Civil rights violations by the LAPD
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Civil rights violations by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) have been much in the news recently because of the scandal at the Rampart Division in which a number of officers were presenting false evidence and framing innocent citizens. This is not the first time that the LAPD has behaved badly with respect to the civil rights of citizens, and there have been numerous attempts over the years to correct these abuses. The department was corrupt in the 1930s and would be reformed only with the advent of the stewardship of Chief Parker in the late 1940s, though the elimination of overt corruption did not mean there were no problems between the police and the community. The Rampart scandal is raising these same issues once more. Racism is not only directed at blacks, in a city like Los Angeles, Hispanics are also targeted by racist policies and racist officers. This is not a new phenomenon. The Sleepy Lagoon Case in 1941 was used against Hispanic zoot-suiters and made them into something to fear for their foreign-ness during the war. The Mexican-American community was mobilized in support of the defendants. In June 1943, a riot started in which for ten days Anglo servicemen and civilians clashed in the streets with young Mexican-American zoot-suiters, a riot which at its height involved several thousand people. These riots were quite different from Watts and the 1992 riots in that no one was killed and property damage was minimal, but the riots did generate antag
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nst King, by bringing to witness the event millions of television viewers (Goldsmith 43).
The LAPD was most directly involved in that the beating was administered by its officers. The Highway Patrol, whose officers were also on the scene, blamed the LAPD, and the patrol officers present said they had not participated and had complained to ranking officers at the scene. The LAPD response was always somewhat confused, both challenging what its officers had done and leaving the door open for a degree of justification based on King's actions.
The political response was also mixed. Again, the videotape caused many simply to state that this was a case of police abuse. Political pressure increased over time, however. For this reason, the Christopher Commission was formed to investigate the matter and to examine the question of racism and bias as it might affect the use of excessive force in cases like that of Rodney King. The Commission first noted the difference in perception between blacks and whites concerning the role of the police:
Within the minority communities of Los Angeles, there is a widely-held view that police misconduct is commonplace. The King beating refocused public attention on long-standing complaints by Af
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1576
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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