Gisela Santiago (right), an organizer with Women Organized to Resist and Defend, reads a statement inside a Walgreens pharmacy in downtown Los Angeles yesterday. The action was part outreach and part protest concerning the Obama administration’s legal battle to restrict women’s access to the morning-after pill, an emergency contraceptive. (Dan Bluemel / LA Activist)

Women’s rights advocates entered a Walgreens pharmacy yesterday in downtown Los Angeles to protest the Obama administration’s efforts to restrict access to the emergency contraceptive commonly known as the morning-after pill.

On May 13, a federal appeals court granted the government’s request for a stay on U.S. District Court Judge Edward R. Korman’s order that would have made the morning-after pill available for anyone of any age without a prescription.

Set up by Women Organized to Resist and Defend, or WORD, the action involved a handful of activists making a statement inside the pharmacy and leafleting. As part of their protest, they placed their own replica boxes of morning-after pills in the contraceptives section as a political statement. The boxes were empty but stated “No I.D. required” and a crossed-off price tag, which above it stated “Affordable for all.” Security and employees at the Walgreens did not interfere with the group’s outreach.

Peta Lindsay, an organizer for WORD, accused the Obama administration of pandering to the political right.

“They are playing political football with our rights,” she said. “It is another example of politicians using our rights for their own personal gain and sacrificing our rights when it is convenient.”

According to The New York Times, Judge Korman similarly accused the Obama administration of putting politics before health and science. He said the decision to broadly distribute the emergency contraceptive had been “corrupted by political interference” and called the government’s arguments “frivolous” and “silly.”

Ironically, the Justice Department’s May 7 decision to appeal comes nearly two weeks after President Obama affirmed his commitment to women’s health and reproductive rights.

“When it comes to a woman’s health, no politician should get to decide what’s best for you,” he said at the 2013 Planned Parenthood National Conference.

Activists placed makeshift replicas of morning-after pill boxes next to other contraceptives as part of their statement to keep the pill’s access available to all women. (Dan Bluemel / LA Activist)

For years scientists and politicians have been at odds about the morning-after pill. In 2011, Kathleen Sebelius, the Health and Human Services secretary, overturned the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to allow the morning-after pill to be sold over the counter to women under 17 without a prescription. It was the first time someone in her position had publicly overruled an FDA decision, according to The New York Times.

After Judge Korman’s ruling, the FDA made the morning-after pill available to women as young as 15. However, groups such as WORD want a return to the FDA’s 2011 decision to make the contraceptive available for all.

During the demonstration, activists chanted, “Old enough to get pregnant, old enough to decide.” When asked if there was an age where parents should decide whether their child should use emergency contraceptives, Lindsay asked in return, “Would you rather them have babies?”

“The reality is if you can’t trust a young woman with a pill, how can you trust them with a baby?” she said. “All you do by blocking contraception is keep her from not getting pregnant. You are not keeping her from having sex, you are keeping her from getting the access and medication she needs.”

Gisela Santiago, an organizer for WORD, read the group’s statement out loud inside the pharmacy. She said she would like to see the price of the morning-after pill reduced as well, making it even more accessible to women.

“I think what really gets me angry is that it is mostly men deciding [on issues of women’s health],” she said. “Men never have to think about having that chance of getting pregnant.”

WORD’s action was held in concert with demonstrations held in 12 other cities this week. At this time it is undecided if more demonstrations will take place.

(Dan Bluemel / LA Activist)

Upset with Wells Fargo’s foreclosure practices, protesters held a demonstration yesterday that briefly shut down one of the bank’s branches in downtown Los Angeles.

The action was organized by Occupy Fights Foreclosures, an Occupy Los Angeles subcommittee that has been assisting homeowners fight what they consider are fraudulent foreclosures. About 80 activists, which included foreclosed homeowners, stood in front of the bank’s entrance for a half hour before joining the nearby May Day demonstration held by the Southern California Immigration Coalition.

“Too many families are being thrown out into the streets,” said Carlos Marroquin, an organizer for Occupy Fights Foreclosures. “Wells Fargo has already paid over a billion dollars in settlements because of their predatory lending practices. It goes to show you that they are not ashamed of what they do.”

In February of last year, five of the largest mortgage servicers, which includes Wells Fargo, paid $25 billion in a settlement over fraudulent foreclosure practices. The lawsuit was initiated by 49 state attorneys general. The settlement was the largest of its kind in U.S. history.

However, Wells Fargo’s foreclosure practices continue to generate criticism. Last month, ABC News reported that Delores Dingman, an 80 year-old resident of Tualatin, Ore., fought Wells Fargo for three years to save her home from repossession. The bank failed to prove Dingman ever missed a payment.

In March, LA Weekly reported that Wells Fargo wrongly foreclosed on Hermosa Beach resident Larry Delassus. The bank was supposed to foreclose on his neighbor, but due to a simple typo, Delassus became involved in an over-two-year battle to save his home from the bank. Despite the error, Wells Fargo continued its foreclosure, eventually gaining possession of Delassus’ home, primarily because he was unable to afford the bank’s fees. On Dec. 19, 2012, Delassus died from heart failure in a Torrence courtroom while listening to his attorney argue his case.

Gary Kishner, a spokesperson for Wells Fargo, told LA Activist that Wells Fargo has a “very strong record” in keeping owners in their homes. He said the bank’s foreclosure rate in California is a little over one percent. In 2009, he said, the bank had provided over 840,000 loan modifications, as well as $6 billion in principal forgiveness.

“Our primary goal is to work with our customers and keep them in their homes,” he said. “We don’t benefit from foreclosures. It costs banks a lot of money to foreclose on a house.”

When asked about loans that are mortgage-backed securities, which are often structured in a way that it is more profitable for a servicer to foreclose on a homeowner, Kishner said in those instances Wells Fargo is “bound by the owner of the loan as to what can or cannot be modified.”

However, according to Pro Publica, “few mortgage deals include such restrictions.”

When asked if Wells Fargo had ever advocated changing a system that often makes foreclosure more profitable for servicers, Kirshner said he was not aware of any such conversations with investors.

Occupy Fights Foreclosures states that it has been able to help many owners keep their homes, often through direct negotiations with banks. Their tougher cases have led to protests where members break into homes, return them to their owners and barricade the houses off from mortgage servicing companies and law enforcement. One such protest in Van Nuys lasted over two months last year before being shut down. Occupiers are still defending a home in East Los Angeles. That protest is in its sixth month. Another such protest, in Altadena, began last month.

Marroquin has worked with Occupy Fights Foreclosures since its inception in late 2011. He calls the foreclosure crisis “the crime of the century.” From his experience, he said the banks are leaving homeowners in the lurch by seizing their homes and selling them to investors for less than what the properties are worth.

“Yet they are refusing to allow the homeowners to stay in their homes,” he said. “That goes to show you that there is profit being made … and the only ones not benefiting in any shape, way or form are the homeowners.”

For related articles, click here.

The Los Angeles Anti-Eviction Campaign celebrates with free hot dogs and popcorn after breaking the locks on the home of Cathelene Hughes, which had been foreclosed upon. Hughes and the LA Anti-Eviction Campaign say it was a fraudulent foreclosure. (Dan Bluemel / LA Activist)

Another set of locks has been broken on a foreclosed home, this time for South Los Angeles resident Cathelene Hughes.

On Sunday, April 21, members of the Los Angeles Anti-Eviction Campaign broke the locks on Hughes’ home located on the 9800 block on South Wall Street.

“This feels great,” said Hughes, 72, who had been living with her aunt since the eviction. “When you don’t have your own place you feel like you’re displaced; you’re not comfortable. It’s just stressful.”

“It’s feeling good to come home,” she added.

Hughes was evicted in February, but her story begins in 2004 when she bought her property for $278,000, which had two homes on the lot. Hughes rented out the larger unit, keeping the smaller, one-bedroom house for herself.

However, what Hughes did not know then, she explained, was that her loan was an adjustable-rate mortgage. As the interest on her loan began to climb, she lost her job in 2009. Then her tenant lost hers. With both her incomes lost, Hughes began to struggle with her payments.

“I got behind,” she said. “That’s what happened.”

Hughes said she reached out to the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, a non-profit that assists homeowners. However, getting a loan modification was proving to be difficult and the foreclosure process was happening at a much faster rate.

“All of a sudden, this guy knocks on my door and tells me my property was being auctioned off,” she said.

The LA Anti-Eviction Campaign, or LAAEC, says Hughes is a victim of bank fraud because her income was inflated on her loan application and that she was never informed the interest on her loan was adjustable.

“[Lenders] don’t explain everything to you,” said Hughes. “They just want to make a loan.”

Since then, Hughes’ home was auctioned to an investor. In return, LAAEC and Hughes recently filed an unlawful detainer lawsuit on the investor, which is a method usually employed to evict a tenant. They are also looking at other legal actions.

The LAAEC began operating in Los Angeles on Jan. 25, but the Anti-Eviction Campaign has its roots in Cape Town, South Africa, where its been operating for 12 years. There is another chapter in Chicago.

LAAEC co-chair Adam Rice said the group engages in acts of resistance, which he sets apart from protest. He cites the Hernandezes, a Van Nuys family that barricaded off their home for over two months to stave off foreclosure and buy time for a negotiation with their bank, as an example of such resistance.

However, the resistance of one is not as strong as the resistance of many. Eventually the Hernandez’s barricade was torn down and the family was evicted from their home, but, as Rice notes, if more homeowners would stand up to the banks, the entire system could be brought to its knees.

“We try to create resistance,” said Rice. “Protest doesn’t do anything but let your voice be heard, and then you go home.”

Article 25 of the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights serves as the basis of LAAEC’s ethos, which states that housing, among other things, is a human right. However, to uphold such a notion in a financial system structured so it is often more profitable to foreclose on homes than assist homeowners in keeping their property can be daunting. Rice said that except for one instance, he has yet to see anyone get a loan modification once the foreclosure process has begun.

“I haven’t seen a lawful eviction in a foreclosure in this damn town the entire time I’ve been looking at these things,” said Rice. “The people’s security of tenure and access to services isn’t being respected.”

Without help, many homeowners facing foreclosure feel alone, often ashamed and powerless. LAAEC has been canvassing Hughes’ neighborhood, local churches and community organizations to educate homeowners on navigating a maze of dubious bank policies, an intimidating legal system and questionable businesses who promise help for a fee and deliver little or nothing in return.

“You have to help each other,” said Soledad Corona, who recently lost her home to foreclosure. “There are so many people that are still hiding in shame. They walk away from their homes and stop fighting.”

Corona met Hughes and Rice through meetings with Occupy Fights Foreclosures, an Occupy Los Angeles group that also assists homeowners. She has three lawsuits pending regarding both her foreclosure and the storage of her belongings because the storage facility wants her to sign a waiver releasing them of any liability before granting her access to her possessions.

Corona’s experience has left her with a negative impression of banks, mortgage servicers and police — particularly with the banks and mortgage servicers who, she said, take advantage of a homeowner’s defenselessness.

“They do whatever they want,” she said. “That’s the scary part. … They figure, what are you going to do? That is why at every point you have to continue fighting. You can’t give up the fight, and it’s a shame because so many people don’t even start the fight. They just walk away. We know people who leave in the middle of the night because it is so embarrassing, and [the banks and mortgage servicers] count on that.”

The event was part celebration and part outreach as Hughes and the activists served popcorn and hot dogs, free of charge, to anyone walking by. It is part of LAAEC’s continuing attempt to bring people together, have a little fun, talk about the foreclosure crisis and what can homeowners do to defend themselves.

Rice was quick to point out that LAAEC is not a charity though. They are looking for people with a fight still left in them.

“We are here to give people the tools to save their community,” he said.

For related articles, click here.

Demonstrators demanding justice for the killing of Jose de la Trinidad by Los Angeles County Sheriffs march on Wilmington Avenue in Willowbrook. De la Trinidad was innocent, unarmed and shot seven times in the back. (Dan Bluemel / LA Activist)

Supporters of the family of Jose de la Trinidad, a man shot and killed by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies last November, marched and rallied again Saturday, April 20, demanding justice in what they say was a wrongful death.

Demonstrators, comprised of anti-police brutality activists, as well as family and friends of victims of police shootings, marched from 122nd Street and Wilmington Avenue where the shooting took place in the unincorporated area of Willowbrook to the nearby municipal court in Compton.

De la Trinidad’s widow, Rosie de la Trinidad, filed a wrongful-death and civil rights lawsuit against the sheriff’s dept. and the county on April 19 for $15 million.

“[The lawsuit] is to hold these two officers accountable for the murder of my husband,” she said. “He was innocent, unarmed, complying with their orders and he was shot dead, seven times in the back.”

On Nov. 10, 2012, deputies attempted to pull over the car carrying Jose de la Trinidad for speeding. His brother, who was driving, attempted to evade the sheriffs, stopping briefly to let De la Trinidad out of the car so he may surrender to law enforcement.

According to an eyewitness, De la Trinidad was complying with the deputies orders to turn around and raise his hands when deputies opened fire. According to the sheriff’s dept., the deputies interpreted his motions as though he was reaching for a weapon.

After the shooting, the LA Times reported, the deputies who were involved were placed on desk-duty for five days before returning to patrol, a fact that Rosie de la Trinidad considers insulting.

“Had it been anyone else, they would be facing life in prison for murder,” she said. “They have destroyed an entire family. My kids, myself, we are never going to be the same. When you lose your soul mate, a part of you goes with them.”

Not expecting a just resolution from sheriff’s dept. or county, Rosie de la Trinidad said the lawsuit was the only means available to her to achieve justice.

“My priority is to have these officers held accountable,” she said. “No settlement will ever put a price on the life that was lost. My husband was such a great man. I’m forced to live the rest of my life with this grief.”

A women lights a candle at a makeshift memorial where Jose de la Trinidad was killed, near the intersection of 122nd Street and Wilmington Avenue. (Dan Bluemel / LA Activist)

The demonstration was joined by groups, such as the ANSWER Coalition and the Youth Justice Coalition. Protesters took a lane of traffic and marched along Wilmington Avenue, often handing out informational pamphlets to pedestrians and onlookers.

Damian Ramirez attended Saturday’s demonstration. Besides advocating for police reform, he campaigns for justice on behalf of his friend, Michael Nida II, who was shot and killed by Downey police in October 2011. Like Jose de la Trinidad, Nida was also unarmed, innocent and shot in the back.

Behind the support for the De la Trinidad family, said Ramirez, is a growing movement of family and friends who lost loved ones in police shootings. He, in part, credits this to the Los Angeles Police Dept. shooting at two female newspaper carriers in February due to mistaken identity during the manhunt for Christopher Dorner, an ex-cop who sought revenge for his termination from the department. The make and model of the truck the carriers were driving bore no resemblance to Dorner’s.

“When we are out here talking about our loved ones being killed, the question people can always ask is, ‘What did they do wrong?’” he said. “We get that all the time. But, when you turn on the news and see two women going about their business, working for a living … and they almost got assassinated by the police, that changes people’s consciousness.”

About 80 people participated in the action, but they appeared to have a lot of support from drivers along the march route who honked their car horns in solidarity. Ramirez sees this as the hard word of activists beginning to show results, saying their non-violent demonstrations and solution-orientated advocacy is beginning to catch the public’s attention.

Among some of the demands of protesters was changing California’s Peace Officer Bill of Rights, which critics say shields cops to the detriment of the community. Protesters would also like to see the demilitarization of local law enforcement, which have been over the years procuring more and more military grade weapons from the federal government.

“Things need to change,” said Ramirez while speaking to demonstrators at the march’s end. “The sheriffs that killed Jose got away with murder. … We are going to take all of our energy, all of our resources and we are going to change this system that protects these officers.”

Related articles:

Jan. 27, 2013: Demonstrators demand justice for unarmed man slain by deputies

Protesters march next to City Hall to protest the U.S. government’s use of drones overseas. The demonstration was held in concert with others across the country. (Dan Bluemel / LA Activist)

Individuals from multiple activist organizations rallied at Los Angeles City Hall on Saturday, April 13, to call for an end of U.S. drone operations overseas.

A significant number of civilian deaths, as well as the drone program’s questionable legal grounds, was the crux of the demonstration, which was held in concert with other protests across the U.S.

Peta Lindsey, an organizer for the ANSWER Coalition in LA, said the use of drones amounted to “high-tech murder” that has killed thousands of people.

“Our government officials try and tell us this is targeted, very specific and that they are just getting the ‘bad guys,’ but we know the truth,” she said. “We know that drones have killed women, children — countless numbers of people throughout the Middle East and the world.”

The CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command is currently conducting drone operations in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Africa and the Philippines have also seen drone strikes, but the level of U.S. involvement is either unknown or disputed at this point.

One of the hardest hit regions from these operations is Pakistan. According to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, from 2004 to 2013, an estimated 2,541 to 3,585 people have been killed in drone strikes. Of those, an estimated 411 to 884 were civilians — 168 to 197 were children. (See details below for breakdown by region.)

Mehboob “Bobby” Aslam, a native of Pakistan who has been living in the U.S. for 20 years, spoke to the demonstrators at City Hall. He said the U.S. government’s claims of fighting terrorism and protecting the freedom of Pakistanis is unfounded. He said the attacks also have negative psychological effects on children.

“When they start drone attacks, they kill, indiscriminately, regular people — children, women,” he said. “Those little kids … they are afraid each time an airplane passes by. People are living in fear there, every day and night, nobody knows what time a drone will come and attack.”

Reuters journalist David Rohde, who spent seven months in captivity after being kidnapped by the Taliban, mirrors Aslam’s statement. In January 2012, he wrote about the terror of living under constant threat of drone attack.

“The drones were terrifying,” he wrote. “From the ground, it is impossible to determine who or what they are tracking as they circle overhead. The buzz of a distant propeller is a constant reminder of imminent death.”

A September 2012 study done by Stanford Law School and New York University School of Law details the impact of life under drones. The report found that the constant fear of drone strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of northern Pakistan has led to a breakdown in people’s lives. Some reported they no longer go outside in groups larger than two or three, fearing it may instigate a drone attack. They also told of people so terrified by the sound of overhead drones that they run indoors for cover, only to run outside again, afraid the building they had ran into was a target. Some parents have removed their children from school altogether after their schools had been bombed.

“[It] undermines people’s sense of safety to such an extent that it has at times affected their willingness to engage in a wide variety of activities, including social gatherings, educational and economic opportunities, funerals and that fear has also undermined general community trust,” stated the report.

The report provides accounts of those who survived drone attacks. In one instance, a March 2011 drone strike in Datta Khel in North Waziristan, Pakistan, U.S. drones fired upon roughly 40 people conducting a jirga, a tribal meeting of community figures and local elders for the purpose of decision-making and dispute resolution. It is estimated that 24 or more people died in the attack.

“The missiles fired from drones kill or injure in several ways, including through incineration, shrapnel, and the release of powerful blast waves capable of crushing internal organs,” stated the report. “Those who do survive drone strikes often suffer disfiguring burns and shrapnel wounds, limb amputations, as well as vision and hearing loss.”

Aslam said the attacks in Pakistan are creating more resentment and extremism, making the region more unsafe.

“People whose mothers and children were killed, those people are looking for revenge now,” he said.

U.S. officials have maintained that drones are an important tool for combating terrorist threats. The U.S. had 167 Predator drones in 2002. Today they number over 7,000 and have become a weapon of choice for targeting alleged terrorists or militants. President Obama, who has vastly increased the use of drones since he took office in 2008, has downplayed the number of civilians deaths in drone strikes, saying they “have not caused a huge number of civilian causalities.”

“For the most part they have been very precise precision strikes against Al Qaeda and their affiliates,” he said, according The New York Times.

CIA Director John Brennan stated in June 2011, acting then as Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, that there had been no civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan for “almost a year.” However, according to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, leaked U.S. intelligence documents demonstrates this was false.

McClatchy news service reported recently that contrary to what U.S. officials state, drone attacks are not only used against those responsible for attacks on the U.S. mainland — al-Qaida and its affiliates. Top-secret U.S. documents recently obtained by McClatchy revealed drones are being used against Pakistani extremist groups, as well those described as “other militants” and “foreign fighters.”

The response to Saturday’s demonstration was tepid. About 40 protesters showed. Michael Lindley, a member of Veterans for Peace, acknowledged this in his speech to the other protesters. He encouraged those present to continue their outreach and educate the public on the U.S. use of drones.

“One of the problems is the government is trying to put us to sleep; they are trying to put the wars we have to sleep,” he said. “We have to do something about it. We have to start talking to the public and tell them about these weapons.”

“It is our responsibility to get out there and tell the public these wars have to end,” he added. “This crowd should be huge. We need to get out there to the public and say ‘Enough is enough.’

Drone Casualty Estimates by Region

CIA Drone Strikes in Pakistan 2004 – 2013

Total U.S. strikes: 367

Obama strikes: 315

Total reported killed: 2,541-3,585

Civilians reported killed: 411-884

Children reported killed: 168-197

Total reported injured: 1,174-1,465

U.S. Covert Action in Yemen 2002–2013

Confirmed U.S. drone strikes: 43-53

Total reported killed: 228-328

Civilians reported killed: 12-45

Children reported killed: 2

Reported injured: 62-144

Possible extra U.S. drone strikes: 77-95

Total reported killed: 277-443

Civilians reported killed: 23-49

Children reported killed: 9-10

Reported injured: 73-94

All other U.S. covert operations: 12-76

Total reported killed: 148-366

Civilians reported killed: 60-87

Children reported killed: 25

Reported injured: 22-111

U.S. Covert Action in Somalia 2007–2013

U.S. drone strikes: 3-9

Total reported killed: 7-27

Civilians reported killed: 0-15

Children reported killed: 0

Reported injured: 2-24

All other U.S. covert operations: 7-14

Total reported killed: 51-143

Civilians reported killed: 11-42

Children reported killed: 1-3

Reported injured: 15-20

Source: The Bureau for Investigative Journalism

An LAPD officer stands in the lobby of the building that houses the Central City Association, a downtown business lobby, during a protest held over the practices of the group. (Dan Bluemel / LA Activist)

In May of last year, members of Occupy Los Angeles and homeless advocates held an occupation-style demonstration every night in front of LA’s downtown business lobby, the Central City Association. That action lasted about three months.

Last night, about 35 protesters returned for a one-night stand.

The demonstration was a continuance of last year’s actions against the CCA, which were critical of downtown gentrification and the treatment of the homeless. The protest was also partly an inspirational message to fellow activists, explained occupier Leslie Miller.

“We decided to do a one-night occupation at CCA, to remind them that we are still here, to say, we haven’t forgotten about you guys,” she said. “And at the same time, light a fire again under the activists and remind them that summertime is coming up soon — let’s get active.”

The CCA represents local businesses, as well as multi-national corporations, such as JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Chevron Corp. The business group is the main driving force behind downtown’s development, with posh hotels, luxury-style lofts, trendy restaurants and bars.

While the CCA touts these accomplishments as boosting the local economy, critics argue the development of downtown has been at the expense of LA’s poor and homeless.

The group lobbies for tougher policing measures on Skid Row, such as the Safer Cities Initiative, and enjoys a close relationship with the Los Angeles Police Dept. and city attorney. Some homeless advocates believe the CCA is attempting to push LA’s homeless out of downtown by various attempts to paint them as drug-addicted, public health hazards and a criminal element.

“When people are sleeping on the streets … it affects our ability to continue to attract investment and continue to make this Downtown thrive,” explained Carol Schatz, CCA’s president and CEO, to Los Angeles Downtown News last April.

Max Cee, the downtown LA neighborhood council’s homeless director, attended last nights demonstration. He was elected to that position after participating in Occupy LA’s encampment in late 2011.

“[The CCA] has a significant influence on the political flow in downtown,” he said. “There should be a separation between money and politics.”

Protesters arrived at the CCA’s office around 9 p.m., shortly after leaving Pershing Square just a few blocks away. En route, activists stepped off the sidewalks and marched through the streets, chanting “Whose streets? Our streets.”

As was with last year’s protests at the CCA, a heavy police response was observed. Within minutes of their arrival at the CCA, police and private security were present. More were to arrive. By 9:36 p.m., there were five LAPD police cruisers and eight officers at the scene.

The demonstrators mostly ignored the police presence. They set up tents and held a meeting to educate other activists about the CCA, as well as discuss future actions.

Related articles:

June 24, 2012: Harsh Skid Row policies driven by business lobby, say advocates

June 10, 2012: At Wilshire and Hope, a lesson in escalation

May 31, 2012: Downtown business group focus of occupy protest

(MC Barnes / LA Activist)

Nearly every day Los Angles police file reports on someone for their simply being suspicious. Suspicious of what, however, is unclear.

It is part of the Los Angeles Police Department’s suspicious activity reporting program, which is touted as a first line of defense against possible terrorist attacks. Though law enforcement praises the reporting system, significant questions are being raised as to the program’s effectiveness and transparency.

LA’s war on terrorism

Since March 2008, when the reporting program began, to July 2012, over 4,000 suspicious activity reports, or SARs, have been filed on Angelenos. Public records requests filed by the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition have revealed that of the 3,001 SARs sent to a fusion center, a local information-sharing hub in Norwalk where the reports would be entered into national databases, 80 percent were found to be useless.

As of yet, no documents or statements made by police officials have revealed that any SAR has thwarted a terrorist plot or led to an arrest, raising the question if the program has any value in keeping Los Angeles safe from terrorism. The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition wants the SARs program rescinded.

“In essence, the LAPD has nothing to show for this,” said Hamid Khan, an organizer for the Coalition. “It looks like a major waste of resources.”

For a person in Los Angeles to have a SAR written on them, they must engage in behavior that police may consider related to terrorism. This was defined for officers in Special Order 1, a department directive outlining the program. Some of these acts are obvious, such as possessing “unusual amounts of weapons [or] explosives.” However, a crime is not a prerequisite for a SAR. Taking photographs of buildings or infrastructure, questioning people about a building’s hours of operation or demonstrating an “unusual” interest in a building are all activities that may get one entered into national terrorism databases.

Though SARs may or may not have a person’s name attached to them, it is the fact that non-criminal behavior is being reported on as though it were a criminal act which most disturbs critics.

“There is a potential for false positives — people being falsely identified and placed into databases for activity that is completely innocent,” said Khan.

Deputy Chief Michael Downing, the head of the LAPD’s counterterrorism bureau, has been a vocal supporter of the SARs program. The LAPD did not respond to LA Activist’s request for an interview, but Downing’s public statements can provide some measure of his opinions about the program.

In a 2009 article in Police Chief Magazine, Downing wrote about the important role local law enforcement agencies can play in fighting terrorism. He argued that the SARs program could be integral in unraveling any local links to international terrorist events.

“This program has the potential to become the bread and butter of U.S. fusion centers, and it can inspire the so-called boots on the ground and the community to get involved in the counterterrorism effort,” he wrote.

In 2008, the LAPD was widely commended in law enforcement circles for being instrumental in helping the Department of Homeland Security take the SARs program to a national level. But after a few years into the program, according to a Senate investigation, the national SARs program never became “the bread and butter of U.S. fusion centers” that Downing had hoped for.

In October 2012, the Senate Subcommittee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs published a report that described DHS and its 77 fusion centers as an albatross around the neck of national security. The two-year investigation revealed an agency bereft with poor training, constitutional and privacy violations, grossly inadequate accounting and ineffective — and even counterproductive — intelligence gathering.

“It’s troubling that the very ‘fusion’ centers that were designed to share information in a post-9/11 world have become part of the problem,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), a ranking member of the Subcommittee, in a statement. “Instead of strengthening our counterterrorism efforts, they have too often wasted money and stepped on Americans’ civil liberties.”

Downing on some level was aware of the incompetence within DHS and its fusion centers. In his position as a senior fellow at George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute, he co-authored a June 2012 report that found fusion centers failing to live up to their stated goal of fighting terrorism.

“The fusion centers are acting as hubs of information — but are they acting as hubs for intelligence? At this point, the answer is: not quite, not yet,” stated the report.

Yet four months later, after the Senate’s report was released, Downing, along with DHS, laagered wagons in defense of fusion centers and its vast amount of useless reporting.

“There’s a lot of white noise, but there are occasionally gold nuggets,” he said to the Los Angeles Times, though admitting in the same interview there have been no convictions from such information.

Since 2003, when the LAPD’s counterterrorism bureau was created, they have “gained considerable … case experience” in fighting terrorism, according to Downing in Police Chief Magazine. For instance, in 2005, the department helped bring down a group called Jam’yyat Al-Islam Al-Saheeh. Formed in prison by a former Hoover Street Crip gang member, the four-man group plotted to attack Army National Guard installations, Israeli offices and synagogues. The group was apprehended and successfully prosecuted.

Downing also mentions how, in late 2008, the LAPD, along with the FBI and DEA, helped expose an alleged source of funding for Hezbollah from laundered drug money. However, according to The New York Times, because the CIA suddenly wanted in on the case, it forced an important meeting between an informant and Hezbollah contacts to be postponed. The contacts were spooked and as a result were never identified and the scheme was never revealed.

But the other cases that Downing highlights in his article seem questionable, either for their lack of terrorist merit or for a lack of results. He mentions an alleged plot in 2007 organized by the Black Riders Liberation Party, a sort-of next generation Black Panther Party which the department considers a domestic terrorist group. The Black Riders’ plan was to “take over four police stations in Los Angeles and shoot and kill as many police officers as possible,” wrote Downing.

But the LAPD’s case against the Black Riders went nowhere. According to Los Angeles Indymedia, four members were arrested on conspiracy to possess automatic weapons. However, the groups leader, General T.A.C.O., a moniker which stands for “Taking All Capitalists Out,” accepted a plea bargain so the other three Black Riders would be released, LA Indymedia also reported. Terrorism had been alleged, but it was never the woof and warp of the case.

The Animal Liberation Front, or ALF, is a group that also operates in LA, which Downing refers to as an “extremist organization.” For several years, ALF members targeted UCLA vivisectors. Some of the ALF’s actions included death threats, firebombing UCLA transport vans, setting ablaze one researcher’s car and turning on a garden hose inside a researcher’s home, which caused thousands of dollars in water damage.

Downing also lists the ALF as being a group that has given the LAPD counterterrorism experience. However, the department never made an arrest or a conviction of an ALF member for a terrorist-related crime, said Dr. Jerry Vlasak of the Animal Liberation Press Office, a group that speaks to the media on behalf of the ALF. He called Downing’s statements concerning the ALF to be “pure self-promotion.”

“To be quite honest, [the police] don’t know how to find the people who are doing the real underground actions,” he said. “They have been spectacularly unsuccessful.”

When Downing spoke of these cases, the SARs program was only 11 months old. The cases that did involve convictions or at least arrests were accomplished with old-fashioned police work and a little bit of luck.

Trust and transparency in a post-9/11 world

On Mar. 12, the police commission’s Office of the Inspector General, or OIG, released the results of its first audit of the SARs program in five years. The OIG examined a four-month period — Feb. 1 to May 31 of 2012 — to test the department’s compliance with Special Order 1. The report did not address any of the Coalition’s points of interest and found the department to be in compliance with the police directive.

On the same day, the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition presented an audit of its own. It was called a “people’s audit,” and its findings were much different.

Khan said he and the Coalition expected the OIG’s audit to “be very superficial” and accused the OIG of “cherry-picking” the data it inspected.

“It was not an audit; it was a memo,” he said at a Coalition gathering held on the night of the police commission meeting. “It was a nine-page document of a policy that has been in effect for five years. There was no audit of any civil rights or privacy violations; there was no audit on the budget or expenses.”

However, the OIG’s audit was revelatory in one respect.

In May 2012, the department said it would no longer keep unfounded SARs in their databases for more than a year. Both hard and electronic copies were to be deleted once the reports were deemed to have no value. The OIG audit, however, revealed that despite these reports being deleted from the LAPD’s SARs database, the reports were “still retained in the Department’s [Division of Records].” On top of that, police want to go further and keep all reports “regardless whether the SAR met Department criteria” for 10 years.

“Not only do they not purge [the SARs, they are] maintained in three databases forever,” said Khan.

“In essence, what is happening is, and what we have been saying all along, that it is all about data collection, data mining and retaining people’s personal information,” he added. “Anyone of us can now expect to have our personal record — for engaging in completely innocent activity — to have that information with the LAPD for 10 years in three different databases.”

The protection of constitutional rights has been central to the Coalition’s argument against the SARs program. However, even before the Coalition’s birth in the summer of 2011, the rights of Americans was a concern for law enforcement. In June 2008, the DHS, the Justice Dept. and the Major Cities Chiefs Association addressed these issues in their recommendations for the national implementation of the SARs program.

“A strong privacy and civil liberties policy will not only protect the rights of citizens, but also protect the agency,” states the report.

In the end, DHS failed to uphold those protections, and, according to the Coalition, nor has the LAPD.

The department’s Special Order 1 expresses some precaution, but its language has the Coalition concerned. Special Order 1 does state that constitutionally protected acts should not be in a SAR, unless, however, those acts “support the source’s suspicion that the behavior observed is not innocent, but rather reasonably indicative of suspicious activity associated with terrorism.”

Jim Lafferty of the National Lawyers Guild said the nebulous language in Special Order 1 goes against established legal standards.

“Many of us in the legal community pointed out that the idea of a ‘reasonable indication’ is completely unprecedented,” he said. “It is an intentionally watered-down version of ‘reasonable suspicion,’ which is a U.S. legal standard that officers must meet when they stop and frisk people or detain and question them.

“It leaves the cop on the beat pretty free to call anything he doesn’t like the looks of, or smells funny to him, as reason enough to open a SARs file,” he added. “Why would you want this to be such a watered-down version of Fourth Amendment protections? Why would you want to do that? Unless you want to, in a sense, give almost unfettered discretion to a police officer on the street.”

The Coalition would like to build up a case showing how that “unfettered discretion” has violated people’s rights. The difficulty, however, in accomplishing that has to do with the secretive nature of the SARs program. For one, they are not mentioned or referenced on arrest reports, but are done secretly. Also, a suspicious activity report is not like an FBI file, which a citizen can gain access to with a public records request. For someone to find out if a SAR has been written on them, they must obtain a court order.

“A normal California Public Records Act request would not release that information,” said Lafferty. “They would consider that privileged information as part of an ‘ongoing investigation.’”

The fact that the LAPD has been dragging its heels in complying with the Coalition’s public records requests compounds the air of secrecy surrounding its SARs program. The Coalition first requested SARs-related documents from the department in April 2012. Some documents have come forward, but, a year later, the Coalition is still waiting for more. The National Lawyers Guild has since threatened to sue the department for the documents.

When the Coalition’s concerns are added up — the concern over privacy, the rights of citizens and institutional transparency — it is the future the Coalition is worried about. They fear suspicion becoming ingrained in the culture.

Under the SARs umbrella is a civilian method of reporting on suspicious behavior. It is called iWatch, and like the department’s SARs program, there isn’t much to boast about. Public records requests have also revealed that, from October 2009 to March 2012, 70 percent of iWatch reports didn’t meet the basic standards of the department. The Coalition argues that iWatch has become a means for people to snitch on each other for no reason.

Khan says the SARs program is a flawed effort on the part of law enforcement to engage in preemptive policing, or what proponents call “intelligence-led” policing. A March 2010 report published by Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank, argued that this method of policing could cause officers to gradually be seen, not as those who protect and serve, but as intelligence agents “prone to politicization and bias.”

Still, the LAPD has to deal with potential threats to public safety. Los Angeles may not be a hive of terrorist activity, but if we take Downing’s word for it, the department has been tracking among others “government of Iran operatives, Hezbollah, sovereign citizen, homegrown violent extremists [and] animal rights groups.”

“In this region we have active terrorist plots, in this region, right now,” he said to CBS Los Angeles in August 2012.

Khan agrees that law enforcement needs the tools necessary to protect Americans from attack, but he does not think the SARs program is any such tool. With suspicious activity reports, he sees a high potential for racial profiling, as well as an excuse for law enforcement to criminalize dissenters, who often have extreme views concerning politics and society, but who never step outside the law except for the occasional non-violent act of civil disobedience.

“I think we would all advocate for the safety of the public and yet, at the same time, at what cost?” said Khan. “On many different levels it is absolutely a dangerous policy.”

Supporters of alleged military whistle-blower Bradley Manning stand in front of a military recruitment center in Long Beach to demand his release, marking Manning’s 1,000th day in prison while he awaits trial. (Dan Bluemel / LA Activist)

Supporters of Army PFC Bradley Manning gathered in front of a military recruitment center in Long Beach yesterday to mark Manning’s 1,000th day in military custody without a trial.

Manning, 25, is accused of turning state secrets — the largest leak in U.S. history — over to the website WikiLeaks. Among the 22 charges against him is that of “aiding the enemy.” If found guilty, he faces life in prison. (The government has stated it will not ask for the death penalty.)

(Dan Bluemel / LA Activist)

Held in concert with over 70 other protests around the world, demonstrators yesterday demanded the immediate release of Manning. Also, because the materials that Manning is accused of leaking revealed injustices and duplicity on the part of the U.S. and foreign governments, protesters further demanded that action be taken against the people responsible for such acts.

“What really gets to me is how they have come down on all of the whistle-blowers, yet none of the perpetrators they have been blowing the whistle against have been held accountable,” said Sanchez, a demonstrator who asked his full name be withheld.

Sanchez also expressed his frustration over what he feels is the media’s failure to uncover much of what Manning allegedly brought to light. He wants greater transparency in government and was thankful for the release of documents.

“How else are we going to be able to find out what it is that our government is doing, if it isn’t through this type of whistle-blowing?” he said.

Aside from the infamous video showing Iraqi civilians being killed by an Apache gunship, there are hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, Afghan and Iraqi war logs and videos that Manning allegedly sent to WikiLeaks.

Some of the diplomatic cables reveal an image of the U.S. government that differs widely from the one presented to its public. For example, they have shown:

• Most of the men incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay were innocent or low-level operatives.

• The U.S. brought cluster bombs onto British soil, which violated a treaty that bans the housing of such weapons, and that U.K. officials concealed this from Parliament.

• The U.S. government did in fact keep count of civilian causalities in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the Bush and Obama administrations saying otherwise.

• The U.S. government was aware that Shell Oil Co. had placed moles within the Nigerian government.

• American forces were ordered not to investigate allegations of torture by Iraqi detainees.

• Since at least 2006, the U.S. government had been funding political dissidents in Syria.

• The U.S. government pressured Spanish courts to drop investigations of torture at Guantanamo Bay.

• The U.S. government used threats, spying and other tactics to influence the 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen.

The cables also showed widespread malfeasance on the part of foreign governments, which is believed by some to be largely responsible for the Arab Spring that toppled several governments.

Even the Vatican wasn’t spared. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had apparently linked Catholic Church leaders in Venezuela with the privileged and well-to-do. Cables revealed that the Vatican wanted the U.S. to counter Chavez’s influence in his own country.

Cops maintained constant surveillance of the 30 or so demonstrators at yesterday’s action, which was held in front of the Armed Forces Career Center. The protest was planned to go on for 24 hours. Within minutes of setting up their action, protesters were approached by Long Beach police, who informed them that it is illegal to sleep on the sidewalk. Protesters said they would stay the night, even if they had to go without rest.

Ty, an 11-year-old whose mother requested his surname be withheld, began to write “Free Bradley” on the sidewalk with chalk when he was stopped by cops. According to police charged with monitoring the demonstration, chalking is considered vandalism in Long Beach. It led to a brief stand-off as protesters attempted, but failed, to reason with an officer on the grounds that the Supreme Court has twice ruled in favor of protecting political speech written with sidewalk chalk.

Ty said he had written on the sidewalk with chalk before, about nine times or so in his life, though not associated with protests. He had never been stopped.

“It made me mad,” he said. “I should be able to draw with chalk.”

(Dan Bluemel / LA Activist)

Despite the warning, some chalking occurred again later by others. Mostly though protesters banged on pots and pans to draw attention and handed out pamphlets.

Josh Dufour helped promote yesterday’s demonstration, which was sponsored by Free Bradley Manning So Cal. He considers Manning to be a hero.

“He is a soldier who stood up for democracy and stood up for truth and what is right,” he said. “If people don’t stand behind him, then we don’t deserve, as a public, to have real people like him standing up for us.”

Dufour said he comes from a family that spans many generations of military service. He thought long and hard about Manning’s alleged actions before supporting him. He said he would never have advocated on Manning’s behalf if his alleged release of classified information had threatened national security or caused anyone harm.

“His information was all just about the travesties that we were committing in the war and the fact that we weren’t even acknowledging that we were committing war crimes,” he said.

Along with demanding Manning’s freedom, his supporters have also decried the way he had been treated while in captivity. For 11 months, without having been charged with a crime, he had been kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, without sunlight, under constant surveillance and barred from exercising. He was denied pillows or bedsheets — though he was never on suicide watch — made to strip naked each night and his sleep was regularly interrupted.

In March of last year, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, accused the U.S. government of “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” in Manning’s case, according to the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper. Since then, the conditions of Manning’s incarceration have improved.

The military’s treatment of Manning has Pat Alviso concerned for other soldiers who may be considering speaking out against military crimes. She said it was important for people to defend Manning, so that military families will know their loved ones will not be criminalized and ill-treated for following their conscience.

“If we don’t look out for [Manning] … where are they going to get the courage to speak up?” she said.

Alviso is a member of Military Families Speak Out. Her son, a Marine, has served five tours — two in Iraq and three in Afghanistan. She knows, she said, that soldiers are expected to follow orders and obey the chain of command, but said there is another issue at play with whistle-blowers. She cites the Nuremberg Trials where the defense of Nazi war criminals, that they were following the orders of their superiors at the time, was not accepted by the court.

“The same thing goes here for us. … You need to follow your conscience above your commitments to the military,” she said. “That is what I personally believe what Bradley Manning did.”

The online manifesto of Christopher Dorner, an ex-cop who sought to exact revenge on the Los Angeles Police Dept. for his dismissal in 2009, spoke of corruption, racism and brutality within the department. However, the LAPD is not the only police department to come under recent scrutiny.

On the week news of Dorner’s alleged murders broke, LA County Sheriffs Dept. officials announced they were firing seven deputies for being in a clique that allegedly glorified shooting civilians. Just a few days prior, The San Francisco Chronicle ran an op-ed written by a former police commissioner discussing why police officers lie while under oath, calling it a “perversion of the American justice system that strikes directly at the rule of law.”

In his manifesto, Dorner speaks of police officers as tyrants who lost “their ethos and instead followed the path of moral corruptness.”

“I saw some of the most vile things humans can inflict on others as a police officer in Los Angeles,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the streets of LA. It was in the confounds of LAPD police stations and shops (cruisers). The enemy combatants in LA are not the citizens and suspects, it’s the police officers.”

Those words may be startling to many, but for Kristian Williams, author of “Our Enemies in Blue,” such abuses are indicative to policing itself. Williams’ book tracks the inception of modern policing and its shortcomings to the present day.

“It’s not surprising,” he said. “I think the culture of policing very much encourages that kind of thing, especially this sort of hyper-masculine, tough-guy persona that all departments encourage.”

Williams said a prime aspect in police cruelty toward civilians comes from within police culture, which he describes as insular and which views the public as something separate from themselves. He said cops often see the civilians they engage as people who “don’t matter and at worse are like menaces,” or in cop terms, “dirt bags and assholes.”

This attitude of police officers was also mentioned in Dorner’s manifesto.

“The culture of LAPD versus the community and honest/good officers needs to … change,” he wrote.

Williams admits though that the us-versus-them attitude of police may be an inevitable outcrop of policing.

“It’s hard to engage in the kind of routinized violence and continuous coercion that they do while also maintaining sympathy or compassion for the people they are encountering,” he said. “I think the job itself breeds a certain amount of sadism.”

If a propensity for cruelty runs within police culture, as evidenced by the numerous instances of police brutality every year, then it is their code of silence that no doubt keeps such behavior from being fully revealed.

Dorner mentions in his manifesto about breaking this code of silence, when he reported his training officer, Sgt. Teresa Evans, for allegedly kicking a mentally ill man in the chest and face. The LAPD determined this was a false claim, which resulted in Dorner’s dismissal. Dorner believed this was retribution for having brought his claim against Evans.

According to Williams, research into the police code of silence goes back 50 years or more. He said the policing institution has its own norms and in-group identity that are “distinct from the law or society surrounding it.”

Because cops and their families tend to live in the same neighborhoods and socialize with each other, said Williams, it creates a deep sense of solidarity, further cementing its network and distinct norms.

“An implicit and often explicit aspect of that is that solidarity is reinforced by covering each other’s mistakes,” he said.

This can range from the mundane, such as correcting an error while it is happening and not informing a supervisor, to broad cover-ups of brutality or corruption.

In this case, the relationship between subordinate and supervisor are entwined in a common interest, explains Williams. A line officers’ decision not to report misconduct or corruption helps protect his immediate superior, who may suffer as the result of such knowledge becoming known. The subordinate’s act would help gain the favor of his superior. Likewise, a superior may help cover up a subordinates’ misconduct or corruption to gain their loyalty, maintain obedience or to protect themselves.

Police think “their job is to enforce the law and rules and make sure people are punished for the wrong stuff they do in society, but not in the police department,” he said. “So there is this code of silence, that they don’t inform on each other or cooperate with investigations.”

This desire to maintain silence and not cooperate with investigations was mentioned in Dorner’s manifesto. Dorner wrote that he was involved in an altercation with with two officers who used a racial slur. According to the other seven cops present, only one matched Dorner’s statements; the other six said they saw or heard nothing.

“Shame on every one of you,” wrote Dorner.

Racism was a major part of Dorner’s vexation with the LAPD. He mentions one officer who sang a Nazi Youth song and others using racial slurs.

Dorner also wrote that Capt. Rolando Solano, the commanding officer of the West LA division had appeared in the Rodney King videotape “striking Mr. King multiple times.” However, Solano, who was a rookie at the time, never participated in the beating, though he was present, according to the Huffington Post. He had testified as a witness, saying the officers in the beating had not done anything wrong. He was eventually disciplined with a 22-day suspension.

“Solano’s failure to stop the beating did not appear to affect his rise through the ranks,” stated the Huffington Post.

The racism within police culture goes back to the pre-Civil War era slave patrols, where modern police forces began. Law enforcement has at times even turned to white supremacist groups for assistance, whether to aid in the fight against communism or to suppress the civil right movement. The detached nature of police culture, as well as its inclination to view civilians as others, further makes racism an easy tendency for a group that may be seeking to dehumanize civilians, said Williams.

“Anytime you are talking about the police, you are talking about race, whether you realize it or not,” he said.

On Feb. 12, Dorner met his end while surrounded by police in a cabin near Big Bear. He had allegedly killed four people and wounded three others, most of whom had direct connections to law enforcement.

In an effort to remove Dorner, San Bernardino County sheriffs shot incendiary tear gas canisters into the cabin, causing a fire. Sheriff’s maintain the fire was unintentional. At some point thereafter, Dorner shot himself while the cabin burned.

Williams thinks there are some things that can be done to reform police departments, such as political pressure and policy changes. However, he admits, no reform will ever provide what people want, which is an institution that protects them, but does not infringe upon their rights or give in to racial profiling, cruelty or violence.

“I think people are right to want those things, but I think they are wrong to think they are going to get that from a police force,” he said. “We need some completely other institutional arrangement if those are the things we are looking for.

“I think ultimately that means we need a completely different kind of society.”

The document has been described as “rage-filled,” “horrific and pathetic” and “rambling.”

There is, however, another interpretation of Dorner’s manifesto. For Mike Rothmiller, who is well acquainted with the LAPD’s murky past, the manifesto is an accurate description of the corruption that plagues the department.

“What Dorner said is spot on,” said Rothmiller, a former LAPD detective, who echoes Dorner’s assertion that the department “has not changed since the Rampart and Rodney King days.”

Rothmiller was with the LAPD for 10 years, leaving in 1983. He worked in the Organized Crime Intelligence Division, or OCID, which at that time was running a J. Edgar Hoover-style operation under the supervision of Chief Daryl Gates. OCID spied on LA’s politicians, business leaders, celebrities and journalists, mostly to consolidate power for Gates by using compromising information to subdue his opponents. Rothmiller documented his experiences in a book he co-wrote with Ivan G. Goldman, called “L.A. Secret Police.”

In his manifesto, Dorner writes about how he reported his training officer, Sgt. Teresa Evans, to his superiors for allegedly kicking a mentally ill man, Christopher Gettler, in the face and chest. However, a Board of Rights hearing, or BOR, ended up determining that Dorner had falsely reported against Evans.

Dorner accuses the department of collusion, based on several members of the BOR being personal friends of Evans. Dorner wrote that he had objected to this on the grounds it was a conflict of interest, but his requests for their removal were denied.

Rothmiller said BORs are a “crap shoot” for an officer. During his tenure at the department, if there was a BOR of significance, he said, it was the chief who predetermined the outcome of the board’s findings. Board members, usually captains, would follow the chief’s lead in the matter so as to gain his favor.

“All of these people want to be promoted,” he said, “and you don’t get promoted to commander if you irritate the chief.”

As far as the accusations of police brutality are concerned, Rothmiller said he had seen “a lot of people beaten” by police officers in his time. Sometimes it occurred in the streets, sometimes in interview rooms and sometimes in the back seats of cars.

Rothmiller said he was taught by the department on how to beat up a suspect.

“You never want to leave marks,” he said. “They told us that from the get go. You go for the soft spots.”

Dorner said in his manifesto that the department had struck back against him for reporting on Sgt. Evans.

“I had broken their supposed ‘Blue Line,’” he wrote. “It is clear as day that the department retaliated toward me for reporting Evans for kicking Mr. Christopher Gettler.”

The LAPD’s “code of silence” hasn’t changed, said Rothmiller, and the worst thing a cop can do, is report negatively on other cops. If it were known a fellow officer had falsified an arrest report, had brutalized a suspect or put an innocent person in jail, it didn’t matter, police silence would be maintained.

“This rule of the street governed every facet of life as a police officer,” wrote Rothmiller and Goldman in “L.A. Secret Police.” “Beyond conscious thought, it developed into a reflex, like pulling your hand from a flame. There was no alternative action to consider. You backed up your fellow officers. Any other course was suicidal.”

Rothmiller explains that if word gets out that an officer can’t be trusted, that cop is labeled by his fellow officers, which is known as “getting a jacket.”

If the jacketed officer is on a lone patrol and requests backup, his fellow cops will still come to his aid, but they may “drive a little slower,” said Rothmiller.

“At that stage,” he said, “your life is in danger.”

One of the more startling revelations in Dorner’s manifesto is his description of a general indifference to human life within the police dept. He speaks of officers hitting suspects, pocketing cash taken from narcotics dealers and, in one instance, beating a transient “nearly to death.”

“I saw some of the most vile things humans can inflict on others as a police officer in Los Angeles,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the streets of LA. It was in the confounds of LAPD police stations and shops (cruisers). The enemy combatants in LA are not the citizens and suspects, it’s the police.”

Dorner also wrote that officers often take photographs of dead civilians and then later, as a sort of game, compare photos to see who had the most disturbing image. He said cops would let a wounded suspect “bleed out” so as to brag to other officers about the case and would be anxious to receive overtime pay for future court appearances.

“I’ve heard many officers who state they see dead victims as ATVs, Waverunners, RVs and new clothes for their kids … because of the overtime they will accrue,” wrote Dorner.

In Rothmiller’s time, there were no cell phones, but the practice still occurred. Cops would often carry cameras with them, he said. Overtime pay was also an issue, said Rothmiller, though he didn’t speak of another cop letting a civilian “bleed out” for it. Instead, he said, officers would often conduct illegal searches shortly before their shift was over, hoping that finding some evidence of drugs in a person’s car would result in four hours worth of overtime.

A dominant accusation in Dorner’s manifesto, and one that has received the most media attention, is that of racism.

Dorner recounts an incident in his manifesto when, while riding in a van carrying at least eight officers, one of the cops referred to a black man as a nigger. According to Dorner, he confronted this cop, and another who defended the use of the slur. Pushing and shoving ensued, and the matter was later investigated.

“The sad thing about this incident was that when Detective Ty from internal affairs investigated this incident only (1) officer … in the van other than myself had statements consistent with what actually happened,” wrote Dorner. “The other six officers all stated they heard nothing and saw nothing.”

Rothmiller said that the racism within the LAPD has not changed since he was a detective. He bases this on accounts he gets from those still employed by the department, as well as those recently retired.

“Nothing has changed,” he said. “They just exercise more caution now.”

On Feb. 9, LA Police Chief Charlie Beck said in a statement that he was reopening the investigation into Dorner’s termination in an attempt, “not to appease a murderer,” but to “reassure the public that their police department is transparent and fair in all the things we do.”

[To read part two of this article, click here.]