I saw an amazing quote from a black community leader today, in the latest L.A. Times story about the whacking of a black suspect by an LAPD officer with a flashlight:

Khalid Shah of Stop the Violence Increase the Peace said he believed it was too soon to judge the police investigation or the arrest.

“Of course it may look bad, and it may be bad,” said Shah, who is working on an alternative citizen panel organized by L.A. Sentinel newspaper owner Danny Bakewell. “We do the process a disservice by rendering any kind of judgment until we can find out what the facts are.”

Wow.

Khalid Shah needs to have a sit-down with Times columnist Steve Lopez, who recently wrote:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead and investigate, but I saw what I saw.

. . . .

Although this thing looked bad, Bratton said from 3,000 miles away, “There should be no rush to judgment before the investigations are completed.”

Guess what, Chief. My investigation is complete.

Any cop who’d whack a captured suspect 11 times, on live TV no less, is too dumb to keep past lunch.

There you have it. A black community leader has more faith in the “process” than a Times columnist does. It’s heartening and sad all at once.

I also loved this quote from another Lopez column on the same topic:

For all the pressing issues in L.A. — gang warfare, huge dropout rates, a housing crisis, crummy low-paying jobs, and a young man shot dead last week while cleaning up gang graffiti in Boyle Heights — so-called community leaders are worked up about a suspected car thief who ran from police and got cracked with a flashlight.

Yeah, we shouldn’t get worked up about this, Steve. That must be why you devoted three entire columns to the topic.

I guess I shouldn’t be so critical. After all, Lopez has a tough job. He gets paid a comfortable salary for writing three columns a week for the Times. It can’t be easy making those three columns look like they are worth it.