Cheryl Dorsey faced a mirror in a Pasadena hair salon, at the beginning of an appointment that would eat up the whole morning and part of the afternoon. Her stylist, Ursula Simpson, carefully braided Dorsey’s locks before weaving in a spectacular lion’s mane of silver curls.
These things take time.
Dorsey could ill afford to spend half the day in a salon chair. She’s in demand now as a talking head on shows focused on the recent spate of police shooting deaths of black men and the hideous retaliation killings of officers in Dallas.
Dorsey, 58, brings a rare set of credentials to the conversation. She is a black mother of four sons who also happens to be a 20-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department. She spent her career in uniform, rising to sergeant before she left in 2000.
I heard her on KPCC the other day and thought she brought a lot of credibility to the table, particularly on the subject of the Los Angeles Police Commission’s controversial 3-0 vote to exonerate officers involved in last year’s killing of Redel Jones, a 30-year-old black mother of two who had just robbed a South Los Angeles pharmacy. Jones, who wielded a knife, was shot in an alley after an officer ran toward her, got closer than he intended and could not back away when she raised her knife.
The officers violated a number of department rules — including engaging Jones while still in their car, failing to turn on their in-car camera, making simultaneous demands on her — but the shooting was ruled justified.
This did not totally compute with me. How do you not follow policy and then not be held responsible, at least in some way, when mayhem ensues?
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