evans of the

Boston Police Department to write a letter of

recommendation for William Sweeney?

A. No, I do not recall that.

The most perplexing answer in the inquiry -- at

least to Sweeney -- came early in the session.

Q. And would you tell us how you came to know Mr. Sweeney, sir?

A. I first met Mr. Sweeney, he was a member of

the same recruit class back in October of 1970.

In fact, Sweeney and Bratton had been classmates

at Boston Technical High School, graduating

together in 1965, and at Grover Cleveland Junior

High School, graduating in 1962. According to

Sweeney, they were both on the safety patrol.

Asked this week about his under-oath testimony,

Bratton said: \"I went to school with him in the

sense that he was one of 100 others.\" To say he

knew Sweeney there \"would be really stretching it,\" Bratton said.

\"I'm not even aware I went to Grover Cleveland

High School with him,\" he added. \"My first

recollection of Bill Sweeney is 1970 as one of

157 officers coming into the Boston Police

Department. I couldn't tell you two people I went

to school with at Grover Cleveland.\"

Grover Cleveland had a 1962 graduating class of

304; there were 322 in the class of 1965 at Boston Technical High School.

Geary acknowledged this week that Bratton's

testimony \"was not something that arose in the

course of that background check.\"

Asked why it was not reviewed, Geary's spokesman,

Stephen P. Burgay, said, \"My guess is because

there's no allegation that there's anything wrong

here. . . . There was no red flag to be seen by the state investigators.\"

Geary said a thorough investigation was made of

Bratton's background, including calls Geary made

personally to law-enforcement officials.

\"Then,\" he added, \"we began to cope with the

dime-droppers, the merchants of venom.\"

Geary was referring to renewed complaints, mostly

or all anonymous, about rumors concerning

Bratton's friendships with Jason Kravitz, owner

of Jason's Restaurant & Nightclub, and Charles F.

Sarkis, owner of Wonderland Race Track and several restaurants.

Any close relationship with them could have been

considered troublesome because of Kravitz'

acquaintanceship with Jason Angiulo, who is on

trial in federal district court in Boston on

racketeering charges, and because of Sarkis'

father's convictions on gaming and tax-evasion charges.

Any problem in the Bratton appointment would come

at a particularly bad time for the administration

of Gov. Dukakis. Present and former MDC police

officers have been recently convicted or

implicated in a number of crimes and

investigations, including the 1980 Medford

Depositors Trust bank burglary and the pending

civil-service examinations scandal.

\"I chased down all the rumors . . .,\" Geary said

of Bratton. \"I don't know that the fact that he

goes into those restaurants incriminates him,\"

Geary said. \". . . I didn't see anything unseemly about those relationships.\"

Bratton acknowledged both relationships and said

neither was close. \"I see no embarrassment

whatsoever,\" he said, \"and I'll state that

categorically. I see nothing at all of an

embarrassing nature or potential embarrassment.

It's not new news. It's all been previously

reported in the Globe, in all three instances.\"

One Bratton matter that has never been written

about concerns the Easter Sunday 1982 murder of

an assistant manager at Jason's, which the

then-Boston Police superintendent was reported to have helped investigate.

\"My involvement in that was strictly as a

referral to the homicide unit,\" Bratton said. \"I

had a call from Jason Kravitz that he had

information about it. I in turn gave that

information to the homicide unit.\" He said he

interviewed no witnesses in the case.

SLAYINGS OF YOUNG CLIMB IN BOSTON

Published on August 13, 1993. Author(s): John Ellement, Globe Staff

Boston has lost 61 victims to homicide so far

this year, a 60 percent rise from the same period

last year, as a new baby boom of teen-agers

accustomed to bloodshed on television, at home

and on the streets settles its disputes

violently. In a city where many teen-agers now

routinely carry guns and some use them to resolve

minor disputes, the percentage of homicide

victims 17 and under has shot up alarmingly, from

just 9 percent of victims four years ago to

almost a quarter of all victims this year.

'

26 BOSTON OFFICERS EARNED $100,000-PLUS IN 1993

NUMBER IS MORE THAN 6 TIMES THAT FOR PREVIOUS YEAR; AREA COMMANDER TOPS LIST

SIDEBAR: BOSTON POLICE PAY

Published on March 9, 1994. Author(s): Indira

A.R. Lakshmanan, Globe Staff and David Armstrong, Contributing Reporter

Twenty-six Boston police officers earned more

than $100,000 last year, more than six times the

number who drew that much the year before,

according to Police Department records released

yesterday. In 1992 and 1991, only four officers

earned more than $100,000 each year, department

records show. In 1990, 12 officers earned more

than $100,000, and 13 did in 1989.

The department's top earner, Capt. Charles

Cellucci, the commander of Area D-4, which

includes the South End, the Back Bay,

BRATTON, IN BOSTON, SAYS CRIME IS DOWN BUT FEAR IS ON THE RISE

Published on January 25, 1995. Author(s): Zachary R. Dowdy, Globe Staff

William J. Bratton, the former Boston police

commissioner who left to take the job of New York

police commissioner in January 1994, told a group

of business executives in Boston yesterday that,

while crime in major cities is declining, fear of

crime is still on the increase. ''Fear far

surpasses the reality of crime,'' said Bratton,

who noted a 12 percent dip in overall crime last

year in New York, including a lower homicide rate.

Dissonance

Bill, We Hardly Know You

Cut Chief Bratton some slack for a good start

by Marc Cooper

[photo] Bratton

LA Weekly Nov. 14-21

http:\/\/www.laweekly.com\/ink\/02\/52\/dissonance-cooper.php<\/a>

[Note from MN: What follows is Cooper's LA Weekly pontifications on why <

people are unnecessarily upset about LA's new police chief, interpolated <

with my comments citing chapter and verse about why Cooper is a horse's <

ass. With \"alternative\" \"journalism\" -- each word in separate quotes <

-- like this, who needs mainstream journalism?--MN]<

CALM DOWN, EVERYONE. CALM DOWN. THE LAPD'S new chief, Bill Bratton, has

barely been in office two weeks and already a chorus of Cassandras out

there prophesy that instead of promised police reform, Bratton's about to

unleash a wave of blind repression. These early critics suggest we are only

days, maybe only minutes, away from the dark ages of Daryl Gates: Operation

Hammer crackdowns on the hood, thousands of black and Latino kinds [sic, I

hope, unless Cooper is simply betraying his

racism about the \"others.\"--MN]

being jacked up and proned out by out-of-control cops from rogue special

units.

[Note from MN: Cooper managed to pen this crap to appear on the Thursday

night before the LAPD went on a shooting spree, with 5 officer-involved

shootings in two days, 4 fatalities. Talk about prophesying!--MN]

Bratton has to take some responsibility for these hellish predictions.

Since winning his post from Mayor Hahn, most of the new chief's public

pronouncements have been repeated vows to lower the crime rate by <

relentlessly stamping out \"quality of

life\" transgressions, including a

promised war against graffiti. Hence the fears that police reform will

languish while legions of kids with paint on their fingers are dumped into

our already overcrowded jails.

[Note from MN: Pity the foolish Cassandras, taking Bratton at his word,

based only on the evidence of his performance in Boston and New York, and

his decision to scrap the LAPD's computer system, replacing it with the

system he installed in NY to make sure every cop and commander was cracking

down hard enough on fare-beaters and taggers.--MN]

I have a one-word response to these nightmarish predictions. Please.

Do you really think the mayor and the new chief are that stupid? That they

have learned nothing from the last two decades of the LAPD's sordid

history? That neither man realizes the urgent need for reform and that

neither knows this is the most propitious moment in recent history to carry

it out? Have we become so demoralized that we can longer even imagine

reform taking place? Can we no longer distinguish between expedient

political rhetoric and actual policy?

[Note from MN: I have a one-word response to this fatuous aggrandizing of

the mayor and chief and attribution of demoralization to those who still

retain their moral compass. Bullshit! Have we learned nothing from every

police chief and mayor for the past 50+ years in Los Angeles, who have

blown every opportunity for ending police abuse of power, aided and abetted

by craven 'liberal' apologists who counsel concession to the prevailing

political rhetoric of support for the police? Do we really believe that

absent an aroused, organized resistance movement of outrage and community

self-defense, that any police chief or mayor will do anything other than

further strengthen and enlarge one of the most militarized police forces in

the US? Can we no longer distinguish between rhetorical promises of

\"reform\" and real increases in repressive power and police impunity,

designed to terrorize and subdue any resistance to the extraction of wealth

from poor people of color to maintain the lifestyles of the super-rich?]

\"What did some of my friends expect the new police chief to say?\"t; asks a

frustrated civil rights attorney, a longtime fighter for police reform.

\"That he was going to come in and hold Kumbaya sessions? Any new police

chief has to come in like gangbusters, talking tough. But I'm much more

interested in what Bratton does, rather than what he says. And so far I

like what I see.\" So do I.

[Note from MN: Holy Toledo. Is the crescendo of crying Cassandras so

powerful, so dominant, so politically correct, that this frustrated civil

rights attorney fears to speak for attribution? Or is this a Marc Cooper

fabrication? Perish the thought! The fact that this convenient attorney

expresses the same views as Cooper himself must be sheer coincidence. Right

down to the racialized reference to 'Kumbaya' sessions! What does Cooper

NOT expect a new chief to say -- that he would hold officers accountable

for abuse? that he would use his position to lobby for elected civilian

community control of the police? that he would seek the establishment of a

special prosecutor, so the DA was not responsible for bringing charges

against the cops he was beholden to for making all his other cases? that he

would seek the abolition of state laws which deny the public the same

access to the records of cops that we have to doctors and lawyers?]

Bratton has swiftly moved on the first prerequisite of real reform,

radically reshaping the department's command structure. Within his first

two weeks he has staged a literal coup d'état at Parker Center, appointing

a trio of the most reform-friendly commanders as his top staff,

simultaneously pushing aside a boatload of crustaceans who have inhabited

the high floors of the Glass House for way too long.

[Note from MN: Oh, so the mark of real reform is that a new chief brings in

his own people, indebted to him for their elevation, in order to replace

the people who owed their allegiance to the old chief? How naive and

sycophantic is Cooper?]

Bratton has appointed the respected Jim McDonnell, head of the department's

community policing unit, as his second-in-command. He's also promoted

commanders Sharon Papa and George Gascon to the ranking positions of deputy

chiefs. All three are 40-something members of a new generation of LAPD,

untainted by the reign of Daryl Gates and all distinguished as independent,

innovative thinkers during the just-concluded administration of Bernie

\"Captain Queeg\" Parks. Attentive

readers will remember the Weekly's recent

profile of Gascon, [Note from MN: A flack piece in a snow-job special issue

edited by Cooper himself previously dissected by yours truly. Email if you

want the long version.--MN] a man who has actually introduced ethics-based

training into the LAPD academy and who promotes in-depth classes on why the

Rampart scandal was not an isolated case. \"Any one of these three

appointees is who we would have preferred as the actual chief,\" says the

reform-minded attorney. \"But look at it this way: With Bratton in, we got

all three now up at the top. Not bad.\"

Even more importantly, Bratton seems to be taking the counsel of his new

advisers seriously. On their recommendation he moved this week to dismantle

the department's notoriously inefficient and incomplete FASTRAC

computerized crime-fighting system. It was an open secret that the system,

which started three years ago with good intentions, just didn't work. LAPD

software specialists are now rushing to install Bratton's preferred

CompStat system.

[Note from MN: Wait, Bratton is taking his advisers' counsel seriously when

he accepts their recommendation that he replace the LAPD computer system

with HIS computer system from NY? Oh, those daring advisers, willing to

face their new boss's wrath by bringing him the bad news he doesn't want to

hear! This certainly bodes well for continued reform within the department.]

And in this case, we should listen very carefully to Bratton's rhetoric.

He claims the old system didn't provide enough scrutiny over department

managers and that the new program will allow him to hold division captains

responsible for their performance and effectiveness.

[Note from MN: Is Bratton doing anything to track problem officers,

complaints of police abuse and disrespect, or use of force? Is he doing

anything to make such records public? The LAPD is operating under a consent

decree which requires it to implement promised reforms that would enable

the department to clean out the alleged \"bad apples\" rather than letting

them rot and fester in the barrel, setting the standard for the whole

department. Such reforms were promised ELEVEN YEARS, three mayors and FOUR

--count 'em -- police chiefs ago, and have yet to be implemented! But not

on Bratton's radar. He wants to make sure captains are riding their

officers to write more tickets and make more arrests.]

Not only is this necessary. It's also very smart. Blame the handiwork of

former Chief Parks for the vastly demoralized rank-and-file Bratton

inherits. Early reviews suggest that the new chief is on the verge of a

minor miracle: pulling the department toward reform while actually raising

the morale of a very grumpy and recalcitrant rank and file. He's doing so

precisely by reversing the dynamic of the Parks era. Instead of an

unswerving defense of the brass and a scapegoating of the field troops,

Bratton is shaking up and replacing the brass, promising to hold managers

and commanders accountable before blaming regular officers.

[Note from MN: The question Cooper assiduously avoids is, blaming whom for

what? Hahn and Bratton are not just rhetorically but practically reshaping

the LAPD -- including a proposed 33% increase in the number of officers,

unmentioned by Cooper in this article -- to deliver the goods to businesses

and homeowners who want a crackdown on and reduction in crime during a

worsening economic situation, rising unemployment, near-genocidal cutbacks

in safety-net social services such as health care, and a generalized

draconian increase in police state powers. They want to incorporate the LAX

police into the LAPD when LAX is one of the flashpoints of the Bush

administration's anti-immigrant crackdown. They want to increase

incarceration rates in a city and state that already have some of the

highest in the world. All of Bratton's administrative and computer-tracking

reforms are aimed at making the LAPD a more well-oiled repressive machine.

Any niche carved out for so-called

\"community policing\" (the police reform

philosophy always supposedly opposite to Bratton's \"broken windows\" tough <

on quality of life crimes crack-down approach will only further illustrate

and expose that so-called community policing is a form of psychological

operations and a part of the militarization of the police. Nobody is being

blamed for police killings, and never has been -- not the cops, not the

brass. Through many mayors and chiefs, LAPD has shot about a person a week

and killed about a person a month. The powers-that-be consider this not

merely acceptable, but desirable, and are willing to shell out millions of

dollars annually as a 'cost of doing business' to settle with the victims

and families of victims. If Bratton and Hahn change this, it will only be

to increase the shootings and killings by the same 33% they want to

increase the force. And what programs and services will be scrapped to

finance such a massive increase in the number of cops?]

Sometime soon we will see just how Bratton carries out his promised crime

crackdowns. And it will be immediately obvious if we are witnessing

something new and inspiring or just the same old same old. In the meantime,

the only hammering Bratton has unleashed so far has been right on target:

starting to smash up the old LAPD.

[Note from MN: Hopeless to think that Bratton's hammer might bang-bang some

sense into Cooper's head. None are so blind as those who will not see. Of

course what will see is not the same-old same-old, but some new and

\"inspiring\" transformations of the LAPD as a 21st Century force of

repression and social control. This will include real-time tracking of

stops, busts, and \"crime reduction,\" but little attention to police

criminality, immigrants rights or racial profiling. Unless we get up and do

something about it, of course, but that is an outcome Cooper continues to

do his best to derail.--MN]

<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","contact":"antiracistaction_la@yahoo.com","link":"www.geocities.com\/ara_losangeles","address":"PO Box 1055 Culver City 90232","phone":"310-495-0299","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"The attacks on May Day at MacArthur Park are consistent both with ICE\/vigilante attacks on immigrants and Bratton's long history of attacks on poor and oppressed people in the interests of global capital, colonialism and gentrification.","numcomment":1,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2007\/05\/198441.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":198460,"heading":"Ramona Ripston's words in the LA Times","article":"Ramona Ripston's words in the LA Times regarding Bratton were definitely not penned before May 1; she specifically mentions the incident in MacArthur park while endorsing another five years for Bratton. Disgusting.","author":"Secret Shopper","parent_id":198441,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2007-05-09 08:02:22","modified":"2007-05-09 08:02:22","fileurl":""}]}