How The LAPD Has Changed 25 Years After The Riots - Sydney Bridgeforth

Summary:

In March 1991, the month of King's arrest, the Los Angeles Police Department's job-approval rating cratered at 34%.  When the officers involved in King's beating were acquitted on April 29, 1992, the city exploded in rioting ignited by the belief that its police force was abusive, racist and unaccountable.

Twenty five years later, expert observers say the LAPD is a department transformed -- and that the change was made possible, in large part, by a consent decree, a police agreement with the federal government.

The future of similar agreements with15 cities -- including Fwrguson, Missouri, Cleveland and Baltimore -- was thrown into question this month when Sessions placed all pending consent decrees under review.

The consent decree finally implemented many of the recommendations that came out of the immediate aftermath of the LA riots: it instituted "discipline reports," created a database of information about officers and supervisors to identify at-risk behavior, revised procedures on search and arrest -- even created a system to account for instances of police dogs biting members of the public.

Many of the things recommended in the Christopher Report in '92 still basically were unfilled because the city didn't finance it.

With lots of  areas still to be corrected, the department is getting wide praises for its revised "use of force."

Analysis:

This article was published at 11:50 pm et by Rachel Wells of CNN on Friday, April 27, 2017.  The article started with a volume less video rehashing the King incident.  However, with presenting the the history of the video and LAPD it was written without and biases.  I often get current event information from CNN, but I have not read any previous pieces by the author and think she did a great job tying in the LAPD incident from 1992 to current events today show the slow progress of better use of force by police officers across our country.


http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/28/us/lapd-change-since-la-riots/index.html