To Protect and to Serve

Until Times writer David Freed wrote about it last year, very few people had ever heard of the Los Angeles Police Department’s secretive Special Investigations Section. It consists of teams of undercover detectives who shadow armed robbers and other dangerous suspects to catch them in criminal acts; sometimes the teams stood by while criminals bullied or beat victims. Eyewitness evidence that would lengthen the odds of conviction and long prison terms often took precedence over the well-being of victims.

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley--a 22-year veteran of the department--said at the time that he had never heard of the unit, which operated without guidelines on when to step in and halt violence when it was on the prowl. Bradley and members of the Los Angeles City Council had plenty of questions, and now they have an answer.

Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates has spelled out the priorities implicit in the department’s motto, “To Protect and to Serve.” Under Gates’ special order, “Reverance for human life must always be the first priority when considering the extent to which (a criminal) incident is allowed to progress or deteriorate . . . during a stakeout or the surveillance of known criminals.”

The police manual is now explicit that “no arrest, conviction or piece of evidence can outweigh the value of human life.” When a victim, witness or innocent bystander is subjected to “potential injury or death,” the LAPD’s “primary objective must be to protect that person.”

The chief has spoken. Special detectives, who never set out deliberately to jeopardize innocent people during stakeouts, now know that policy says that it must not happen by accident, either.