officers - The Black Vault

FD-350 (Rev. 5·8·81)
• •
·-
(Indicate page, name of
newspaper, city and state.)
r-----------~~M::o::::un::..:t~C:::Ii~PP:::i"~.:9:...:in:..:....::.Sp::..:a::c.:.e.::.B.:.elo:.:..w;.:,;l:...._ _________ IDate: LOS ANGELES TIMES
ALMARTINEZ
The
Media
Did It
'I fit is any comfort to him, Police
Chief Daryl F. Gate's is the most
talked about cop in Southern .
California.
Not since Beverly Hills Patrolman·
. Paul Kramer was slapped by ZsaZsa
- Gabor has anyone found an individual
· policeman worthy of such intense
· discussion.
Even people who normally OJllY talk
about themselves are talking about
Gates.
You remember the Zsa Zsa Incident.
Kramer was attacked when he stopped
her for· a traffic violation. Though under
assault, he bravely subdued the enraged
Hungarian and brought her to justice.
Kramer was something of !1 hero in the
. incident because he didn't respond to Zsa
Zsa's openhanded assault by clubbing
her into bloody submission.
Chief Gates is definitely not the hero in
the beating of Rodney King.
Though not personally involved, he's
considered morally responsible for the
conduct of those officers accused of ·
beating King whjle he was lying on the
ground being a racial minority.
The cops claimed King had been
speeding, may have been on dope and _
· was resisting arrest. Subsequent ·
: -investigation indicates otherwise. ·
The cops did note in their initial report,
however, that he was bl!lck, and that's
true. Though not specifically mentioned
· in the Penal Code, it probably isn,'t.wjse
~ to be black in L.A.
0
Thanks to the amateur videotape, the
beating is not being dismissed as simply
another case of police overreaction,
which is a euphemism often employed to
.explain undocumented cop violence.
. The matter is being investigated by
·the department's internal affairs
division, the L.A. County district
attorney, the state attorney general and
~the U.S.-Department of Justice.
Edition: T.UE S , Y.t.AR 19 , 19 91
METRO SECTION, PAGE 2
Trtle:THE MEDIA DID IT
As a friend puts it, ···only the Boy~-:_~
CIVIL RIGHTS
Scouts of America and the Bishop of
· ... Rome aren't invo~ved in sorting through Character:
'-thething." · . C~ICB.tion: 80-33B
~ That too is a result of the widely I Submitting Office:
; telecast videotape, which has turned the LOS ANGELES
.··beating into a subject of conversation
l wherever social critics gather. · .
. They talk about the tape as though It's
a new television show, discussing not
only the atrocity of police violence, but
its. potential as a series. Videocop!We're
· thinking about it. .
. Most of the comment I've heard has
·~een concerned not with how the
:.;policemen involved in the beating should
be punished, but with how L.A. should
:deal with Dacy-1 Gates.
" People like Jesse Jackson, who always
seems to be around during high-profile
'controversies, and Kim Basinger, who
'Sat in her car during one anti-Gates
·demonstration pouting her protest, feel
the chief ought to be fired. .
So do all of my Maoist friends on the
Westside and many of.my Tory frien~ in
1·the Valley.
• One telephone caller suggested that .
Gates ought to be made up in blackface
and forced to live in neighborhoods
patrolled by white policemen. · · ,
t A letter writer said she had achieved
, "psychic contact" with the chief and he
was an agent of the devil. Newspaper ·
·editorials have suggested pretty much
the same thing.
I . 0
I've talked about Gates with everyone
I've come in contact with for thepa"st
· ·several days.
-This has included pr~per suburban
: grandmothers in Walnut, cholos in East
L.A., creek rats in Topanga and
·.unfrocked Marines in Burbank.
~ Only two people thought the chief was
getting a bum rap, and one of them was a .
white supremacist. He thought I was one
too, due to a column in which I cautioned
temperance in condemning all cops.
He asked quite seriously, "How did a
:Mexican ever get into the Ku Klux
-Klan?" .
· "On a waiver,'' I replied. He accepted
~that.
. :._ ____________ _
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