To Live and Die in L.A. |
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It has not been the best of weeks
for the boys and girls of the Los Angeles Police Department. The pride
and joy of this little village has again been thrust under the scrutinizing
microscope of society for another round of intense questioning and second
guessing. Now I understand how difficult it must be to be a police officer in L.A. It's bad enough these people have to constantly deal with their town's oppressive living conditions. Be it the smoldering heat that bakes the inhabitants like cookies or the suffocating smog that eviscerates their alveoli, this town has got to be as healthy and pleasant a place to live as the bottom of a sun-baked Port-a-potty. And to add insult to injury, this cavalry of cops was tapped to serve extra hours maintaining the peace at the circus that is the Democratic National Convention. Now you would think that a convening of well-to-do politicians, those who we elect to represent the less couth and qualified in their constituency, would need as much protection as the bingo game down at the old folks home. Anywhere else in America, that would probably be true. But remember Ð we're in L.A. now; all bets are off. Refusing to be upstaged by the boneheaded decision-making skills of those inside the convention center, these officers of the law decided to show the Democrats (and the rest of the country) who the real idiots were by breaking out their billyclubs and pepper spray and breaking up a free concert that was playing across the parking lot. The fact that it was the hard-rocking, anti-establishment, anti-authority band, Rage Against the Machine, playing wouldn't have anything to do with their overreaction, would it? Sources say that the crowd of roughly 9,000 people, the largest of the entire week outside the convention, was extremely well behaved, even for a Rage concert. But the LAPD still decided to break up the party early and remove the crowd by any means necessary. The tactics employed here would make Castro proud -- using officers on horseback to pin the people in and then funnel them from the Staples Center to the only exit in sight, an extremely narrow bottleneck across the parking lot. |
Wait
for the people to panic at the sight of these nightstick-twirling madmen
in riot gear and then trample each other in an effort to flee the previously
peaceful scene. Then have the other land-bound policemen fire into the crowd with rubber bullets, beating and arresting any others who dare to complain or break from the panicking pack. You can almost hear the bearded one chuckling to himself through an acrid cloud of Cohiba smoke, can't you? Now not to be too incendiary, I should defend the policemen a little bit. It's not like they were completely unprovoked Ð it is reported that a group of 40 or so people dressed in black began attacking the officers with concrete blocks and parking signs before setting a fire around them with discarded signs and banners. That certainly warrants some response, but to cause a panic in a crowd of over 9,000 just because less than 1% of them Ð1% that was reportedly completely separate from the concertgoers -- is just stupid. Hasn't this police force learned their lesson yet? Remember what happened last time they started assuming and overreacting? That time they assumed that every black person was a riotous hazard that needed to be beaten. This time they assumed that every white person within earshot of a "fight the power" punk band must be a card-carrying anarchist that also needed to eat billyclub. The police commander, surprisingly, stands behind the decision of his troops. "We believe our response was strategic, measured, and appropriate," he said. He also claims that the concert was "unlawful" Ð even though promoters had cleared the concert again just earlier that day Ð and that the crowd was warned. At last count there were over three dozen people injured in this escapade and countless people pissed off. And wouldn't you be? If I went to a concert and started getting shot with pea-sized Super Balls going over 100 mph, warning or not, you better hold me down. My response won't nearly be as strategic and measured. |