I think it’s really important to publicise what happened to the immigrant rights protest in Los Angeles. The police attacked protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets. 1 You can read more.
I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner, I’ve been sick. Brownfemipower is on it. I particularly recommend State Violence is Not an Anomaly (if you’ve got a faster internet connection than I have). This is awful, but it’s also not the first time the police have acted like this, by any stretch of the imagination, and it won’t be the last, unless there’s some counter-organising.
Note about comments I don’t want this to become yet another debate about ‘illegal’ immigration, or who immigration policy should serve.
- This protest was inter-generational, and included a lot of old people and children. I don’t want to emphasise that, because that implies that I might think it was OK if the police had just attacked people in their twenties, but I thought you should know. [↩]
Jesus Christ, this is nightmarish. I hope that the LAPD gets nailed to the wall on this one, and considering that they assaulted a reporter for Fox News, there’s actually a chance they might.
Hm. Throwing rocks at cops is always a bad idea and anyone who did deserves a rubber bullet or beanbag. But it looks like this got out of hand. The call for an independent investigation is an excellent idea and I hope that it operates in an aboveboard and transparent manner. The LAPD does not have a good record in this regard – you’d think that the city would have done something about that by now. Bad cops need to be gotten rid of. Even if someone is in this country illegally, if they are not violent and are not resisting the police they don’t deserve to be shot with anything.
Myca, I understand that you don’t want a general debate on immigration policy, and I’ll honor that. But these marches aren’t asserting immigrant rights; legal immigrants, such as the ones I work with (2 of whom just got their citizenship after years of following American law) have no problems that I know of. These marches are specifically asserting and demanding certain rights for illegal immigrants, and to call them marches for “immigrant rights” without making that distinction seems deliberately deceptive to me, making it sound as if people are trying to withhold rights from legal immigrants.
I am Myca!
I am Mandolin!
I am Maia!
We are the borg, RonF.
You will be assimilated.
You all look the same to me.
Yeah, there’s a lot that’s going on. I’ve tried blogging on it but have been busy the last couple days to do very much. It reminds me a lot of what happened in 2000 at several demonstrations including the DNC. I’ve seen up close and experienced what the LAPD does when its officers just start hitting and shooting(less lethals) at everyone in their path until they just stop, in my experiences totally unprovoked. Man, woman, child, disabled, elderly or baby in a stroller, it doesn’t make any difference.
I’ve also seen the media assaulted and the injuries they’ve received but this was on a larger scale than 2000. The media and the LAPD have an agreement in place that was reached in 2002 that covers the media’s coverage of either assemblies that have been declared unlawful by the police or have been given an order to disperse. So the media outlets are using that agreement and its violation to pursue legal options.
The people who were on the receiving end of 240 rounds of rubber bullets and an unknown number of baton blows and other forms of force used were not throwing rocks and bottles at officers. These individuals were men, women and children relaxing in a park where a permitted rally was taking place having no idea what was about to happen to them. No one from this group was arrested on any charges.
About eight other individuals were arrested but they were separated by the people in the park by some distance in an area not covered by the permit to assemble.
Problems already noted in the investigations involved the department’s decision to issue an order to disperse from a hovering helicopter and only in English. Even if people could have heard the order amidst the noise of a helicopter, many of them might not have understood it.
MacArthur Park is in the Rampart divison of the LAPD(and there’s a substation in the park) which consists largely of immigrants from Mexico and Central America and the rally attracted many Latinos from various backgrounds who spoke and understood primarily Spanish. So why not issue an order to disperse in that language as well?
Also inside sources from the LAPD said that there were no commanders or supervisors at the scene and the department doesn’t know where they were. They also said that officers were pulled away right before to handle other assignments in the city, but I don’t think that was the issue except that the officers pulled were the more experienced ones. The average experience level of a riot officer in the LAPD is about three years and they usually put officers out there with less than 4.5 years experience. Which means they are more prone to lose control of themselves and that’s what they did, based on what was depicted in the videos. They went on a rampage.
The supervision is always very thin. Yes, bad officers definitely need to be terminated but try to do that in California, because of the stacked arbitration process it’s almost impossible to fire them and keep them fired, but these officers are probably no better or worse than most of them in the LAPD. This is how the department as a whole handles crowd or rally situations. Problems like those aired publicly this week are intrinsic to the LAPD and likely other agencies as well. It’s also part of the “us vs them” culture pervasive in law enforcement agencies.
Also, the misuse of less lethal options was readily apparent. Not just the decision to use them against peaceful people in the first place which was bad enough but also using them in ways that can be lethal or cause serious bodily injury, i.e. baton blows to the neck which were reported. Also, firing less lethal shotguns(as depicted in photos and videos) directly at head or face level which is considered a lethal use from any distance. Also potentially lethal are shots to the spinal cord, neck and sternum areas. These are noted by the manufactors of both the shotguns and the less lethal munitions to protect these companies from civil liability.
Injuries by less lethals(which resembled marks left by foam bullets) in the abdomon and kidney areas of the body as seen in photos especially at close range.
This also mirrors evidence from earlier demostrations. The LAPD was sued for doing this including firing a rubber bullet that took out a woman’s eye and the city paid out millions in law suits in connection with the LAPD’s use of less lethal shotguns. They should know better if their training in less lethal options either was not given, inadequate or did not take, but they still do it.
Lots of probes. Internal Affairs administrative review, FBI, Use of Force panel review, police commission reviews and an investigation required by the LAPD’s federal consent decree. I’m not sure what they’ll accomplish because it’s 2007, the LAPD has been thoroughly probed for its conduct at demonstrations and nothing has changed.
What will be interesting is to see how this impacts Chief William Bratton’s prospects for appointment to a second term as chief, the process of which is going on right now.
RonF, I think it was Maia who said that, not Myca.
So what should the police have done? Allow the MS-13 thugs to continue throwing bottles at officers and wounding them?
Andrew, I don’t think that either total passivity or psychopathic violence are the only possible responses.
I love how often that seems to come up, though.
A: Hey, maybe invading Iraq wasn’t such a hot idea.
B: OH REALLY?! Would you rather we unconditionally surrender to Osama?
A: That’s . . . not even close to anything I said. Or think.
—Myca
Sorry, Maia.
Back in 2004 the Red Sox won the World Series. Before that they beat the MFY (that would be the New York Yankees to you non-Red Sox fans) in 7 games after being down 0-3 for the American League pennant. After the latter there were wild celebrations in the street (and you’ve have to be a Red Sox or Yankee fan to understand why) in Boston. There was one point where by all accounts the celebration got out of control. One young woman was hit in the eye and killed by a rubber bullet. Those things are no joke.
There are alternatives between ignoring an assault on the cops and launching an all out indiscriminate assault on innocent bystanders. I’m going to be watching the results of this investigation to see what actually did happen (I hope we’ve learned that at least from the Duke “rape” case). If it turns out that there were people throwing rocks at the police, it’ll also be interesting to see what will be recommended that police should do when faced with armed resistance – getting hit in the head with a rock can kill, and getting hit elsewhere can break bones or otherwise cause serious injury.
Yes, it makes total sense if group A is throwing rocks and bottles at you to go after Group B, which is not engaging in that behavior and is peacefully assembled in a designated area for a rally. The guy with the camera filming a gathering, yes he threw a rock. The little kids with their parents yards away sitting on the grass, yes they threw bottles. The officers were on a rampage by the time they got into MacArthur Park assaulting people who had nothing to do with any altercation.
If a group of people are throwing rocks and bottles at police officers, then if they apprehend them, it should be at that point. If they merge into a crowd of people then they’re just gone, if the only way to apprehend them is to do what these officers did. But do officers who have relatively fewer years of experience than the officers who were pulled off of that assignment going to do this? Are they going to do it without proper supervision? Are they going to do it if they’re not even using less lethal options in ways that keep those options less lethal?
Probably not.
And it’s not clear how the officers suffered their injuries. There are other ways for them to be injured in situations like this than in being hit by projectiles. Riot gear doesn’t allow as much free movement for example, especially when carrying less lethal shotguns.
Most of the time the bottles thrown are plastic water bottles, most often empty which bounce off of their riot gear. Rocks are much more problematic, in terms of injuries caused. But is shooting 240 foam bullets at a peaceful crowd an effective means of dealing with a relatively smaller group of people who may have been causing trouble? Is clubbing people trying to enjoy their time there with batons an effective way of dealing with people?
I think this round of investigations will say, no. What remains to be seen is whether the LAPD will take the recommendations and implement them given that they haven’t in the past even after millions paid out in litigation.
The police officers in my city working at demonstrations have had bottles thrown at them(and their riot gear is not as padded as the LAPD’s) and have ignored them, stayed in their line and what has happened, is that people stopped throwing things at them because they weren’t getting what they wanted, an armed response or other demonstrators tell them to knock it off because there’s children or elderly people there. When I spoke with several of them and their supervisors, commanders afterwards, that was the rationale that they used. They balanced the risk of injuring a larger number of people to apprehend those who had thrown bottles at them and made their decision on how to respond to the situation.
Ironically, this is contrast to their behavior when they had received their training from LAPD officers.
They also had more of a command staff present at the demonstrations including up to the level of deputy chiefs as well as middle line officers who were experts in use of force training. The LAPD had none of that. In fact, Chief William Bratton was ready to leave town and he spends about 25% of his time on stints out of town.
The LAPD which apparently wasn’t supervised very well because they can’t even figure out where their commander or his captain even were at the time and they had sent out their more experienced Metro division officers to other assignments just went on an indiscriminate rampage. The very least that they need is a hard look at how they conduct business, but then that’s what the LAPD has always needed and despite the Warren Christopher Commisson, the federal consent decree and other reform processes, they still have great difficulty with that.
Apologists who give them carte blance to behave the way they want or feel led to do so aren’t really doing them any favors. The end result of their defensive behavior are police agencies in really bad shape, poorly trained, supervised and often in violation of federal and state constitutions not to mention federal and state laws.
Well, I received this charming comment on my site.
I hate trolls.
I live in Los Angeles, and I have attended in the neighborhood of twenty large marches or rallies here (mostly anti-war, not immigration-related). I have not ONCE seen any protestor attack another, or steal or damage property.
The police always show up to these demonstrations. At best, the officers sit around, look bored, and draw a paycheck for doing nothing. At worst, they taunt and assault the demonstrators (which, unfortunately, happens far more than it is reported). Can somebody please explain to me why it is a good idea to send a bunch of heavily-armed, poorly-controlled men to these rallies which have historically been remarkably law-abiding? Why provide a target for those very few demonstrators who want to provoke the police?
One could argue that, should a riot break out, police presence would be necessary to quell the violence. But, leaving aside the fact that these riots Just Don’t Happen at protests, why couldn’t the police stay holed up several blocks away from the event?
I suspect that the investigation of this event will focus on poor decisions made by police after the protest started. That’s a shame, because the biggest mistake was made much earlier, in deciding to send police to the demonstration in the first place.