officers - The Black Vault

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FD-350 {Rev. 9·8·81 )
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1 unsavor~_~ppetites
Time for a housecleaning:
W
hy is. Daryl Gates stil~ chief of the
Los Angeles Police Department? It.
was .plain last. week he should leave. His· .
leadership is discredited. His department '
is in disrepute. Some ·residents .fear his
officers, and Los Angeles itself is distract- •
ed and, shamed by the mounting evidence
- intolerable ye~ incontrovertible - of his
department's uns~vory appetites. ·
It is not enough to discipline the 15 officers
who either beat or ·watched the beating
of Rodney G. King. ·
Transcripts of disp~tches ----------­
between squad c~rs and Such a rampant lack of .
with the watch commander's
office prove discipline ~nd compassion,
that racial slurs and ·
jovial violence are not such widespread decay, can:;_;
aberrations, as Gates ·· • · '
blandly suggests. 1. only exist wath the license
hayen 't ~eaten any_one of force commanders
thzs. bad m .a long t~me,
said one transcript. Oh :--· ·
no, not again, came the teasing reply.
Oh no, not again. . . . The Implications
hang in the air as plain and poisonous as a
smothering smog: Without the evidence of
the videotape, the attack would have been
chuckled over and then forgotten, like
some bad joke. In turn,· that implies that
even· with several officers indicted and
others to be disciplined, the problem can't
be treated by disciplining patrol officers
only. The command failure is complete. So
must be the housecleaning.
The transcripts and the videotape establisll
that casual racism .and brutality is·'
common in the LAPD. Fifteen officer~;
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(Indicate page, name of
newspaper, city and state.)
B8 (Editorial), Press
Telegram, Long Beach, CA
Date: Weds., 3/20/91
Edition:
Title· LAPD 1 S UNSAVORY
APPETITES
Character:
or
Classification:
Submitting Office:
Lon
Indexing:
SEARCHED
INDEXED
SERIALIZED fiLED ---r
MAR 2 ~ 1991
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lOS ANGElE:S
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