Los Angeles - Officers at a south-east Los Angeles police
station organized arrest contests and other dubious competitions to
boost morale among beat deputies, the Los Angeles Times reported
Thursday.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said he has ordered a halt to
the practice, which he called a 'well-meaning but ill-conceived
idea'. But police watchdog groups sharply condemned the actions.
One competition, described in an internal Sheriff's Department e-
mail obtained by The Times, was called 'Operation Any Booking.' The
object was to arrest as many people as possible within a specific 24-
hour period. The paper said that the contest did not appear to have
driven arrests rates significantly higher than usual.
But anther one-day competition called 'Operation Vehicle Impound'
saw officers seize 37 cars in one day, even though the daily average
during the month was just 4.7 cars.
Lieutenant James Tatreau, who appears to have organized the
contests said they were 'just a friendly competition to have a little
fun out here.'
'We're not doing anything wrong,' Tatreau said. 'No way, no how
did anyone encourage officers to falsify a report or an arrest.'
But Hubert Williams, president of the Washington-based Police
Foundation, called the competitions 'highly problematic and
inappropriate.'
'The arrest is one of the most potent tools in the possession of
law enforcement and should be used with great thought,' Williams
said. 'It's not a competition or a game.'
The contests continue a series of high profile scandals for the
Los Angeles police, who perpetrated the infamous beating of Rodney
King in 1992, as well as other video-taped beatings. A separate
corruption case called the Rampart scandal exposed how more than 70
officers framed gang members for crimes they did not commit. The most
recent incident occurred when police were accused of using excessive
force to break up a peaceful May Day march by immigrants.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
USA
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