officers - The Black Vault

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brutality will get them booted out o(;
their jobs fast and, in cases like this .. ~
one, thrown unsympathetically to the
district attorney and FBI and ACLP,
.and NAACP. +t r
· On Thursday the chief said he · =:.
would seek felony charges against ·;:.;.
three officers, and disciplinary actionagainst
the others. Thr~e days after
the tape aired IIrBt on TV. About time.
A police chief from another city, ii
black man, once told me that he .. ~
believed brutality, racism and sexism·
existed on police forces everywhere for
two different reasons:
One, he called "The Old School.'\'
The problem wasn't so much that :·, _
officers of "The Old School" were the
TV stereotype of loner tough-guy, out
that, for whatever reasons, they ! .
couldn't change as fast as society did.
It's like they were always two or three
years out of "fashion," only it was ' ,
equality at stake: They had to be
ordered to treat people right. . .
The second reason was "The Wrong
·Recruits." Police work today requires a
social maturity that is rare among · .:
those who think they want to be cops.
It is rare because of all the usual ·
negative forces- poverty, the
disintegration of the family, the
imperfect education system. And then
.there is the probl!i!m of recruits who
know how to hide their hatreds and - ~
power-trip needs right up tO the .. ~~
moment of crisis. ·. ~
When we imally learn who held the~
batons, who shot the Taser and who: '
kicked Rodney King, perhaps we'll · ~ ·
also.get clues to where the ·LAPD wept
wrong with them. . • -.: .
From the few facts we know so far; ·
my guess today is a lot of "Old SchQiil.,"
including in the chief's seat, and a "--
· smatterin_g of "Wrong Recruits." ·· -·~