Patterico's Pontifications

3/18/2008

Affirmative Action for SWAT

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 5:58 am



Armed Liberal quotes an anonymous female LAPD supervisor on Bratton’s plan (reported here by Robert C.J. Parry) to change entrance standards for SWAT so that SWAT “looks like Los Angeles”:

SWAT is who I call when the situation overwhelms my immediate resources. If I need them, I don’t give a damn if they are “reflective of the community” or six toed farm boys with acne, I just want them to be the best. Only the most physically capable, tactically gifted, expert shooters, with a proven ability to perform for the good of the team and the innocent victims in immediate need of their services should qualify for SWAT. If some of those super qualified candidates happen to be female, terrific, but I cannot understand, for the life of me what benefit is reached for officer or public safety by lowering standards and tweaking the process to increase the numbers of minorities and women qualifying for this unique and vital function. Chief Bratton’s transparent attempt to court certain groups in this and other situations indicates a troubling willingness to endanger lives in pursuit of his personal ambitions.

Read it all.

UPDATE: I told you on Sunday that Robert had made some news with this, and that we’d be hearing much more about it from the L.A. Times. Always trust content from Patterico: the story is on the front page today.

To my surprise and to the paper’s credit, the story concentrates, not on the secrecy of the report (although that gets prominent play), but on the dangers caused by the watering down of standards for this elite unit. It’s a great example of the paper actually paying attention to the right things for a change, and kudos are in order. And once again: well done, Robert!

2 Responses to “Affirmative Action for SWAT”

  1. An unfortunate Race To The Bottom:
    Gates,
    Williams,
    Park,
    Bratton.
    How low will they go?

    Another Drew (f9dd2c)

  2. If they’re going to have a SWAT team that looks like L.A., will they be recruiting gang bangers and taggers?

    Steverino (e00589)


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0679 secs.