Can the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department assert itself as one of the best and most innovative departments in the country? Can it say that it serves its communities as vigilantly and as well as other law enforcement agencies? Can it say that it still enjoys the reputation in the profession that it once did?
February 4, 2014
I couldn't help but note how the absence of supervisorial intervention had played out for others elsewhere; how their failure to stem some cancerous problem exacted ever greater tolls later. What might have culminated with a written reprimand or a punitive day off instead ended up being the irrevocable loss of careers, families, and freedoms. A few employees ended up taking their lives.
January 20, 2014
But whatever Baca’s priorities, I have reason to question that the welfare of his personnel and countrymen were high among them. His tax dollar-funded support of a department Muslim Community Affairs Unit was less concerning to my mind than his open advocacy of other questionable Muslim entities such as CAIR. Also his mea culpa parading of contrite Century deputies in the aftermath of a shooting proved more embarrassing than mollifying.
January 7, 2014
As for those who have tried to damn those officers, I wonder what they would hope they might do if they'd seen 12-year-old Nevada teenager Jose Reyes whip out a firearm on teacher Michael Lansberry.
November 4, 2013
The wife says that there is usually justification to my umbrage—it's my bail schedule that sucks. And so mine has been a history of strained associations, parted companies, and dissolved friendships.
September 11, 2013
I'd sleep better knowing that those tasked with the power of making life or death decisions were those most capable of doing so.
May 16, 2013
If he worked in one of those small towns that prohibits the exhibition of elephants in a city park on the Sabbath, you could bet that he'd somehow find a way to be booking a pachyderm into evidence Sunday night.
May 2, 2013
It's been said that a truly good cop could have worked any era in law enforcement and done quite well. When my mind revisits those cops that I used to work with, around, and to varying degrees tolerated, there are two groups that stand out predominantly for their diametrically opposite approaches to patrol.
March 28, 2013
Once while attending a force training seminar, I spoke quite critically of a deputy-involved shooting wherein a pregnant bystander was shot and killed. It was the kind of thing that was easy to grandstand on—or so I thought—and so I did. A lieutenant who was more intimately acquainted with the details of the incident quickly set me straight. The dressing down I received was pretty severe, and I didn't like it one bit. But I had it coming. In spades.
November 8, 2012
If given the opportunity to make a difference in people's lives, are you more apt to toss a lifeline or an anchor?
September 27, 2012
I am not going all "born again" or going "p.c." on ya. I am just pledging to try and be a little more discriminating in how I communicate my thoughts from now on. Ideally I would like to communicate my thoughts without offending you any more than necessary.
July 11, 2012
Well, a couple of weeks ago I blogged about the attempted arrest of a Santa Maria (Calif.) Police officer that resulted in his shooting death. I'd like to think that a vast majority of the few thousand—we keep a running tally—who read the piece at least understood where I was coming.
February 14, 2012
Why did the Santa Maria (Calif.) PD attempt to arrest one of its officers on a public street? Was there some other precipitating factor at work? Because absent such explanations, I fail to see the need for the PD to take the officer down then and there at a DUI checkpoint.
February 2, 2012
These are legitimate concerns, especially from an officer safety angle. After all, take-over robbery suspects have been known to don raid jackets or flash badges as a means of gaining entry into victims' houses.
November 28, 2011
It is quite possible that Baca did try to keep abreast of things, only to find his efforts undermined by another all-too-human factor-the fear of alienating one's self from the marginal affections of el jefe. Face it, nobody wants to get caught playing Mr. Blackwell—the fashion critic-to the emperor with no clothes.
October 31, 2011
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