Patterico's Pontifications

7/15/2007

Because It’s the L.A. Times

Filed under: Dog Trainer — Patterico @ 7:24 pm



How does an entire column discuss HBO’s programming without once mentioning “Entourage”?

Heh

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 1:20 pm



Ace has one of the funniest video clips I’ve seen in a while.

Louisiana Bans Some Type of Abortion Procedure, the Details of Which Are Unclear to Us at the Moment . . .

Filed under: Abortion,Dog Trainer — Patterico @ 12:45 pm



From the June 14 L.A. Times comes this mealy-mouthed report:

A type of late abortion is restricted

From Times Wire Reports
July 14, 2007

Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco signed legislation in Baton Rouge that penalizes doctors who perform a late-term abortion procedure, making the state the first to restrict the surgery since a similar federal ban was upheld this year.

The new law allows the procedure only when the pregnant woman’s life would be endangered without it. It would be a crime in all other cases, including when the pregnancy is expected to cause health problems for the woman.

What type of late-term abortion procedure was criminalized? I think you know, but you have to read between the lines to figure it out:

The statute mirrors one that President Bush signed into law in 2003. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Under the Louisiana legislation, doctors face fines up to $10,000 and jail terms of up to 10 years.

I love the way they dance around this topic. While the rest of us are calling a spade a spade, the L.A. Times is calling a spade a type of digging tool.

Robert Parry on the Effect of the LAPD Consent Decree

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 12:11 pm



Regular readers will remember our old pal Robert C. J. Parry, a staunch LAPD defender who published an extensive essay on this site in May about the LAPD disciplinary system. Mr. Parry has an Op-Ed in this morning’s L.A. Daily News, which relies on statistics to show that federal oversight has not improved the LAPD in ways the activists predicted.

News reports of the day show that many predictions were made about the Advertisement decree’s benefits, but few were quantifiable. The only concrete promise was that the decree would provide definitive proof of LAPD racial profiling.

The message in the undercurrent was unmistakable: Things will change — fewer shootings and uses of force. Fewer public complaints [and] more complaints sustained . . .

Mr. Parry shows that in most of these areas, the opposite has happened.

Federal oversight has not resulted in fewer shootings. Instead, with federal oversight, shootings are up (although very few are found out of policy).

Nor has federal oversight reduced the number of public complaints. On the contrary, public complaints are up: in the 1990s, there were never more than 4000; now that number approaches 7000 some years.

The increase in complaints, interestingly, appears to have been almost wholly due to an explosion of unfounded complaints. The statistics show that the percentage of sustained complaints is way down. Notably, Mr. Parry’s statistics show that the absolute number of citizen-generated sustained complaints is about the same now as it was in the 1990s — perhaps slightly lower.

This isn’t for a lack of investigation, Mr. Parry notes:

All complaints against officers are now thoroughly investigated and subject to triple audits — by the LAPD Audit Bureau, the inspector general and the consent decree monitor. The complaint’s plausibility is disregarded. Just ask the cop who was investigated for stealing a woman’s ovaries.

In short, with shootings up, illegitimate complaints way up, and the percentage of sustained complaints down, federal oversight appears to have produced the opposite of what was intended. At the very least, it has been no panacea, serving to do little other than drive officers away from the Department.

Mr. Parry provided the Daily News with extensive charts detailing his raw data, but the Daily News declined to publish that data. (His piece, by the way, was declined by the L.A. Times. Is anyone surprised? Anyone?)

So Robert graciously allowed me to publish the raw data for his report here. All of it came from the LAPD itself — though as he explains below, not without a struggle. In the end, Mr. Parry says, after a month-and a half of begging, he still didn’t get everything he wanted.

Here is Mr. Parry’s data:

(more…)

Beldar’s Post, Which I Haven’t Read, Is Wrong

Filed under: Court Decisions,General — DRJ @ 9:29 am



I haven’t read this post by Beldar. But I think he’s wrong. I agree with Eugene Volokh’s post on the topic (which I have read).

I may end up reading Beldar’s post, just because I enjoy reading Beldar. I just thought I should register my disagreement with him now, before I do.

UPDATE: This post is really by Patterico. I mistakenly posted it from DRJ’s account. Yes, that means she has something coming up, so consider that a teaser.


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