officers - The Black Vault

F~35,0 (Rev. 5·8·81)
•
(Indicate
page, name of
newspaper, city and state.)
(Mount Clipping in Space Below)
--~:.:..:.:....:...:.:::...~.::~~;__ __ _..:._ ________ ---JDate:
The Only Way ~os Angeles
Can Clear Its.Name of
Police Brutality
•
• LAPD: Silence about law-enforcement
abuses is routine in Los Angeles, unlike
in.other major U.S. cities. The problem
is that oversight institutions are weak.·
B,v Jack Katz
P
olice in Los Angeles may well be more brutal
than those in other large U.S. cities, but we
may never know because they are far less
subject to control. The most significant aspect of the
disgraceful beating of Rodney G. King is its subtle
revelation of the routine silence about law-enforcement
abuses in our community.
:Ip virtually all U.S. jurisdictions, people presumed
by the police to be criminal offenders ar~ widely
tr-eated with verbal disrespect and are often subject
to physical mistreatment. The public rarely learns
apqut the problem, because the victims usually have
Ja* Katz is professor of sociology at UCLA.
much more to fear from the police than a beating. As
in the King case, the victim's first thought as the
police approach is not about brutal cops but a,bout
probation status or about vulnerability on the
charges that the police may bring. Many street
criminals would welcome a beating that would
compromise the police's ability to send them back to
prison. Bear in mind that the King incident came to
light not because he or his passengers approached the
media, but because, by very odd chance, a bystander
had on hand a new video camera that he was eager to
try out.
J
What is more distinctive about Lo~ Angeles is ap;/
institutional weakness in the professional constitue}l71
cies of the police. Other communities have at 1~ 6
three supports for oversight, all of which are lacly rec
here.
ft]z
First, legal academics, bar associations and ~·liz£"
in Southern California are stunning in their o/~OlJ.
Lawyers in this part of the country have bro§i OlJt
a national, century-old tradition in whicJ llze
minded groups of lawyers periodically doctce. './';
denounce such local problems as political/ _ll]