Prosecutors said in a statement that after a lengthy review, there was insufficient evidence to prove any officer violated the law when using force, although some might have used "questionable tactics."
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.
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.
[Updated at 12:32 p.m.: Prosecutors reviewed an extensive LAPD investigation into 30 officers that including 7,500 pages of documents.
Prosecutors said that the series of events led to actions by officers against "... nonviolent protesters and media personnel [including women and children]."
"The media had innocently and unwittingly positioned themselves in an area directly in the path of officers attempting to clear the park," the report noted. However, prosecutors noted, "not every push or shove amounts to excessive force."
"We cannot establish that any particular officer's actions were unreasonable or without lawful necessity in light of the tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving circumstances."
Prosecutors added that identity "is a factor which must be proven beyond reasonable doubt."
Carl Stein, longtime cameraman for Los Angeles
television station KCAL, struggling and in pain on the ground
after having been beaten by LAPD officers. Anonymous friend of
Carl Stein tells BoingBoing,
"He spoke to the photo editor at the day of the incident
and explained that the photo depicted the
cops beating him to the ground.
Interestingly, when the paper went to press,
the caption reads that the cops are" helping
him to get up."
A federal jury Wednesday awarded $2.3 million to a Los Angeles police officer who said she was sexually harassed and gave birth to a stillborn child because of the stress.
Officer Melissa Borck, 45, said she suffered discrimination and abuse while she was at the Los Angeles Police Department's Valley Traffic Division in 1996, and was retaliated against for reporting the harassment to Internal Affairs. The unanimous jury verdict comes a decade after Borck first filed the lawsuit in April, 1999.
But then again, I'm officially nutzzzzzz, until certified un-nutzzzzzz in a competent court of the law. So I am waiting on the law, and the certificate required by the law. But I'm no expert.(.pdf) Anyone see ours, yet?
The distress call “mayday” comes from the French, who were leading
pioneers in flight. In 1911 there were 433 licenced aviators in France,
compared to just 171 in Britain and even fewer in the United States.
Flying was a risky business, and it wasn’t until parachutes and radios
were introduced that the French call “M’aidez,” or “help me,” became
Anglicized to the modern international distress call, Mayday!”
FOLLOW-UP 2008: Almost
one year later, "prosecutors
are still deciding whether to charge 29 officers on 72 allegations,
including unnecessary use of force [and assault assault of dozens
of people, including
women, children and members of the media]."
Almost one year has gone by and no charges
for assaulting children, gee, that seems like a double
standard to us.
Think the above was an isolated incident? Think again.
The Los Angeles Police Department apologized Monday for an American flag faux pas at the Saturday grand opening of its new department headquarters downtown.
The opening ceremony included demonstrations by SWAT team members who rappelled down the face of the new building, as well as the display of an enormous American flag draped vertically from the roof.
The only trouble was, the flag was draped so that its field of stars was displayed on the viewer's right. Proper flag protocol, as written in Title 4 of the United States Code, requires that the field of stars be displayed on the viewer's left.
While that requirement might be considered an arcane bit of knowledge by most people, dozens of readers of The Times pointed out the mistake when they saw a photograph of the flag in Sunday's paper.
"Please teach the LAPD proper flag etiquete," commented Kathy Sturdevant of Pasadena. "When hung vertically, the stars (aka "union") belong on the upper left. This embarrassment could have been avoided with a simple google search."
A few readers even asked if the Los Angeles Times had reversed the image.
"Did the Times print the photo backwards or was it really hung incorrectly?" asked Bruce Linsenmayer of Altadena.
The photo however was not flopped, as some suspected, and the LAPD offered an apology when it was informed of the error.
"There was certainly no disrespect intended to our national flag, and we will be more careful the next time we display it on a building," said Lt. John Romero, an LAPD spokesman.
-Ruben Vives
Photo: LAPD SWAT team members rappel down the new 10-story police headquarters during its grand opening ceremony.
