Garcetti, Chief Moore & Police Comm. Soboroff
New LAPD Chief- Moore of the Same
by Michael Novick, Anti-Racist Action LA
httpss://ara-la.tumblr.com/post/174935057110/new-lapd-chief-moore-of-the-same
Following a search and recommendation of three top candidates by the Police Commission, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti has named Asst. Chief Michel Moore (pronounced Michael) as his choice for LAPD Chief to replace Chuckie Beck, who is retiring early after unrelenting community criticism. Garcetti’s choice is expected to be approved by the City Council, even though he comes out of the same mold as Beck, trained up originally under Darryl Gates (whose tenure ended with the 1992 rebellion after the acquittal of the LAPD cops who beat Rodney King), and then schooled in the data-driven, counter-insurgency “community oriented policing” approach of former LA and NY Chief Bill Bratton. Police theoreticians refer to “community policing” as “the domestic equivalent of psychological operations in the military, to control the thinking of the population or the enemy.”
In a slap in the face to the parents of victims of LAPD shootings — and the LAPD has been the most murderous department in most of Beck’s tenure — Moore is himself a killer cop, responsible for two separate shootings in the 1980s, one fatal (a head shot).
Moore is a former supervisor of SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics), LAPD heavy para-military outfit, which still carries an insignia commemorating their attack on the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense headquarters on 41st & Central (as well as a later attack on a South Central home on 54th St. housing members of the SLA, who were all burned to death). SWAT was an LAPD innovation that was widely emulated, and is now used frequently in drug raids, and currently being promoted on a CBS-TV show in which Garcetti appeared as himself.
Moore also oversaw the LAPD’s Anti-Terrorist Division, which has strong ties to the national security surveillance state apparatus, and has been a strong advocate of so-called “evidence-based” policing, using data generated by previous police activity (based on racial profiling and enforcement of laws criminalizing poor Black and Brown people) to provide a supposedly objective and scientific justification for targeting certain individuals for surveillance, or designating certain neighborhoods or street corners as “hot spots” where crimes may occur.
These systems, such as “PredPol” (Predictive Policing) and LASER (Los Angeles Strategic Extraction and Restoration) are the new sci-fi versions of the old “Weed & Seed” approach that was driven out of the city years ago, but now come with ties to national efforts driven by academics embedded in private corporations that profit from building a racist architecture of surveillance and social control in cities across the country. SWAT, which Moore oversaw, has been authorized by the Police Commission, which is completely unresponsive to community input and concern, to purchase and pilot drones, accepting a donation from the LA Police Foundation (which LAPD chair Steve Soboroff is connected to) for the purpose, on top of the over 50% of the city’s budget the LAPD drains off (including funds targeted for homeless services).
For more information about how to resist this and other crimes by the LAPD, contact Black Lives Matter LA, which leads a weekly vigil Wednesdays at 4 PM outside DA Jackie Lacey’s office, Temple & Spring, or the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, info here: httpss://stoplapdspying.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Appeal-letter-December-9-2016.pdf
