Only minutes after a recent Los Angeles Police Commission meeting began, Steve Soboroff, commission vice president, offered a bold order to the public in response to widespread outcry over police violence.
“Stop pointing guns at officers, stop pointing knives, lunging at officers,” he said. “Stop attacking officers, and I think that our officer-involved shootings will go way down. I think it’s important…”
A lively crowd (especially for 9 a.m. on a weekday) quickly interrupted Soboroff, resentfully speaking over the man with the microphone.
“Startin’ with bulls--- again, that is crazy!” one woman said. “I just walked in and you already startin’ with bulls---.”
“I guess we’re all suicidal then, huh Steve?!” another woman seethed.
Soboroff, sitting alongside his fellow commissioners in front of the crowd, murmured just loud enough to hear from the back of the room, “Ahh just throw ’em out, will ya?”
The tension in the room was palpable but there was an eerie sense of familiarity to it, as if everyone in the room had expected just this kind of unruly start to their morning. However, Soboroff was keen on finishing his statement, which came ahead of a weekly discussion about police-involved shootings in the city. He indeed concluded his prewritten proclamation, asking the mostly African-American crowd to start treating officers with more respect so that perhaps officers would be less inclined to shoot people.
Thus began a rowdy, yet routine Tuesday morning meeting, with every single activist in attendance lining up for his or her two minutes of commentary on every single agenda item. The meeting dragged on for hours as the demonstrators became exasperated in their cries for change.
When things got particularly heated, anyone wreaking too much havoc was forcibly removed. It only riled the crowd more.
Asked whether the activists’ tactics will be successful in affecting change in the future, Matthew Johnson, police commission president, snidely chose to “leave that for other people to decide.”
With these outbursts occurring every week, the commissioners have become understandably disgruntled with the activists’ rudeness and profanity. What is not understandable, however, is the commission’s complete disregard for the civilians’ demands.
At first glance, the rebellious crowd appears disorganized and disrespectful, but in reality they represent several well-respected community groups such as Black Lives Matter, the Youth Justice Coalition, Stop LAPD Spying and Los Angeles Community Action Network.
Recent statistics indicate the commissioners should not be focused on the nature of the activists’ flare-ups but rather on the substance of their statements.
As of September 31, 2015, LAPD had already engaged in more officer-involved shootings than all of last year, totaling 31 shootings with 17 fatalities.
“We’re trying to figure out why there’s protocol [against police-involved shootings] in the first place if there’s no penalty for breaking it,” Michael Williams of Black Lives Matter said. “We’re trying to protect our lives from the people who are supposed to be protecting our lives.”
“I don’t know how many more deaths we need to actually have an uprising that ends this,” Mariella Saba of Stop LAPD Spying Coalition said. “We are sick and tired of the murders, sick and tired of the corruption, of the brutality.”
Other than the police-related violence, perhaps the most startling aspect of this movement is the deepening chasm between the civilians and the commission, which are supposed to be working together to “police the police”. Clearly, neither part of that equation is happening; they aren’t cooperating with each other and they certainly aren’t doing a good enough job of keeping the police in check.
This marked divide has created widespread miscommunication and misinterpretation of government action between the two sides.
There is no clearer demonstration of this separation than the juxtaposition of Youth Justice Coalition member Robert Cristo’s and Commissioner Johnson’s perceptions of the Christopher Commission and the Rampart Scandal that tainted the LAPD over 20 years ago.
The Christopher Commission was formed in 1991 in the wake of the Rodney King beating in order to investigate LAPD injustices. The Rampart Scandal was a case of widely publicized corruption within an anti-gang unit of LAPD’s Rampart Division in the late ’90s that also uncovered massive evidence of police malpractice.
Both were considered landmark findings at the time but their respective legacies are clearly looked at through different lenses by the prominent social activists and leading governmental figures of today.
While Cristo claims these findings validate everything his group is speaking out against in the commission meetings, Johnson uses the outcomes of the scandals as cornerstones of his defense of the progress of the LAPD, calling it “one of the leading police departments in the country.”
To be fair, it would be unreasonable to place all blame on Johnson, an entertainment lawyer who Mayor Eric Garcetti appointed to the commission only a month ago, as these issues have stained the city for decades. To the same degree, the commission’s utter disregard for the community’s voice goes against everything the commission is supposed to stand for.
With no signs of an end to the disruptive behavior of the activists, something will have to give eventually. For now, the meetings continue to quietly adjourn.