Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck is calling it a career. After 40 years with the Los Angeles Police Department, Beck recently announced he is retiring in June. Beck joined the LAPD in 1975 as a reserve officer, became a full-time police officer in 1977 and was appointed chief in 2009. In April 2014, on a 4-1 vote, Beck was…
*27-year-old Erica Garner, social justice activist and daughter of slain New Yorker Eric Garner died an untimely physical death during the recent holidays. However, I believe she metaphorically died in July 2014 when NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo choked her father Eric to death, after three long years filled with police department denials and justifications regarding the use of that prohibited choke…
During my 20-year career with the LAPD, I frequently was the victim of persecution and a hostile work environment because I did not “go along to get along.” Instead, to paraphrase educator Horace Mann, I always sought to win some victory for humanity. I was never alone in this fight. For example, in 2006, 19-year Buffalo police veteran Cariol Holloman-Horne…
Beatriz Paez is just one of the many recent victims of what I like to call “Contempt of Cop”; fortunately, Paez lived to talk about her encounter. Ms. Paez witnessed plain clothes officers detaining several individuals at gunpoint and decided to record the incident on her cell phone. One of the officers, a U.S. Marshal, told Paez to stop recording…
After a massive 48-day manhunt, three deputy U. S. Marshals saw accused cop killer Eric Frein “moving through tall grass…” and they “could see his hands… he had no weapon.” Frein was taken into custody near an abandoned airport hangar without incident. This was very different from the Christopher Dorner manhunt which ended in a shootout and Dorner’s death. Very…
After several days of much maligning of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement with regard to recent police shootings, I think it is time to address the (blue) elephant in the room. As a retired, twenty-year veteran sergeant of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and a black woman and a mother of four black young men, I come from…
What do current, retired, fired and former officers Michael Slager (South Carolina) ; Tim Loehmann (Ohio), Darren Wilson (Missouri), Michael Rapiejko, (Arizona); Anthony Pantaleo(New York), and Gregory Kwiatkowski (New York) all have in common? Each of these officers was involved in excessive uses of force, some resulting in million-dollar civil settlements before they became involved in a serious bodily injury or deadly force incidents.…
Tim Loehmann, the Cleveland Police Officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, and his partner, Frank Garmback, both have storied police histories. Earlier this year, Officer Garmback was involved in an excessive force lawsuit that settled for $100,000. Officer Tim Loehmann was described by high-ranking officials on the Independence Police Department (where he previously worked) as someone who “could not follow simple directions,…