Lapd 2007 may day executive report pdf

This group of disruptive individuals appeared to move from Wilshire and Park View to the south side of the park near 7th and Alvarado. As officers in the vicinity of 7th and Alvarado experienced, and reported via the radio, objects being thrown at them, two distinct groups of supervisors discussed plans to disperse the crowd, independent of each other.

The first discussion took place between Hollywood Lieutenant Guillermo Rosales and officers and supervisors from the Bicycle Unit at 7th and Alvarado. Neither group had full situational awareness. While both discussions resulted in a decision to declare an unlawful assembly and disperse the crowd, the plan that was ultimately utilized was formulated by Egan, Gray and Carter and was not communicated to Lieutenant Rosales.

This plan involved the use of Metropolitan Division resources to move the crowd from the south side of the park northbound from 7th and Alvarado toward the north side of the park. At p. As officers continued to report objects being thrown by individuals in the crowd, the skirmish line continued north across Wilshire, driving the small group of disruptive individuals from the south side of the park into the thousands of peaceful demonstrators gathered in the north side of the park for a rally.

The line of officers, spanning across the entire north side of the park from Wilshire to 6th Street, proceeded to move the crowd westbound toward Park View, clearing the entire park of participants, whether peaceful or not. During this move westbound, as the line moved past a Spanish-language media tent, some individuals in the crowd, including members of the media, were pushed and struck by officers with batons.

Officers also continued to fire less-lethal impact munitions until they reached the sidewalk at Park View at the west end of the park. During this move to clear the park, no complete dispersal order was given in either English or Spanish. Deputy Chief Carter followed behind the line of Metropolitan Division officers for the entirety of the move westbound through the north side of the park.

Captain Egan and Commander Gray remained at Wilshire and Park View for the duration of the move to clear the park, which lasted approximately 24 minutes.

In the end, as seen on video, officers had driven thousands of people from the park, knocked over and struck some individuals - including media and non-media, peaceful or not — and deployed a total of less-lethal impact munitions and over uses of the baton.

As a result, individuals claimed injury from two broken bones to bruises and numerous claims of emotional distress and 18 officers were treated for various abrasions and contusions by Emergency Medical Technicians at MacArthur Park, or later at hospitals, and released. Analysis of May Day The six primary factors that influenced the events that day included: 1 planning; 2 tactics, including the use of force; 3 command and control; 4 situational awareness; 5 training; and 6 individual responsibility.

There were several factors that contributed to the inadequate planning for the afternoon march and rally in MacArthur Park. Recognizing the historical significance of the May Day rally, the Rampart Area command staff requested additional resources and asked that further attention be paid to planning for the MacArthur Park rally.

In fact, as Rampart Area Captain McDonald pushed for further planning meetings in preparation for the Rampart event, he was verbally reprimanded by Deputy Chief Carter.

The fact that Rampart Command assigned the drafting of the Rampart Incident Action Plan IAP — the blue print for the management of the event - to several individuals also contributed to the issues in planning for MacArthur Park. These drafters attempted to plan for an ever-changing event, as Deputy Chief Carter modified the number of external resources to be committed to Rampart and the placement of key personnel during the event, up until the morning of May Day.

While a Rampart IAP was produced and disseminated, it was missing several key details essential to proper event management. Further, various entities, integral to the management of the crowd on May Day, were absent from the planning process altogether. Entities, such as Air Support Division and Metropolitan Division, were not involved in the planning phase.

Ultimately, different versions of the IAP were distributed, some entities did not receive or review the plan, and the final version of the IAP was not communicated to all entities involved. Additionally, a viewing area was not provided for the media - contrary to a settlement agreement entered into by the Department - which resulted in the media unknowingly encircling themselves in and around MacArthur Park, placing members of the media directly in the path of the move to clear the park.

A number of tactical deficiencies arose on May Day, ultimately resulting in the movement of a small group of unruly individuals into a large group of peaceful participants. Tactical issues included:. Failure to Guide Marchers One of the first tactical deficiencies identified during this review was the failure of the Incident Commander to properly prepare for the arrival of the marchers into MacArthur Park.

During past events, officers were pre-deployed to assist with this process. This tactic was not utilized on May Day. This failure caused officers to hastily react to a crowd unexpectedly moving toward them on Park View Street. The decision to deploy a squad of motor officers to push the crowd east on Wilshire resulted in a compression of the crowd, causing tension in the crowd to rise and encouraging others to participate in disruptive behavior.

Use of Force By the time the events ended in MacArthur Park, more than uses of the baton and less-lethal impact munitions had been deployed. It appeared that some of the officers and supervisors in MacArthur Park believed that, contrary to Department policy, baton strikes could be used to compel a person to disperse, even if they were merely standing in front of the officers, failing to respond to direction.

Further, non-target and target specific less-lethal impact munitions, were deployed absent the intent to affect an arrest - in contrast to the law which states that use of force should be deployed as a precursor to an arrest.

Treatment of the Media The treatment of some members of the media raised questions about the training, discipline and understanding of the role of the media on the part of some of the officers in MacArthur Park that day. Some officers did not adhere to the guidelines required pursuant to agreements between the Department and the media, including those outlined in the Crespo v. For example, in the move to clear the park, some officers pushed and struck some members of the media to move them from the area, rather than allowing the media to move safely into a designated media viewing area.

Crowd Dispersal Strategies The declaration of an unlawful assembly should be resorted to only when there are no other reasonable alternatives. The decision to declare an unlawful assembly and disperse the crowd on May Day appeared to be made quickly, without consideration of the impact a dispersal order would have on those exercising their First Amendment rights. Arrest posture It appeared that the Department leaders for this event did not consider adopting a posture of isolating and arresting those who were engaging in unlawful activity or disrupting the rally.

Instead, they decided to declare an unlawful assembly and clear the entire area. While there is no official Department policy on when an arrest shall or shall not be made in a crowd control situation, as each instance is unique, the crowd may have reacted differently if they had seen people committing unlawful acts being isolated from the crowd and arrested.

Moreover, arresting and removing those violating the law may have reduced the need to declare an unlawful assembly, offering a greater level of protection of First Amendment rights. Utilization of Available Resources Although, ultimately, there were nearly officers deployed to the MacArthur Park event who were available to assist Metropolitan Division in crowd movement, Metropolitan Division performed the movement of the crowd almost completely on its own.

Proper coordination with the available resources may have provided the ability for officers to pass people, who were either unable or unwilling to leave, through the skirmish line to awaiting officers who could either redirect or arrest the individuals as appropriate. While the sound truck was requested by field supervisors to provide a dispersal order at 7th and Alvarado, the sound truck never appeared.

Knowing who is in command during an incident is of utmost importance. There must be one person who understands the objectives of the plans, receives tactical information and makes decisions with a complete understanding of all that is occurring. Both Commander Gray and Deputy Chief Carter, however, began to make decisions and give orders very early into the afternoon. As a result, subordinate officers witnessed conflicting direction and obvious tension between the three command officers.

As subordinates from various positions in the field made numerous requests over the radio that went unacknowledged and unanswered - including requests for the sound truck and repeated requests for action as officers were being struck with objects thrown by people in the crowd - officers began to make independent decisions in efforts to control the crowd.

This seemed to result in various forms of miscommunication. Deputy Chief Carter, Commander Gray and Captain Egan failed to maintain communication with those in the field in order to obtain a full picture of the unfolding events.

As a result, these men were unable to fully understand the situation before them. While many individuals had varying degrees of situational awareness that day, none knew of the scope of the tactical movements and action of officers in MacArthur Park.

The Incident Command Post, had limited situational awareness due to several factors including the lack of an aerial image from the Air Unit and limited resources to monitor the radio. Moreover, Deputy Chief Roupoli, in the Multi-Agency Coordination Center MACC , which was responsible for oversight of all events in the city on May Day and the coordination of all resources, received little to no information from the Incident Command Post or the command staff in the park.

Research conducted in the preparation of this report revealed that Metropolitan Division received no training in crowd control in the 18 months leading up to May Day , as the Metropolitan Division Basic Course was cut sometime in Further, when Metropolitan Division personnel were receiving regular crowd control training, prior to , the content of that training may have been incomplete, or even inaccurate.

These issues were not caught, however, as at that time Training Group was not tasked with providing oversight of the training of specialized units such as Metropolitan Division. Further, as previously discussed, proper training in regard to the treatment of media was apparently lacking. Every Department employee has an individual duty to act appropriately and every officer is responsible for his or her own actions.

Additionally, every Department employee, whether officer or supervisor, has a duty to stop a fellow officer who is engaging in misconduct. Therefore, the events of May Day raised two significant questions: Why did some officers appear to have performed inappropriately? In the end, any individual who either engaged in misconduct or witnessed unacceptable behavior, yet did nothing to stop it, must be held accountable.

Later that night, he called a meeting with his top executive staff to discuss his concerns. Soon thereafter, Chief Bratton launched four investigations: a personnel complaint investigation; a use of force investigation; a criminal investigation as to those who threw objects at officers; and an investigation by the Office of Operations, which included orders to produce an internal After Action Report.

Chief Bratton also made an unprecedented move by relieving Metropolitan Division officers from their field duties until they completed mandatory training. Chief Bratton subsequently directed Deputy Chief Hillmann, the Commanding Officer of Operations-West Bureau, to prepare training for Metropolitan Division and all command staff within the organization. Chief Hillmann immediately convened a team of Department experts to review and identify points of failure in regard to command and overall operations of the May Day incident.

Additionally, beginning July , Training Group and Metropolitan Division launched the Department-wide training course on Mobile Field Force and crowd control tactics and use of force policy for all personnel assigned to the Office of Operations.

As of October 1, , approximately 2, field officers and supervisors have been trained and more than 6, members of the Department will be trained by March Chief Bratton further recognized the need to appoint a single entity to be responsible for institutionalizing lessons learned and to help establish policies and procedures for the management of a variety of large-scale incidents e.

He believed having this responsibility divided among several entities in the past may have led to inconsistencies in the planning, operations and after action review of incidents throughout the City. Chief Bratton was also concerned that, as in the past, lessons learned might be lost without a single entity to institutionalize the necessary changes. An IMT is comprised of specialists who are experienced leaders, decision makers and strategic thinkers familiar with all aspects of emergency management, to be responsible for managing large, complex incidents.

Recognizing the benefits of this concept, Chief Bratton directed the IMT to be incorporated into the practices and policies of the Incident Management and Training Bureau.

Therefore, the Department has now adopted the IMT concept as its standard. Recommendations and Conclusion The recommendations of this report differ from the recommendations of reports and commissions that have preceded it, in that they will be followed by a clear plan for implementation and institutionalization via the Incident Management and Training Bureau.

The efforts of the Department, to date, indicate its commitment to ensuring that these recommendations will be ingrained in Department policies and procedures that will remain long after those in command today have moved on. To this end, it is expected that all of the recommendations will be implemented within one year of the publication of this report. The recommendations are detailed in the body of this report and are divided into five distinct areas: 1 policy; 2 planning; 3 command; 4 training; and 5 auditing.

Letters to Editor. Note that this broad generalization mixes different reports for example, local versus network and FOX versus MSNBC and combines the reports on May 1 before and after the attack with reports aired on May 2. Subgroups of the stories revealed the same patterning. While metaphor analysis of verbal reports provides important information, visual semiotic analysis of a subset of nine stories reveals a more complete picture.

Visually, the shift to the riot-suppression frame was accomplished by replacing images of peaceful marchers with those of the LAPD in full riot gear striking demonstrators and journalists with batons and shooting them with rubber bullets.

Yet the newsrooms sought to mitigate this direct visual evidence of police culpability. For example, they were careful to include statements of officials like Chief of Police William Bratton, who assured the public that only some police officers got out of hand, while a few anchors and correspondents repeatedly blamed demonstrators for instigating the violence by throwing rocks and bottles at police officers. But a review of all the video broadcast showed only one brief video clip of such an action.

On the other hand, we found ample broadcast visual evidence that police officers violently attacked defenseless, peaceable marchers. Our study shows a contradiction between what network television news presented and what the actual footage showed.

Moreover, the networks limited the airtime allotted to interviews with demonstrators, while giving significantly more time to anchors, correspondents, journalists, and police personnel. Aerial coverage remained the most popular camera technique, which kept viewers symbolically detached from the demonstrators, who were rendered as faceless masses. When demonstrators were interviewed, they were shown enraged or injured and remained nameless.

Such newsroom skepticism, however, was strained in the face of the abundant videotaped evidence from numerous professional and amateur sources of the unprovoked LAPD attack on families, ambulant vendors, and well-seasoned and remonstrate journalists and their camera crews. Consequently, a striking feature of the May 2 reports were the many disclaimers that reporters made regarding the judgment that the viewers at home should withhold. These statements were aired without a concomitant response from the rally organizers.

Our three analyses allow us characterize the television news reporting of the violent events of MacArthur Park as a journalistic debacle. When television news media falsely and repeatedly depict peaceable marchers as violent instigators, the political ramifications are substantial. On that day, 5 million people marched in more than cities across the country. Its sheer size took the nation by surprise, and its political impact could not be denied. It effectively forced many previously unconcerned U.

In , however, when the news media effectively cast these marchers as agents of violence, the peaceful nature and message of the demonstrators was lost on the nation. The news media worked the standard framing of an alleged confrontation; the news media also made peaceful marchers out to be the instigators of the violent police response. With such a framing, the nation passed over the political issue of immigrant rights and depreciated the moral legitimacy of the peaceful marchers.

Since the portrayal of moral legitimacy to a national audience is a key element of an effective social movement, on May 2 the television news media undertook a political role that reduced the public estimation and support of this movement. These latter figures do not add up to the overall totals since we do not refer to so-called minor metaphors which rarely occur and metaphors that are neither violent nor peaceful. Allow me to quote it here. That is important. Our officer gave a legal dispersal order and were met with the violence.

In coming days, it will become clear what transpired. Until then there should be no rush to judgment. Like this article? Support our work.