Local News in Brief : Officers, Backers Picket NBC Studios
More than 300 Long Beach police officers and their supporters picketed Monday in front of NBC Studios in Burbank to protest the network’s participation in a “sting” operation that videotaped the arrest of a black activist by a white officer.
The off-duty officers marched peacefully for about an hour “to bring to the public’s attention that the police were victims in this and the job of media is to report the news and not make it,” said Mike Tracy, president of the Long Beach Police Officers Assn., which staged the demonstration.
A crew from NBC’s “Today Show” videotaped the Jan. 14 incident in which Long Beach Police Officer Mark Dickey appeared to thrust the head of Don Jackson, a Hawthorne police sergeant on administrative leave, through the plate-glass window of a motorcycle parts shop.
Jackson said he has has conducted a series of “stings” to test how police around Los Angeles treat minorities.
In picketing NBC, the police officers also protested NBC’s refusal to release its unedited tape of the incident.
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