Mike Davis And The LAPD

The general assumption that people make of the role that police officers play is that they are there to “Protect and Serve” the community. What people many times do not realize is that in reality a large percentage of police officers in Los Angels, including the Chiefs of Police, do their jobs with a different intention in mind. Police officers as well as politicians claim to be working hard on keeping drugs off the streets when in reality they are bringing on the violence themselves by instigating problems that are not really there. Bringing violence to the community is to their convenience because when crimes are solved and people are arrested police officers are portrayed by the media as the “heroes”. Not only is the LAPD committing a large number of acts of corruption but they are all set toward youth of color.

The ideal role of a police officer is to help and protect the people of the community for which they work to create a safe environment but when members of the LAPD are biased and only interested in their own refinement, innocent youth are left to pay the consequences. Police officers mainly target their corruption scandals toward groups of young males of color because they find it easier to arrest them strictly because of their physical appearance and use probable cause as their excuse. From there, “Kids are humiliatingly forced to ‘kiss the sidewalk’ or spread eagle against police cruisers while officers check their names against computerized files of gang members.”(Davis, 81) If their names and addresses are not yet entered they are added to the roster as well “…for future surveillance.”(Davis, 81)

There are two major Black gangs in Los Angeles, which are known universally as the “Bloods” and the “Crips”, they are most known for their “organization of the sale of crack and out shooting the police with huge arsenals of Uzi and Mac-10 automatics.” (Davis, 81) Because they distinguish themselves by the Bloods color-coding their clothes in red and the Crips in blue, police officers have used this against many black males wearing the color of these gang rivals. Many times the Chief of Police gives orders for the officers to “stop and interrogate anyone who they suspect is a gang member, basing their assumptions on their dress or their use of gang hand signals.” (Davis, 83) Law enforcement has also been found to be deliberately provoking gang violence by writing over Crip graffiti with red, which is the Bloods color, or Blood graffiti with the Crip color.