By Foreclosing Legal Responses to Officer Abuses, A City's Top Cop Encourages Lawlessness
Chief James McDonnell
Los Angeles Police Department
100 W. First Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Dear Jim:
I want to join a gang, but don’t know how. Can you tell me where I send my application?
Readers might be surprised that I am seeking your advice about moving into criminality, since you’re the chief of America’s third-largest police force. But you’re obviously the right person to ask, for a couple reasons.
First, I’ve long considered you a friend. You used to return my calls, back when you were an LAPD commander, Long Beach police chief, and L.A. sheriff. I’ve always trusted your law enforcement judgment; you’ve been a cop since 1981. I was a big fan of your amusingly direct Boston Irish style. And I still appreciate how you made time to speak at three public events convened by my publication, Zócalo Public Square, including a panel at RAND where I interviewed you about gun control.
But mainly I’m asking because you’re the person who convinced me that I need to become a gang member now.
We’ve never talked privately about this, and your position precludes you from offering public encouragement of my transition into gangland.
But through your actions (and considerable inaction), you’ve made your message unmistakably clear:
If Californians like me want to protect our neighbors and ourselves from lawless federal raids, the only real option we have is going gangster.
I confess that I was confused during the first few days of June’s ICE and Border Patrol siege of Southern California. I assumed that the ubiquitous LAPD mission statement, “To Protect and Serve,” was a commitment to do just that for all of L.A.
I thought you’d have your detectives out there investigating federal violence against Angelenos. But you didn’t. For a day or two, I wondered if you had been persuaded by lefties to defund the police. I briefly worried that you had decided to check out, or retire. After all, you’re 66 years old and have become noticeably hands-off, in a Bidenesque way.
But I was wrong. Pretty soon you were showing up around the city in order to make clear that LAPD’s non-response was exactly what you intended.
You explained that the department’s nearly 50-year-old “Special Order 40” restricting you from doing immigration enforcement also meant that you couldn’t protect Angelenos from violent federal officers doing immigrant enforcement. Your principled refusal to intervene included cases in which U.S. citizens were assaulted or arrested, or legal immigrants were kidnapped or even shot.
Which reminded me of something else I admire about you: you’re not a politician—as you proved back in 2018 when you lost the sheriff’s election to that lunatic Alex Villanueva.
These days, you still won’t respond to public appeals, despite the fact that you must have known that 72% of Californians think local police should arrest federal immigration officials who “act maliciously or knowingly exceed their authority under federal law,” according to a YouGov poll.
Of course, you are also pragmatic, and you recognized that you couldn’t stay completely out of the immigration raids. So, when the federal authorities found themselves surrounded by Angelenos who have organized themselves to protect their immigrant neighbors, you couldn’t just let everyone brawl in the streets. When the feds called you, asking for protection, you rolled out and helped them.
You were keeping the peace!
Ungrateful activists claimed that you were taking the feds’ side. But they don’t understand you like I do. As you explained so patiently over the early weeks of the raids, you have to see the big picture. Stopping the abductions of Angelenos now might get in the way of preventing serious crimes, and even terrorist attacks later.
“All of the crimes we investigate potentially could be in partnership with [federal agencies],” you told the city council this past summer. “Without that partnership, we wouldn’t be able to go into the World Cup, the Olympics.”
So, to preserve future cooperation with “federal law enforcement partners” for giant sporting events, you left the task of defending Angelenos to Angelenos themselves.
You didn’t leave us entirely alone. When we responded to the federal raids with public demonstrations, you sent in police, who shoved protesters and fired “less lethal” projectiles—for the protesters’ own protection of course. You also defended police who fired pepper balls or projectiles at journalists like me who were covering the protests—presumably to convince us to retreat before we got hurt.
You were careful never to support the raids. So, what did you want the people of your city to do?
To figure out your intentions, I went back to notes from our earlier conversations. When we spoke before that gun control panel, I saw, you approvingly cited John Stuart Mill, the 19th century English philosopher-politician.
Mill famously argued that people may cause evil not only through our actions, but also through inaction: “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing,” Mill said.
Reading that, your message finally dawned on me. Taking on bad people without the cops behind you requires grit and resolve. You, I realized, had been leaving Angelenos to our own devices to confront federal violence because you wanted to toughen us up!
Your hands were tied, and you could see that politicians would be no help. Many Republicans support the abusive actions. Democrats refuse to put themselves in jeopardy by investigating federal agents who act violently and abusively.
You saw that the choice in our situation wasn’t red or blue. It’s Blood or Crip.
You know better than anyone that when everyday people understand they will never be protected by the system, they will band together outside the law.
By acting to foreclose every other possible option, you were telling us to seek protection outside the law through the time-honored institution of the gang.
I know I won’t see you on my side of the streets when we take on the feds. But once I’m on-boarded into the right crew, I’d really like to buy you lunch, or at least a cup of coffee.
Because, looking back at all your efforts in response to these federal raids, I truly can’t thank you enough.
