May Day and MacArthur Park will be safe today; August 29, 1970 and Ruben Salazar- revisited

Today is the first of May, "May Day," and it's time for another round of demonstrations on the changes sought for illegal immigrant status. On May 1, 2007 MacArthur Park was not the place to be if safety was a concern. The May Day Melee. The first hazard was the presence of roving bands of people, many masked, throwing objects at police that also endangered anyone else nearby. The second risk to life and limb came from the unlikely source, the police who somehow got the idea or order to clear the Park of everyone, and immediatley. That included the t.v. news people with their cameras and a lot of other reporters, many among the persons struck by batons and otherwise physically forced to move.

For those familiar with local history, it was an action reminiscent of the action taken by the L.A. County Sheriffs Department back on August 29, 1970 at Laguna Park in East L.A., the unincorporated county territory just east of the City of Los Angeles, during the Vietnam War protest, the Chicano Moratorium. The action of the LAPD in 2007 was unexplainable, at least in terms of a leadership decision. It appeared very similar to that 1970 event, although no deaths resulted. A much greater level of force and actions constituting police misconduct happened in 1970, as noted above, where Sheriffs deputies used a combination of excessive and deadly force and poor tactics, escalating "the problem" or precipitating it, depending on one's point of view, by pushing people into an area that bottlenecked or stopped their ability to exit the area, thus beginning the commotion.

That was the day L.A. Times columnist, Ruben Salazar, was killed hours later by a deputy firing a sharply-pointed tear gas projectile designed for penetrating solid walls, into a bar through a curtained entrance, striking Salazar in the temple and killing him. This seemed to be a series of inappropriate actions stacked on on another to arrive at the deadly result: Equipment wrong- Wrong device used (deadly projectile instead of cannister), the Deputy apparently did not identify the target before firing (b/c if he did, it would arguably be murder), and fired through curtains with a weapon firing a sharply pointed projectile designed for plywood wall penetration; Poor communication as later-arriving officers fired more tear gas into the already gassed bar, unaware of the first firing, and finally, the entry was delayed since they were quoted as saying they did not have gas masks. (Equipped for firing gas but not having masks? If accurate, very poor planning); There was no announcement to exit made before firing the tear gas, according to witness testimony at the inquest. See:
"COLUMN ONE: Journalist's Death Still Clouded by Questions; Friends say Ruben Salazar, whose stories often criticized police treatment of Mexican Americans, believed he was in danger. His 1970 slaying left a lasting wound." By ROBERT J. LOPEZ, TIMES STAFF WRITER (pdf file) (view as HTML)

As for the life of Ruben Salazar, you can see the 2000 web article in La Voz de Aztlan, that provides more details to put it all into context for a better understanding of the times and events. Salazar was an important figure with a presence early in the civil rights movement as one of the few sources for views relevant to and reflective of Chicanos, and other Latinos (there were fewer "others" in present relative percentages back then) that many young people have only recently come to recognize. The article in La Voz appears to me to be a pretty fair report of the situation, although there may be opinions of extreme views presented in other postings there. It's all relative to your point of view.

In the 1970 event, not much in the way of accountability during or after the event occurred, and although Salazar death resulted in a Coroner's Inquest finding of homicide, "death at the hands of another," there was no prosecution of the deputy for the death. The 2007 events were in high contrast to that time and millions of dollars were paid out for the actions of the LAPD in MacArthur Park, thoroughly recorded by the many news people present and among the victims. In 1970, Congressman Edward Roybal was important in pressing the FBI for an impartial investigation into the death and the Coroner's Inquest was later held. It was shown on television but with less fanfare than the OJ murder trial in Santa Monica years later.

Yet, you can contrast that 1970 time to now, as there was little accountability and change happening in those times, or even an acknowledgement that choices of action by the government side was possibly wrong, for that matter. In 2007, it sounded very different and I think there was even some blame expressed by Chief Bratton, placed not on the culprits of the first level of disruption, but on his own officers. That's always a liability-relevant and attitude-setting thing to hear the leader make statements almost before the dust from the event has settled.

Today, MacArthur Park will probably be the safest place in the city with a heavy police presence to ensure that. And you can expect that they are fully trained this time around to apply any law enforcement activity to the specific offenders and only at a level of force that is necessary to complete the action. Yes, today everyone should be on his best behavior, and everything should be "by the book," which somehow was put to the side in 2007. A very expensive lesson that focused on the LAPD that day, of all that day's events nationwide.

Going to the merit of this day's protest, I will leave that for the many other commenters to fill that in. I will say that the entire manner of handling protesters has done a complete change from the 60's era approach from law enforcement and government where much intolerance was the general guideline applied and actions conformed to that attitude. Now it seems to be that there is an overly accommodating invitation to any group who wants to occupy public space, consume public safety resources for the events, regardless of the cause and at the public's expense for collateral services needed.

How times have changed-

LAPD Overtime a City Council Topic last week. Can they handle it?

The LAPD has it's own overtime considerations on overtime that the City Council is examining as part of the city budget items. "City grapples with LAPD's overtime pay," By Jason Kandel, Staff Writer http://www.dailynews.com/ci_10707094 is a story that appeared in the DAILY NEWS on April 17, 2009, a little earlier than the Fire Department's overtime story. The LAPD has it's overtime cost rising over the last 10 years but the workforce has been relatively stable, and that's caused concern.

Sizable increases in base pay - which is how overtime pay is determined -
are also part of the reason LAPD's annual overtime bill surged from about $32
million in fiscal year 1997-98 to nearly $79 million in 2007-08, according to
LAPD figures.

Greig Smith, Council Member and an LAPD Reserve officer, offered an explantion,

It's cheaper than hiring more police officers," said Los Angeles City
Councilman Greig Smith, a member of the city's Budget and Finance Committee.
"For a long time that was our reasoning. It was acceptable because it is
actually cheaper.

"It kind of spun out of control."

Regardless of what Smith says, and often it's in the form of a poor analysis or inappropriate analogy, the overtime is an increasing expense to be dealt with directly.

The city council is trying to get the budget balanced and some have asked that the mayor's plan to arrive at a 10,000 officer force by continued hiring be held off temporarily to help financially. Mayor Tony is intent on this goal, as he's in urgent need of more feathers in his cap to use in his bid for California's next Governor- as if he hasn't done enough for us at the city level already. The union, of course, would like to have more members and says that would ease the OT, which is often due to time spent in waiting in court to testify on cases.

The LAFD overtime as the city's other financial concern, will keep council busy for the near future, and satisfactory "solutions" rarely can be expected by the Council.

If you have any views of this council having some special skill or lofty ideals applied, you can forget that. Just tune in online live or on-demand to the meetings and after a few of those sessions you will either be thoroughly frustrated and disillusioned, wondering why no one runs against them, or you will be like many others who have no time to see that and become an "admirer" of these noble folks who are able to work so intently on the city's problems.

Let me tell you now, a lot of the problems were created BY them and their "lofty" ideals and ideas. Remember, each Council Member makes almost $180,000.00 cash salary a year and all have another $100,000.00 or so of benefits to help them get their job done. 15 Council Members with a staff of 20 and they've had up to 8 city cars apiece assigned full time to them and they still waste time with personal agendas for Resolutions and other items, all out of their jurisdiction, to send to D.C. or to Sacramento for those elected representative to ignore or to acknowledge courteously and then ignore, but to sound as if they are taking in such offerings.

The budget crisis comes, in part, from spending for programs without enough checking into worthiness of the programs they fund. A good deal of cronyism is showing in this area. Sometimes it's just throwing money at a problem on some "snake-oil salesman's" pitch for a cure that they are to lazy or ignorant to work on. This tradition is not new, but the dollar values increased and the assumption of continued tax money rolling in was a bad one to adopt.

So now, taxpayers get more taxes and "fees" imposed to cover the past council shortcomings in judgment and there's plans for MORE- (May 19th brings a lot of them for you to hang yourself with.)