The Phanatic presents: a history lesson! Let’s talk about why police brutality is as synonymous with Los Angeles as the Hollywood sign of terrible traffic. https://twitter.com/Jasmyne/status/1260276662328897537

The LAPD was an embarrassment post-war. They were mired in scandal. “Reformer” Chief William H. Parker took over the Department in 1951 and wanted the LAPD to be an elite, paramilitary force. That meant that recruits had to meet high standards & undergo rigorous training.

To put this in perspective: today LA has 1 officer for every 433 residents. NYC has 1 officer for every 236 residents. It used to be worse. Not to mention LA’s population isn’t nearly as dense as NYC’s. So there was a very simple message: be brutal.

Parker’s thinking was that if criminals realized how badly outnumbered the LAPD was the LAPD was screwed. So what was Parker to do? Relax hiring standards? Abandon paramilitary policing for community-based policing? Fuck no. Be brutal.

The LAPD’s idea was to scare anyone out of breaking the law. There was also a sustained PR offensive to burnish the LAPD image (Dragnet is the most famous example of this). Excessive force was standard operating procedure.

This didn’t end with Parker. Thomas Reddin actually attempted community based policing but he left to become a news commentator. Then after an interim chief was Edward M. Davis. Davis founded CRASH (the unit that was the basis for Training Day & the Shield),

authorized Terry stops (stop and frisk), & replaced beating suspects with a choke hold until they passed out. He was also a technical adviser on Dragnet. He also had the LAPD gather intelligence on “political subversives”.

Davis was sued in the case that set the standards for police surveillance. Unless you had reasonable suspicion of a crime, no surveillance (reasonable does a lot of heavy lifting here & “being to the left of Mussolini” counted).

He also brutalized the GLBT community.

Davis was invited to Pride in 1975 & declined saying he’d prefer to support conversion therapy. He doesn’t get enough credit for what a thundering shithead he was. Of course, that’s largely because He was replaced by Darryl Gates, a shithead’s shithead.

Gates loathed community policing & was mentored by Bill Parker. If Gates wasn’t a fascist he certainly aspired to be. He made extensive use of the LAPD Public Disorder and Intelligence Division (PDID) which was used to infiltrate, surveil, & harass the LA left.

Gates even set up an international spying operation (!!!). Eventually a lawsuit disbanded the PDID. One of the lesser known horrors of the LAPD: during the run up to the 84 Olympics Gates was empowered to arrest every known and suspected gang member in LA. Which he did.

Gates held those folks in custody until the games were over and let them go. Gates ALSO used the CRASH units to brutalize South Los Angeles. Rodney King and on is pretty well-documented. Which brings us to today. If you look at this thread there’s a running theme

That theme is the LAPD treated civil rights as an inconvenience to be overcome. Brutality was their only tool. So you look at a video of an LAPD officer brutalizing a citizen & you should be outraged, but you shouldn’t be shocked.