Patterico's Pontifications

11/16/2006

Jack Dunphy on LAPD Punching Video

Filed under: General — Jack Dunphy @ 7:42 am



[Posted by Jack Dunphy]

A few more words about the videotaped arrest in Hollywood:

It has been reported that one of the involved officers had twice previously been accused of using excessive force during arrests. Though neither charge was sustained, the uninformed reader may draw an inference that the officer has a pattern of such allegations, giving credence to Cardenas’s claims that he was victimized. It’s important to note that most LAPD officers working the street, including me, have at some point in their career been similarly accused. The filing of such complaints is a routine tactic employed by criminals, especially gang members, who use these allegations in their effort to discredit the officers who have arrested them. Sadly, this tactic has been known to work.

Also, despite all the media attention focused on this incident, there has been remarkably little curiosity displayed in the press about Cardenas’s attorney, B. Kwaku Duren. Duren is affiliated with an organization called Cop Watch L.A., which, according to its website, expresses the following as its mission:

CWLA is a program dedicated to the struggle that will end police terrorism through collecting information on and observing police activity, offer support for those caught in the criminal (in)justice system, fight for change without a reformist consciousness, and ultimately work side-by-side with oppressed communities(*) to create Revolutionary alternatives to policing, prisons, and all systems of domination, oppression and exploitation.

Duren is also identified as the chairman of the New Black Panther Vanguard Movement, whose website offers the interested visitor additional insights as to what his motivating ideology might be.

I acknowledge my bias in favor of the officers in the Cardenas case, but readers should also view Duren’s claims on behalf of his client through the lens of his own professed beliefs.

My thanks to Patterico for offering me this forum.

— Jack Dunphy

17 Responses to “Jack Dunphy on LAPD Punching Video”

  1. Patterico, I have been following with interest your posts on this topic.

    I agree with your point that often times what you see on a video is not the entire truth. With that 19 second YouTube video being a very good example.

    Having said that, wouldn’t you agree that the the above arguement could be made about the Borat/Throw the Jew Down the Well song video?

    After all, when you first look at that video clip, it appears like a bunch of people are laughing and cheering at a song about anti-semitism. But is that really the whole story?

    As see-dubya wrote, there could be a whole lot more context there that was edited out.

    It would be unfortunate to condemn as Jew haters those people in that video without giving them the benefit of telling their side of the story.

    I say this not to try to pick a fight with you, or to be obnoxious, but just to make what I consider to be a fair point.

    EFG (f0e683)

  2. Opps. My apologies. Jack Dunphy wrote this, not Patterico. I suppose I should have posted this someplace else.

    EFG (f0e683)

  3. Being that Jack Dunphy is a nom de plume, I think it’s important to mention that the REAL Jack Dunphy was a very talented novelist who was married to the great singer/dance Joan McCracken (see the immortal “Pass That Peace Pipe” number in Good News) She left him for Bob Fosse, and he left her for Truman Capote.

    David Ehrenstein (1a2b16)

  4. Putting aside people’s motivations or ideologies, don’t you think that capturing more video of such incidents is better for both societal oversight and for clean cops? I agree that small clips can look biased. That’s why I locally support an initiative (I’m not in L.A.) we’re trying to get off the ground to mandate taping arrests where possible and that all interrogations are taped. I understand the concerns of this, but the overwelming damage a dirty cop can do, and the difficulty of policing them, combined with the value of oversight, seems to me to weigh in that direction. Afterall, the vast majority of cops will benefit, and putting away criminals will be easier.

    fishbane (3389fc)

  5. http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmFmZDg4MmM3ZjFkMzZhYTgxZjEzNDllMWRiM2IxOWQ=

    If cops were not stopping and searching blacks and Latinos more frequently than whites, theyd be shirking their duty to protect the innocent, and racial sensitivity and political correctness be damned. – Jack Dunphy

    This is why Kwaku Duren gets covered. He’s pretty sure that’s LAPD policy – not incident pattern demographics – and foments separate use-of-force threshholds. I can’t say one way or another.

    Cops have a dangerous job and are almost always lied about more than lie. We generally have a naive understanding of what is legal and often necessary to apprehend difficult suspects. But video evidence challenging an official report must carry consequences, lest official reports become devalued.

    If it wasn’t a false report, charges in this matter would probably not have been reduced to “resisting, delaying or obstructing a police officer.”

    [And how, precisely, do you know that? — P]

    steve (18814c)

  6. So, David, are you in favor of having cameras to monitor crime everywhere, or do you think cops are the only ones who require round-the-clock state supervision?

    RCJP (7e1ac4)

  7. I don’t know what the law is in California but in Illinois “resisting, delaying or obstructing a police officer” carries up to 364 days in jail. The same as battery or aggravated assault. What was it reduced from?

    nk (32c481)

  8. UCLA Police Taser Student Repeatedly (Video)…

    There was a huge blogospheric reaction overnight to a student being tasered by UCLA police after he failed to produce an ID card at the Powell library.
    The report:
    An incident late Tuesday night in which a UCLA student was stunned at least four times w…

    Outside The Beltway | OTB (30d6b6)

  9. Perhaps He Deserved to be Tasered…

    This is a symptom of a much larger problem and that is students, children, deciding that they do not have to follow the rules, they are “above the law” so to speak. Either their parents are doing a lousy job or these are simply spoiled little brats t…

    Wake up America (59ce3a)

  10. The cops were in the library at 11 pm checking ID’s. They do it every night. They don’t want rapist, thieves or other criminals that are not a part of the UCLA family in the building so late at night.

    If a citizen does not comply with lawful orders of a public safety official, the public safety offical is authorized to detain and investigate the cause of non compliance.

    I do not want my public safety officals backing down. They are on the front lines.

    If the subject was in a private location, and public safety officals entered the establishment and requested ID and engaged the subject, then the public safety official may be overstepping his offical duties.

    But as it stands right now, the police handled this incident professionally. It was not a pretty sight, but it was necessary to protect the public that night and at anytime in the future.

    MIke (1b2f1a)

  11. RCJP, different David here, but most people have to abide by several codes of conduct, which are determined by the nature of their work and their employer. I think it is entirely fair to ask that the actions of agents of the state be recorded for the public benefit without requiring individuals in their personal lives to undergo such scrutiny.

    The other David is not suggesting round-the-clock state supervision in the least — he is asking for a video record of specific kinds of actions, which would be beneficial to the citizens and police. Further, calling it state supervision isn’t quite right. The police are, in some very real and strong sense, “the state”. Wanting recordings of arrests and interrogations isn’t state supervision, it is state accountability, something we as citizens who employ the officers through our taxes and our participation in civic life should be allowed to ask for.

    Just as it is within the rights of a private employer to supervise their employees and evaluate their performance, it is within the rights of citizens in democratic systems to supervise their civil servants and evaluate their performance — to be denied access to the information required to make rational choices is anti-thetical to the central tenets of participatory democracy.

    It is demonstrably intellectually consistent to ask for these forms of accountability but to resist other forms of state surveillance. Note that nobody is asking for recordings of the officer’s personal lives, or even most of their professional actions — just those actions that are most perilous for both the authorities and the person being arrested.

    David Eads (129049)

  12. […] The Los Angeles Times, twisting this latest videotaped incident into an excuse to mar all law enforcement. L.A. police officer Jack Dunphy speaks about several episodes caught on tape at Patterico and NRO. […]

    UCLA Student Tasered by Police in Library « The HILL Chronicles (fced9f)

  13. Mr. Dunphy, I saw the video and I can state confidently that you are a liar. You have lied in each and every phrase of your post. I live in New York, where people like you have just murdered an unarmed groom-to-be in cold blood. You aren’t capable to get criminals off the street but you are asserting your rights to torture or murder innocents. Yours are Gestapo or Communist tactics and that is exactly who you are.
    If you believe the UCLA student should have been tasered, I firmly wish you and each of your family members to be tasered – exactly as you approved it for that student.

    Victor Luria (007e5e)

  14. Mr. Dunphy, you just show your true colors by saying gang members only accuse the police. How many innocent people have your incompetent police murdered? Ever heard of Amadou Diallo? You’re too coward to take on gang members, so then you take to beating and killing innocent people – and if they protest, you call them gang members. Meanwhile, real gang members know how much valor there is in you – so do their business happily.
    God help us all if you with your Gestapo tactics get to power.

    Victor Luria (007e5e)

  15. […] The Los Angeles Times, twisting this latest videotaped incident into an excuse to mar all law enforcement. L.A. police officer Jack Dunphy speaks about several episodes caught on tape at Patterico and NRO. […]

    The HILL Chronicles » Blog Archive » UCLA Student Tasered by Police in Library (be0686)


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