PROFILE
FROM Charlie Beck
LAPD chief Charlie Beck why police shouldn't enforce immigration laws A bill making its way through the legislature would make all of California a sanctuary state. That bill has divided the state’s law enforcement community. This week, LA police chief Charlie Beck came out in favor of it.
Mass Incarceration Summit 130 law enforcement officials have now joined forces to reduce mass incarceration in America. They’re in Washington today to come up with a plan. The group includes Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton.
Beck Gets Another Five Years as Los Angeles’ Chief of Police LA Police Commissioners today told Chief Charlie Beck they want to see some improvements in the LAPD. But they approved his application for a second 5-year term by a vote of 4 to 1. Chief Beck joins us.
Do LAPD Officers Deserve a Raise? Mayor Garcetti says LA can’t afford to give cops a raise, and he wants to address them directly. The cops rejected a no-raise contract, even though it was recommended by leaders of their union, the Police Protective League. Now the League says it’ll sue to prevent the Mayor and the Chief of Police from going to roll call.
What Can the Rest of the Country Learn from the LA Riots? In 1991, Rodney King, an African American, was chased down for drunk driving by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department. King was beaten by the LAPD, struck more than 56 times and tasered more than once. The incident was videotaped by a bystander and broadcast repeatedly, locally and worldwide. Four of the officers were charged with excessive force and tried a year later in the white, conservative suburb of Simi Valley. When all were acquitted of all charges, the city exploded, but the LAPD was completely unprepared. Exactly 20 years ago today, Los Angeles was in the second day of a riot that killed 53 people, wounded thousands and cost more than a billion dollars. It was a perfect storm of police abuse, racial hostility, economic decline and crime, including deadly traffic in crack cocaine. Today, crime's declined, people feel safer and race relations are much improved, but LA's troubles aren't over yet. What can the rest of the country learn from a city that's often called a preview of America's future? For complete KCRW coverage of the 1992 riots, go to http://KCRW.com/LARiots .
LAPD Gang Officers Won't Disclose Their Finances Here in the gang capital of the nation, the Los Angeles Police Department has been making progress, with an 11.1 percent drop in gang-related crime last year alone. But advances like that could be at risk because so many highly trained officers have dropped out of specialized gang units. They have refused to comply with financial disclosure rules required by a federal consent decree after the so-called "Rampart Division scandal" ten years ago.
LA Police Chief Beck Discusses Racial Profiling After the Rampart scandal in 2001, the Los Angeles Police Department was under a federal consent decree that required monitoring of various reforms. When Judge Gary Feess lifted the decree last year, he said the Department of Justice should continue its oversight of the LAPD’s effort to get rid of racial profiling. On Sunday, the LA Times reported on a letter from Washington warning that the LAPD’s are inadequate, quoting an officer as saying he “couldn’t do [his] job without racial profiling. We hear more from LA Police Chief Charlie Beck.
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Terrorism and tweets, hate speech and murder Just days before an election, Britain is coping with a rash of deadly terrorism, and Prime Minister Theresa May is on the defensive. And again today, President Trump has tweeted criticism of the Mayor of London. Later, a double murder in Portland, Oregon has revealed the ugly past of a supposedly “progressive” city. One immediate question: is “hate speech” protected by the First Amendment?
Who's to blame for the opioid crisis? Some of the lawyers who took on Big Tobacco are now going after Big Pharma. It’s all about the deadly epidemic of opioid use. Are the drug companies to blame? What about the users? Later, on today’s Talking Point: making sense of Britain’s upset election.
Ex-FBI Director Comey tells his side of the story Today, former FBI Director James Comey came close to calling the President who fired him a liar. The White House denied the claim and called it insulting, but Republican Senators did not challenge Comey’s truthfulness. Many questions remain: did the President try to obstruct a federal investigation? Later, we’ll go behind the “velvet rope” for a look at 5-Star health care for the richest Americans.
What happens when America retreats from the world? Is President Trump taking his "America First" agenda to extremes, withdrawing the country from the international stage on trade and climate change, distancing America from its traditional allies across the Atlantic and even threatening to physically isolate the country through the building of a wall along its southern border? León Krauze guest hosts.