"Jack Dunphy" - always a good read!
[PJ] Gentle readers, we return today to a topic that has become all too familiar: the Los Angeles Times and its eagerness to discredit law enforcement, most especially the Los Angeles Police Department.
On Thursday, the Times published a news story under the following provocative headline: "Stop-and-frisk in a car:' Elite LAPD unit disproportionately stopped black drivers, data show." Coming in at more than 2,500 words, the story decries the perceived racial disparity among the drivers stopped by a specialized unit of LAPD officers. Regular readers of the Times are accustomed to such stories, just as they are to the paper’s willingness to ignore relevant facts so as to advance the notion that minorities in Los Angeles are unduly put upon by the police.
In advancing this notion, Times writers Cindy Chang and Ben Poston resort to well-worn techniques, presenting what to the untrained reader seems to be a straightforward analysis of the data, then bolstering it with the opinions of purported "experts," anecdotes from people who claim to have been victimized, and references to long-ago events.
The LAPD officers under scrutiny are assigned to Metropolitan Division, or Metro, an elite unit that includes SWAT and the mounted detail, but whose primary function is crime suppression. In an effort to stem a rise in violent crime, in 2015 the LAPD doubled the size of Metro, whose officers ride in unmarked cars and do not handle radio calls or perform other routine police duties. Their mission is to patrol those areas of the city most affected by crime and conduct vehicle and pedestrian stops on people who may be connected to it. And this is where they have aroused the suspicions of the Wise Ones at the Los Angeles Times. |