LAPD To Use Police TV, Rather Than Media Training, For Future Major Events
By Donald R. Winslow
DURHAM, NC (August 2, 2007) - Back in May, NPPA president Tony Overman called for the Los Angeles Police Department to begin immediate and ongoing media relations training, and wrote a letter to LAPD's top cop objecting to the behavior of police officers during a May Day rally that turned into a melee in McArthur Park leaving several journalists injured.
Today, the Los Angeles Times reports, LAPD Police Chief William J. Bratton has decided the best way to avoid a repeat of the incident, where police beat journalists and marchers with batons and fired more than 200 rounds of rubber bullets, is to have a police TV crew follow officers who are working at "major incidents" and record their every action.
"Every 15 minutes or 30 minutes, the incident commander will narrate what is occurring at the event," said Deputy Chief Mike Hillman, the new head of the department's critical-incident training bureau, who developed the idea, the Times' story says. Police officials say they hope the presence of a department TV video crew will keep officers on their best behavior.
This is the same police department caught on tape in 1991 beating Rodney King, and then caught on tape in 2004 beating a suspect, Stanley Miller, with a large metal flashlight, and then caught on tape again this year beating Telemundo reporter Carlos Botifoll while he was live and on camera broadcasting from the May Day event. The presence of TV and video cameras in these instances didn't seem to deter officers from delivering significant body blows, or from ending up appearing in popular YouTube videos as citizens armed with cell phone cameras catch their beatings in the act.
Bratton has not commented on NPPA's suggestion to train officers to not beat working journalists. It appears that instead, LAPD prefers to have their own police officer-produced LAPD TV tapes of incidents instead of relying on local TV or the network's footage for their internal use.
Times reporter Richard Winton's story quotes LAPD Commander Andrew Smith, who says that he tells police officers that in today's culture "each and every action you take on the streets is likely to be on video." It also says that police plan to install a high-tech low-light video camera in an LAPD helicopter and a command station on the ground will use it to watch officers at major incidents "in real time."
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