Political Sabotage: The LAPD Experience; Attitudes Toward Understanding Police Use of Force:
by Richard Melville Holbrook
Category: Law

Political Sabotage may not be the answer for all in understanding social crime and violence or police use of force to control it, but it does provide a focus and single source toward that goal. Want to know about Ruby Ridge and Randy Weaver, Rodney King and a truer story about the fiasco at Waco, Texas? Did law enforcement do it right? Maybe, but maybe not. These questions are also answered: What facts and experience create the subtleties for "the mystique of police culture?" Is a true unprofessional "code of silence" part of it? Is that culture a closed club for those wearing the badge of the Los Angeles Police Department? Is its "culture" and its use of police force in the attempt to control crime and violence responsible for the LAPD's downfall? Does diversity and affirmative action exist as co-conspirators in that downfall? Or will it all remain as the unknown result of the influence and impact of the emotional and ideological attitudes found in our American society and its sometimes politicized, attorney dominated, and unjust justice system? What part did political sabotage play in orchestrating what academic isolation and a supporting media label "the ineffective administration of a corrupt LAPD?" And what led that leadership through a moderate level of hesitation and silence to a federal consent decree and various "commission investigations," and to every activist and media embellished blame, to forgo the effort to retain the best parts of what had once made the LAPD the most innovative, respected, effective and efficient police organization in America? These questions have truthful and experienced answers. But the overall question is yet to be answered: Will the American citizen ever truly understand enough to make a difference?