While our nation reels from mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, as well as Gilroy, Calif., I have been heartened that most commentators, pundits and presidential candidates have refrained from leaping to the ignorant view, spouted most notably by Donald Trump, that the perpetrators were “very, very seriously mentally ill.” Thankfully, more and more members of the media…
While I applaud the intentions of Los Angeles lawmakers in attempting to prevent underage tobacco use, a ban on flavored cigarettes that includes menthol cigarettes will be counterproductive to this goal and detrimental to the society at large. The City Council should reconsider this ban. As a retired sergeant and veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, having spent my…
I spent twenty years as a Los Angeles Police Department officer and patrol sergeant. I’m also a black woman and a mother to four sons. In 2014, a spate of deadly police use-of-force killings began with the choking death of Eric Garner by New York police and the shooting deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Ezell Ford in…