I know that it's just TV, but the premise that the LAPD would hire any gang member without knowing about it is false on its face. Absent political misdirection and interference, background investigations on potential new hires, working gang units and intelligence files would have early-on identified and disqualified a gang affiliate for police service.
What's missing in this somewhat naive story about the LAPD and gang influence, are the truer underlying facts that had helped destroy the full credibility of a once incorruptible LAPD.
The Department had been forced by the City's liberal and politically correct politicians to hire some police recruits who had criminal records, including a few who were documented gang members.
One of the results was "The Rampart Scandal." Look it up. The core cause was the City's so-called "diversifying" hiring standards. These are the same standards that hired the likes of convicted Officer Rafael Perez, the core cause of the "Rampart Scandal" and subsequent public distrust of the underlying culture of the Los Angeles Police Department.
The L.A. Times reported in May of 2003 that Ruben Palomares, a former Rampart Division officer awaiting sentencing on drug trafficking charges in San Diego, was being investigated for allegedly overseeing a ring of drug and robbery suspects suspected of committing dozens of robberies in Southern California over several years. Current or former officers of the LAPD, Long Beach Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department were also involved. Other members of the ring, which was believed to number more than a dozen people, included security guards and a professional female boxer. Also named was a prison guard and former Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy Rodrigo Duran.
Another alleged member of the ring was LAPD Officer William Ferguson, "who had been arrested five times before he was hired by the department." Ferguson had also worked at Rampart during the same time as Perez, and had a string of disciplinary problems at the LAPD. This is further concrete evidence that the liberal hiring standards that accompanied affirmative action programs instilled in Los Angeles and elsewhere, continue to be directly responsible for the degrading of both the reputation and effectiveness of law enforcement everywhere.
But watch it. Very entertaining. Even for me.
Okay, I watched the next episode. Getting harder to watch. Far too unrealistic. Gangs don't have that much power to operate in LA.
Richard M. Holbrook, author of "Political Sabotage: The LAPD Experience; . . . . . ."
What's missing in this somewhat naive story about the LAPD and gang influence, are the truer underlying facts that had helped destroy the full credibility of a once incorruptible LAPD.
The Department had been forced by the City's liberal and politically correct politicians to hire some police recruits who had criminal records, including a few who were documented gang members.
One of the results was "The Rampart Scandal." Look it up. The core cause was the City's so-called "diversifying" hiring standards. These are the same standards that hired the likes of convicted Officer Rafael Perez, the core cause of the "Rampart Scandal" and subsequent public distrust of the underlying culture of the Los Angeles Police Department.
The L.A. Times reported in May of 2003 that Ruben Palomares, a former Rampart Division officer awaiting sentencing on drug trafficking charges in San Diego, was being investigated for allegedly overseeing a ring of drug and robbery suspects suspected of committing dozens of robberies in Southern California over several years. Current or former officers of the LAPD, Long Beach Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department were also involved. Other members of the ring, which was believed to number more than a dozen people, included security guards and a professional female boxer. Also named was a prison guard and former Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy Rodrigo Duran.
Another alleged member of the ring was LAPD Officer William Ferguson, "who had been arrested five times before he was hired by the department." Ferguson had also worked at Rampart during the same time as Perez, and had a string of disciplinary problems at the LAPD. This is further concrete evidence that the liberal hiring standards that accompanied affirmative action programs instilled in Los Angeles and elsewhere, continue to be directly responsible for the degrading of both the reputation and effectiveness of law enforcement everywhere.
But watch it. Very entertaining. Even for me.
Okay, I watched the next episode. Getting harder to watch. Far too unrealistic. Gangs don't have that much power to operate in LA.
Richard M. Holbrook, author of "Political Sabotage: The LAPD Experience; . . . . . ."