Opinion: LAPD’s William Bratton: Blog Cop
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| IP-address APB: LAPD’s Bratton is on the blog |
Times newshound Patrick McGreevy reports that L.A. Police Chief William Bratton is getting into the computer age. No, we’re not talking about the long-delayed, court-ordered officer-tracking system. We’re talking blog.
With LAPD Blog, Bratton joins a suddenly crowded field of civic bloggers, including Councilman Eric Garcetti and animal services manager Ed Boks.
UPDATED 3:48 p.m.: www.lapdblog.org now appears to be working.
The blog’s first posts take a more confrontational approach than the generally upbeat attitude of other civic blogs. An unsigned response to a Daily News editorial alleging he cooked crime stats begins, ‘Your recent article and editorial regarding the Los Angeles Police Department crime statistics require a deeper explanation and discussion than you have allowed.’ Bratton told the Times he sees the blog as ‘an opportunity for me to respond to those issues where I feel the department is being misrepresented.’ Watch out, trolls!
The story says Bratton will post regularly on the departmental blog, but a staff member will administer the blog.
The chief hasn’t given up on old media, though. Last week he defended the department in a Times op-ed arguing the post-Rampart consent decree not be extended when it expires next month. Bratton wrote:
This is a new LAPD. Fully one-third of our officers have been hired since the consent decree was implemented in 2001, and more than two-thirds have joined the department since 1995, when the Justice Department began its investigation. So, a significant percentage of our officers accept these ‘new’ practices as normal operating procedure. Among the changes: watch commander review of arrestees and booking charges, stringent selection standards for anti-gang and field training officers and creation of a specialized division to investigate uses of force.
Plus, he didn’t add but could have — we’re bloggin’.
LAPD Standoff: A federal judge will hear arguments May 15 about whether to extend the consent decree two years or let it expire next month. Read Erwin Chemerinsky, Catherine Lhamon and Mark Rosenbaum’s oped about why the LAPD still needs policing, and Bratton’s op-ed about the new LAPD, and cast your vote.