More Bad Cops

Last month I blogged about the kind of out-of-control cop that makes the regular folk treat the police with disdain. Last week, there was another example of an even more organized version of the same thing. It involved a "competition" amongst LA Sheriff's Deputies to see who could tally the most bookings and vehicle seizures:

Results from the competitions, called Operation Any Booking and Operation Vehicle Impound, had been posted on a wall in the Lakewood station. Two hundred deputies are based in Lakewood, which is the local police force for 120,000 residents in five cities southeast of Los Angeles, Artesia, Bellflower, Hawaiian Gardens, Lakewood and Paramount.

What's more appalling than the competition itself? That the Sheriff doesn't think there's anything wrong with it:

The sheriff called the attention on the contests 'much ado about nothing' and said he had no plans to punish the deputies who competed or the 'well-intentioned lieutenant' who had the idea.

'They’re not acceptable,' he said. 'They’re not appropriate. But no harm, no foul. The only disciplinary action I’ve taken is saying to the lieutenant who organized them, ‘Hey, knock this’' off.

In other words, the sin was in getting caught, not making light of creating an incentive to arrest innocent citizens and steal their property. Non-cops caught on to the evil pretty quick:

Samuel Walker, an emeritus professor of criminology at the University of Nebraska in Omaha called the competitions 'absolutely outrageous.'

'I’ve been teaching in this field for 30 years, and even back then it was commonly understood that quotas were a bad idea,' Professor Walker said. 'They just encourage bad arrests. They distort policing priorities. They encourage police to make weak arrests that won’t stand up or arrests on trivial matters instead of more serious crimes like gangs, gun violence, drugs, murder.'

Note to the LAPD: "To Serve and Protect" does mean to serve your own interests and protect your own asses.