Let’s just say you’re a well-to-do doctor living in Brentwood. It’s Saturday morning and you’re out jogging along the tree-lined San Vicente Boulevard. All of a sudden a police car pulls over, two cops race out with their pistols drawn and order you to assume the position. You’re under arrest, they say, for drug dealing even though you haven’t broken a single law in your life, and most certainly not trafficking in drugs.
You say as much to the cops, at which point one of them says something about you being a wise guy, takes out his baton and starts whacking you on your back and legs. The pain would be piercing, except you’re too stunned to notice. One of them then throws a packet of cocaine onto the sidewalk later claiming in court that it fell out of your pocket. You’re found guilty on a trumped-up charge and thrown in jail for five years. Your life is basically over.
None of this would ever happen, of course. And even if it did, there likely would be such an outrage among your similarly well-to-do friends and neighbors that somehow, someway, justice would prevail.
But in certain parts of town and for certain kinds of people, this sort of hijinks has happened with chilling regularity, leading to what’s likely to become the most widespread police corruption scandal in history. And yet, as the revelations over the Rampart Division abuses keep popping up on almost a daily basis generating increased national attention as well the outrage is limited, at best. Many of L.A.’s elected officials pretty much have kept their mouths shut, including Mayor Richard Riordan, while L.A. Police Chief Bernard Parks and District Attorney Gil Garcetti tussle over whether the inquiry is moving too fast or too slow. Meanwhile, with little indication that the Police Commission has much of a handle on the case, there is continued talk of having an outside agency take over the probe.
For the most part, Los Angeles yawns at the whole mess perhaps a reflection of this city’s lackadaisical attitude about anything that’s not weather, traffic, sports and business, but more than that, the encapsulation of our general ambivalence about how the police do their job.
The Rampart cops, it should be noted, deal with some of L.A.’s most unsavory characters most especially gang members whose perspectives on what’s right or wrong tend to be out of whack. For many Rampart residents, the sight of a cop car cruising their neighborhood is a good thing. Arrests of neighborhood thugs are even better. So it should come as no surprise that when the revelations first came out last year, the community responded not with outrage but with big banners declaring support for the LAPD.
On their face, the beatings and shootings and lying are hard to justify under any circumstances. But the victims aren’t well-to-do Brentwood doctors. They’re the bottom of the barrel hooked on drugs, entrenched in gangs and all too familiar with the inside of a jail cell. They’re the type of people who are constantly lying and conniving. In other words, perfect foils for the cops.
But wait a second, don’t these people have rights, too? Well, yeah, but That’s the problem this is a “yeah, but” kind of story. And such conditional attitudes about not-so-upstanding people take us down an awfully dangerous road one that even well-to-do Brentwood doctors would do well to avoid.
