Days of Cooking the Books May Soon be Over of LA’s Police Department

PARKS’ PLACE-They say character is what you do when no one’s watching. 

What if everyone’s watching? 

Tuesday, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the city is going to purchase 7,000 body cameras (photo) to outfit LAPD officers. The Mayor hopes these cameras will promote accountability and transparency. 

Due to the rash of officer-involved shootings of unarmed, and an overwhelmingly number of black people, there’s been a big push to capture all officer-involved incidents from beginning to end. 

I believe this move should be positive and will hopefully help quell any suspicions the public may have in dealing with an officer who may pull you over. 

We all know we act a little different if we know we’re being filmed/watched. There is evidence that not only do body cameras modify the behavior of officers, but those interacting with the officer modify their behavior as well. For the Rialto Police Department, complaints and use-of-force incidents went down sharply once they began wearing the cameras. 

The key to ensuring this program is successful lies in making sure the procedural process in how cameras are issued, stored, and deployed and will be used is clearly defined. There needs to be room in the budget every year to make sure it can be maintained, there needs to be sanctions against those who fail to properly use the camera or tamper with it, and the digital footage the camera captures needs to be easily retrievable and archived properly. I’m anxious to see how this develops. 

It looks like the days of cooking the books may soon be on ice for the LAPD. 

Tuesday, the Police Commission announced the creation of a Data Integrity Unit who will make sure crimes are classified correctly and in line with federal reporting guidelines. 

In August, the Los Angeles Times issued a report which found that the LAPD was annually misclassifying over 1,000 violent crimes as minor offenses. 

I’ve been voicing my concerns since the early 2000s on the suspect way the department captured crime statistics. You can read the May 2006 advisory I released here that criticized the way domestic violence and other offenses were categorized. Officers claim they feel immense pressure to make captains look successful and make crime disappear by falsifying records.

This is a very unfortunate situation as there is no room in law enforcement for dishonesty at any level rather it deals with public statements, crime statistics, probable cause, search warrant affidavits or court testimony. Hopefully, the Department will identify the reasons, causes and personnel responsible and take corrective action. This unit is a step in the right direction, albeit it took 10 years of denial and a exposé by the Times to get here.

●●●

I saw it coming: Tuesday, the American Hotel and Lodging Association and the Asian American Hotel Owners Association filed a suit in federal court against the City for passing the union-friendly and completely ludicrous hotel worker minimum wage ordinance which would raise the minimum wages of hotel workers in the city of L.A. to $15.37 an hour. It would not take tipped employees into account. 

Hotels with 300 or more rooms would have to accommodate the pay hike on July 1, 2015. Hotels with 150 or more rooms would have until July 1, 2016 to comply. 

This poorly thought out ordinance which is labeled as a means of lifting employees out of poverty, instead will terminate between 1200 to 1500 employees and eliminate a like number of jobs in a "job scarce city". It is amazing to see those who have a job so willing to try out their twisted public policy theories on others at the expense of their jobs and livelihood of their families. I am sure that those who supported and voted for this would not make the same sacrifice for the so-called "public good."

But I didn’t see this coming: the City Attorney’s office was in cahoots with the union representing the hotel workers and even gave them a sneak peek of the ordinance before it was made "publicly available" according to the Daily News. Isn’t it funny how some people working for the city are working against the city’s interests and the residents that pay the taxes that pay their salaries??? 

I’m telling you the more I stick around, the more interesting these exposés are getting. 

LAME I mean, LAANE, the Los Angeles Economy for a New Economy, is a union-advocacy group and they were all behind this. The ordinance was heard in council September 24 and they came to show out.

It’s no secret that most city councilmembers are beholden to unions and I’m sure they’re Facebook friends with Maria Elena Durazo and now Rusty Hicks. 

The execution of this ordinance was just so sloppy they were bound to get caught up and sued. As you may remember, it came out around the same time that the Mayor introduced his plan to raise the minimum wage for all workers in LA to $13.25 by 2017. There were so many conflicting messages and interests around and the confusion remains.

 

(Bernard Parks is Los Angeles Councilman for the 8^th Council District. He is also  former Los Angeles Police Chief. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 12 Issue 103

Pub: Dec 23, 2014