A baffling development in Los Angeles, home to some of the more notorious police abuse cases over the last several decades. The chief of police there has apparently decided that he will no longer release the names of any police officer involved in a shooting or exessive use of force case.

Absolutely mind-blowing. Particularly in L.A., with its history of high-profile police brutality incidents. As recently as October 2004, the Los Angeles Times published a blistering report detailing how police officers in L.A. regularly withheld information from the city’s civilian review board regarding police shootings. Evidence that called the justification of shootings into question was routinely buried, blurred, or “overlooked.” In several cases, withholding that evidence resulted in bad cops staying on the job, allowing them to amass records of wrongful shootings and improper use of force incidents. LAPD has proven it can’t be trusted to police its own. Now it wants to shield its officers from public scrutiny? Jesus.

The thing is, at least the Times had the names of those officers at hand in order to compile its report. Bury these cops’ identities from media and the public scrutiny, and it becomes impossible for anyone other than the police department to know if the same cop is habitually abusing his authority.

The Times has also found, for example, that just 1% of L.A.’s cops account for 20% of the city’s police shootings. You’d think that good cops would want the renegades exposed and dismissed, if not for the obvious reasons, than at least to protect the image of the police in the city. But the only organization actively pushing the secrecy policy is the police union.

Police officers are public servants. When it comes to what they do on the job, they have no expectation of privacy. Not only are they not above the law, I’d argue that they ought to be held to a higher standard than those of us without badgets, and who don’t get to carry guns in public, and legally use them on people.

L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa campaigned on bringing accountability, reform, and transparency to the police department. Now, he has come out in favor of the new secrecy policy.

Residents of L.A. ought to be mighty pissed off about this.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 21st, 2006 at 6:45 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.