Furor Over Teen's Death By LAPD Continues...

Since I first blogged about the news of another tragic police shooting of a young black male a few days ago the story has continued to receive widespread attention. The Los Angeles Times has run almost a dozen stories in 5 days this week, a lot of them appearing on either the front page of the paper or in the front page of the California section. Then, on Thursday this editorial (headlined "A Lingering Shoot-First Culture") was published:

It's going to take more than a
new police policy on shooting
at moving vehicles to prevent
another tragedy like the one
Sunday that cost the life of
13-year-old Devin Brown. The
uproar over the shooting is not
about cops firing at cars. It's
about the Los Angeles Police
Department's long-troubled
relationship with the city's
African American community.

Right on point! As other commentators at LAVoice.org and blogging.la have also noted, there's a bigger picture here than just a wayward barely teen-aged boy joyriding. Today's Times actually does a pretty good job of "connecting the blots" on the LAPD's record regarding race relations with the African American community in Los Angeles, as it covers Police Chief Bill Bratton's "week of painful losses." The story mentions 1979 police shooting of Eulia Love, the 1991 Rodney King beating, the 2002 Donovan Jackson beating, the 2003 Stanley Miller beating.... Of course what makes the last three incidents so sensatioal is that all three were caught live on videotape, and in all three cases the police responsible were not found guilty of criminal wrongdoing. However, if the police are not punished when their "bad acts" are recorded for the entire world to see, then how can the community have confidence in the police when there are no video cameras around?