LAPD Officers Get No Criminal Charges In 2007 May Day Melee

News You Might Have Missed: The Los Angeles Times reported on Hallloween that the Los Angeles County District Attorney has decided not to press criminal charges against any of the thirty or so officers it had investigated in the wake of the now-infamous 2007 May Day melee in Mcarthur Park.

They described the incident as "unfortunate and preventable" but said that the office was "closing our file and will take no further action in this matter."

Last year, Police Chief William J. Bratton said he planned to discipline 11 officers and called for the termination of four others for their roles in the melee in which police were accused of using excessive force to clear immigration rights demonstrators and journalists.

LAPD officers were videotaped wielding batons and shooting rubber bullets in an attempt to disperse a largely peaceful crowd. A scathing internal investigation into the incident blamed poor leadership and overly aggressive tactics by officers in the field.

Earlier this year, the Los Angeles City Council agreed to pay nearly $13 million to people injured or mistreated in the melee.

Under the settlement, the department must submit to court oversight of its crowd-control procedures -- another layer of federal involvement that comes as LAPD leaders are impatient to be free of a longstanding and more onerous monitoring program imposed after the Rampart Division corruption scandal.

Curiously, the original L.A. Now report on the D.A. decision which included the previous graphs has been modified ("updated") when the story was moved to the front page of the paper and became:

After a lengthy review, prosecutors said there is insufficient evidence to prove that any of the 30 officers who were investigated violated the law when using force, although some might have used "questionable tactics."

The melee, which occurred at the conclusion of a pro- immigration rally and received national attention, resulted from poor police training, leadership and communication, prosecutors said. Their finding echoed the Los Angeles Police Department's own scathing report on the officers' actions.

Officers were videotaped wielding batons and shooting less-than-lethal rubberized bullets in an attempt to disperse the mostly peaceful crowd after a small group of agitators confronted police. Dozens of protesters and journalists were injured as officers cleared the park.

The department's "planning, tactical and command failures" were the backdrop for the officers' actions against "both violent protesters and nonviolent protesters and media personnel," prosecutors said in their report. "The media had innocently and unwittingly positioned themselves in an area directly in the path of officers attempting to clear the park."

In the immediate aftermath, Police Chief William J. Bratton removed a deputy chief and commander from their posts. Deputy Chief Caylor "Lee" Carter retired shortly thereafter.

Bratton also said he planned to discipline several officers and called for the termination of others for their roles in the melee.

But internal disciplinary panels gave no officer more than a 20-day suspension. Some officers, however, were demoted, according to their attorney.

Earlier this year, the Los Angeles City Council agreed to pay nearly $13 million to people injured or mistreated in the May Day melee.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League is happy with the result that no more officers will be punished for their actions that day.

The LAPPL is pleased that District Attorney Steve Cooley exercised his prosecutorial independence and made the right decision to not prosecute any officers involved the May Day incident. His review sought only truth and justice, and was not influenced by any political agenda.

As the LAPPL has said all along, there needs to be a thorough review of the facts about what happened on May Day 2007 before passing judgment about officers’ actions. We are pleased and relieved at the outcome of the District Attorney’s investigation, as we were with the Board of Rights hearings in July.

We also said that the public should not be surprised by the final outcome. Removed from the political and media spotlight, the District Attorney and the Board of Rights, which included a civilian member, objectively reviewed the facts and rendered opinions of the officers’ actions based on long- standing Department policy.

The Department’s 2007 May Day report presented to the Police Commission acknowledged that the events that transpired primarily resulted from breakdowns in command structure, planning and communications, as well as training deficiencies.

The League went on record immediately after the incident pointing out the lack of continuous and updated training that partially contributed to the incident. Training is the backbone of good police work – ensuring that officers know not only what to do, but can properly implement the Department’s policies, procedures and expectations in any situation. As a result of the 2007 report, revealing the Department's ill-advised decision to abandon introductory training for new Metropolitan Division officers and to not train all officers for large tactical missions, the Department reinstated training as a fundamental priority.

We would like to point out that that there were many positive actions by officers on that day, as the Department itself has acknowledged. We commend those officers for their professionalism and restraint under difficult circumstances.

We'll see if this is really the last we hear about this incident (I doubt it).