Press Play with Madeleine Brand
LAPD Reform Today, Terrible Traffic, and Remembering Katrina
According to a new, nationwide traffic study, Angelenos spend an average of 80 hours a year in traffic. And ten years after Hurricane Katrina destroyed communities in New Orleans, thousands of refugees settled in California—many in Los Angeles. Cassandra Cousin is one of them.
By Madeleine Brand • • 51m ListenThe Rampart Scandal in the 1990s was what it took to finally reform the LAPD in a meaningful way. But many LAPD watchers today wonder if the police department isn’t backsliding. Monday, the LAPD will roll out its first batch of body cameras. Officers assigned to the San Fernando Valley will begin testing the cameras next week, and South L.A. officers will get body cameras in mid-September. Then, people all over the world started seeing autoplay video of yesterday’s shooting of two Virginia journalists in their social media feeds. We look at how websites responded. And as California’s drought drags on, we’ve been hearing stories about farmers in crisis mode: fallowing fields, digging deeper wells, and irrigating crops with wastewater from oil drilling operations. But a recent report by the Pacific Institute finds that California’s agriculture industry had record revenues in the past two years. And, Angelenos on average spent 80 hours in traffic last year, and we claimed the worst stretch of freeway in the country: the southbound 101 from Woodland Hills to downtown. Finally, it’s been ten years since Hurricane Katrina destroyed communities in New Orleans. Thousands of Katrina refugees settled in California, many in Los Angeles. Cassandra Cousin is one of them.
