Such intrigue aside, one thing has been clear this week in the City of Angels. Of all the divergent activist cells that have called for unity, none has displayed a more unified front so far than the Los Angeles Police Department. Call it the Unity Irony. All this week, the millions of budget dollars and thousands of training hours have paid off for the L.A.P.D. blue. But arrest totals are down from the hundreds that took place in Philadelphia during the Republican convention.
Vandalism is almost nonexistent.
Moreover, no single Democratic delegate has even remotely felt the activists' presence. Even at permitted marches with no confrontational aspects, the police have been overly antagonistic. Police readily admit they have been aggressive. But that was part of the plan. The L.A.P.D. has carefully drawn lessons from protests that took place over the last year in Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia.