During the early 1960s, Chief William Parker publicly took issue with the civil rights movement while turning a blind eye to his officers’ sometimes brutal conduct in black and Latino neighborhoods. The LAPD has a long history of strained relations with Los Angeles’s minority communities. What makes the reconciliation even more remarkable is that its architect was the same man who had already transformed the New York City Police Department: William Bratton. How the LAPD’s reconciliation with L.A.’s minorities came about may be the most important untold story in the world of policing. Nor has the police department become popular by sacrificing public safety: violent crime in Los Angeles has been falling for years. Over the past decade, the department has transformed itself radically, along with its relations with local minorities. “There was never any element of hostility toward our department at all,” Tingirides says.įor more than half a century, many African-American Angelenos and more than a few Latinos considered the LAPD an oppressor-“an occupation force,” in the words of former Urban League president John Mack. His brother had called him on his cell phone and explained the situation. Fine, they said in that case, we’re handing this off to you. Tingirides told them that LAPD guidelines prohibited an attempt to make an entry. “Once she understood what had happened and had someone talking to her as a person and a fellow parent, it totally changed her demeanor and dynamic,” says Tingirides. Mom and the highway patrol pulled him aside. Tingirides and the mother then went over to the brother, who was still arguing with the PJs. Disgusted at the way Tingirides was talking about a hard-core gangbanger, the deputy left. These things can happen, Tingirides said. This was news to the mother, who had simply gotten a call from her son saying that the cops were chasing him for no reason. “Your priority needs to be getting your son out of here safe,” he said. ![]() Tingirides interrupted the deputy’s harangue, saying, “Hey, I got this.” Then he introduced himself to the mother and the sisters as a cop and a parent. ![]() Meanwhile, Tingirides noticed, one of the brothers had started an argument with a group of PJs nearby.Īny cop who’d worked the public-housing developments of Watts during the 1980s and 1990s had seen it happen: the gang skirmish that escalates to a shooting the crowd that turns on the cops. Almost as soon as she had arrived, upset and worried, the mother had gotten into it with one of the deputies, who began upbraiding her for raising a gangbanger. Tingirides was also disturbed by the atmosphere developing among the assembled group of roughly 15 spectators, including the suspect’s mother, sisters, and brothers. Entering seemed an unwise tactic in fact, LAPD guidelines called for the use of a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team. They were preparing to go in when Phil Tingirides, the Los Angeles Police Department captain responsible for Southeast Division, arrived on the scene. Deputies spotted the third ducking into one of the apartment buildings. Sheriff’s deputies caught one of the Bloods before he could vanish into the maze of two-story apartment blocks that make up Imperial Courts. ![]() The suspects themselves were members of a rival gang, the Bounty Hunter Bloods. It was here that the three teenagers made a serious mistake: they ran north into Imperial Courts, a 500-unit public-housing development controlled by one of Watts’s oldest street gangs, the PJ Crips. To the north was the Watts section of South L.A. They pulled over, leaped out of the car, and scrambled down the highway embankment. Moments later, the suspects’ car caught fire. By now, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies and California Highway Patrol officers had joined the pursuit. The kids headed for the freeway, first speeding south toward Long Beach on the 710 and then turning west onto the 105. ![]() Three teenagers ran out of the house, jumped into their own car, and rammed through the barricade. When the South Gate police arrived at the scene, they blocked the street with their patrol cars. Someone in South Gate, a working-class city in Los Angeles County, had seen a group of young black males who appeared to be breaking into a neighbor’s house. Chief Bratton improved community relations in the City of Angels.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |