The shooting of a mentally ill black man, Ezell Ford, by LAPD officers has led local civil rights figures to speak out about the use of deadly force. Also, the world of sports writing has long been a male-dominated field of journalism, though it’s significantly more common to find a female beat writer today than it was in 1979 when Lisa Saxon got her start. Then, has LA arrived with a New Year’s party befitting its megalopolis status?
Ezell Ford autopsy results raise more questions
The August 11th shooting of mentally ill black man Ezell Ford by LAPD officers has led local civil rights figures to speak out about the use of deadly force against the unarmed 25-year-old. The results of the autopsy are now public, raising more questions about the tactics employed by officers that day.
The autopsy reveals Ford was shot three times — once in the right side, once in the back and once in the right arm. The shots to his back and right side are what ultimately led to his death. Additionally, a “muzzle imprint” on Fords back appears to indicate that Ford was shot from behind at a relatively close range.
The two policemen involved allege that Ford tackled one of them during a routine stop, and attempted to grab one officer’s gun. That officer claims he then called out to his partner, who shot Ford in the back. The downed officer then pulled his back-up weapon and fired. The LA Times reports that no witnesses have spoken to police, and now civil rights activist Earl Ofari Hutchinson is now calling upon L.A. County District Attorney Jackie Lacey to explore the possibility of filing charges against the policemen responsible for the death of Ezell Ford.
Does your opinion of the incident change now with the release of the autopsy?
Shortly following the shooting, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti ordered the release of the results by the end of the year. Do you feel more confident that the investigation will be impartial?
AirTalk guest host Patt Morrison was joined by civil rights attorney Connie Rice and attorney and former cop Harry Stern to discuss. (The transcript below has been edited for brevity.)
MORRISON: What did you read into the findings? Do you think they’re consistent with the police account or is there still more investigation to be done?
RICE: Well, I don’t see anything earth shattering here. It’s consistent with what we’ve heard before, and it’s what we expected to find. I guess the thing that I’m more interested in is why did they stop him in the first place?
For me, the question is always: was this encounter truly necessary? And did police have enough cause to stop him in the first place?
MORRISON: And that of course isn’t explored by any of this?
RICE: Exactly. That’s the question, because if the police had no business stopping him anyhow, then you’ve got a very different kind of inquiry. The investigation looks entirely different.
If they had a good reason to stop him and things got out of hand and he panicked and did something to cause them to defend themselves, well you know how that story goes.
But if they had no reason to be in contact with him, then the question is: was this at all, was any of this necessary? And the answer might be no.
MORRISON: Harry Stern joins us as well, an attorney at the law firm Rains, Lucia, Stern based in San Francisco. He’s a former police officer. In your reading and understanding of this, are the findings consistent with what the police officer's account was?
STERN: They are, and I think naturally the public’s going to have questions and maybe even concerns about a shot in the back, that doesn’t sound good.
However, in this context, when you’re talking about an officer who goes to their backup weapon, which is a very unusual circumstance, really a last resort, it is consistent with what the officers said and that is that the officer on the ground was struggling for his duty weapon, the weapon in his holster. The fact that that officer then went to his backup weapon, the weapon of last resort, and fired it, seems to confirm what their account of events was.
MORRISON: Can you speak to the concerns in African American communities that something that may be nothing triggers a great deal?
RICE: Well, yes I know. My brothers, my mother and I were very, very worried about my brothers, who are African American men. And every Air Force base we moved to, my mother would take her sons to the air police and say these are my sons; don’t kill them.
MORRISON: Even if this shooting is found to be in policy, do you agree that it’s likely that it will raise some of the larger questions about why this stop was initiated in the first place and the procedures for dealing with the mentally ill?
STERN: Well to answer the first part of your question, absolutely. I mean that’s an ongoing debate and discussion in light of everything that’s been going on within the last six months in the country.
And I look at it like this: there is a tension that’s developed between what I call “proactive police work” and “reactive police work.”
On one side of the coin is de-policing, where the police really respond — no offense, but — like firefighters. They wait in their station to be called and only respond to things after the fact.
The other way to do police work is proactively; to stop people within the confines of the Constitution, which gives officers wide latitude in doing investigative stops and trying to identify crime and criminals before other people are victimized.
So that’s really the tension as I see it, where the debate is.
MORRISON: And Connie Rice, in that debate there is an awful lot of latitude not only as a policy but in terms of how it's practiced on the street.
RICE: Absolutely. I’ll tell you there are units within LAPD that I think do this job beautifully. They don't make unnecessary stops. They know folks in the community. They know everybody’s name. They know everybody’s problems. They know who has a mental illness, and they know who is schizophrenic. So when they go out, when these cops go out, they really are part of the community, and they don't make unnecessary stops. And they really are only after stopping people to stop real crime, not small petty stuff, but stuff that has a chance of endangering other people. And those cops do a really, really good job Pat.
Now, my question, and I don't know this unit... I don't know these cops personally. I have nothing to say about them. But you do have to ask the question: What are they doing stopping a citizen? Police can't just stop you because they think you look funny or because they have a whim and a prayer. They have to have a good solid reason and good cause for stopping you.
And that's where I start my inquiry, is why did they stop the guy in the first place? And what were they trying to accomplish?
It's tricky work. It's a tricky inquiry, but I think you do have to make it in order to be able to get the full picture here of what was going on.
Guests:
Frank Stoltze, KPCC’s Crime and Politics Reporter who’s been following the story
Connie Rice, Civil rights attorney and member of the Board of Directors at the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization. She’s also an honorary trustee at KPCC.
Harry Stern, attorney at the law firm Rains, Lucia, Stern based in San Francisco. He’s a former police officer.
This post has been updated.
Obama administration to speed up Guantanamo Bay detainee transfers
Detainee transfers out of Guantanamo Bay grinded to a virtual stop between 2011 and 2013. And the Obama administration is planning to kick start efforts to drastically cut down the Gitmo population in 2015, reports the Washington Post.
Closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp is one of the Obama’s national security goals, and the President has taken a more active role in making sure that happens. Accordingly to the Post, has called several heads of state to see if they’d be willing to accept the transfers. The administration is pinning its hopes particularly on Latin American countries after Uruguay agreed to take six detainees this month.
What are the obstacles facing the administration to closing Guantanamo Bay?
Guest:
Missy Ryan, Pentagon reporter for the Washington Post who has been following the story
Lisa Saxon reflects on being one of the first women in sportswriting
The world of sports writing has long been a male-dominated field of journalism, though it’s significantly more common to find a woman who is a beat writer today than it was in 1979, when Lisa Saxon started covering baseball for the L.A. Daily News. Back then, she was one of only three women covering the Major Leagues on a full-time basis.
"It's all I wanted to do," Saxon told AirTalk. "I talked my way into the [Cincinnati] Reds bullpen when I was 15 years old...I just had one goal, I'm very focused, and everything I did was working toward that."
However, society was much more closed-minded when Saxon [who still went by her maiden name, Nehus] first started covering baseball, and she had to deal with degradation and sexual harassment on a daily basis from those [and there were many] who felt a woman had no business being a sports writer. She says her access to locker rooms was often revoked, she was treated like a lesser person by other members of the media, players, and team executives.
"My very first day, even, at the Daily News, long before I went into a locker room, I went to my desk and there was a sign there that said 'token female.' So, from the very beginning, the stage was set, that I was different and I was lesser than," said Saxon.
An article by Vice Sports alleges that when Saxon would go into locker rooms, players would yell, spit, throw their jock straps at her, expose themselves, or worse. She gave a similar depiction to us about what she experienced.
"You can learn to block some of that out once you're in, but sometimes things got very personal, and that's when it became hard for me," Saxon says. "My greatest struggles were when the attacks were very personal in nature, when players called in to question my character...Reggie Jackson once told me he wanted me to lie under the team bus so he could have it roll over me. That's how much he hated me."
Saxon says Reggie had a particular dislike for her and that he was ruthless to her in the locker room, making fun of her for her clothing, calling her a b**ch, and telling her she was ugly. She says she ran into him years later, after he had retired from baseball, in the locker room of the Oakland Athletics.
"I had gone in to, I think, do an interview with [then Athletics star] Mark McGwire...and I heard all of a sudden, 'Lisa! Lisa!' And it was Reggie. And I said 'Something's wrong, because he just addressed me by my first name.'"
Saxon says Reggie told her he'd always felt as if there was a problem between the two of them. Saxon says she asked Reggie to be more specific.
"I looked him right in the eye and said, 'Well, Reggie, was it when you asked me to lie under the team bus so it could roll over me? Was it when you called me the b-word? Was it when you called me ugly or made fun of my clothes? You'll have to be more specific.' And Reggie [who often referred to himself in the third person] looked at his friend and said 'Reggie doesn't say those things.' Then he looked at me and said 'Reggie doesn't say those things. But if Reggie ever did, Reggie apologizes.'"
As it turned out, Saxon says, Reggie's apology may have only been to get her to use her Hall of Fame vote to put him in, which she did not do. Saxon says while she did have to deal with plenty of discrimination and harassment like this during her career, she prefers to remember the people with whom she worked who were friendly, helpful, and wanted her to succeed. She says players like Tommy John, Don Sutton, and George Hendrick were just a few of the men who had her back when others turned theirs.
"There were many, many people who were wonderful, and to those people, I can never say thank you enough," says Saxon.
Saxon says she never wanted to be seen as a victim, and until recently she didn't think that her story was more meaningful than anyone else's. She says she's never viewed herself as a pioneer in her field, but in recent years has come to realize the meaning of some of her contributions to journalism. She recalls one such instance during a trip she took to Angel Stadium of Anaheim in 2013.
"I went up to the press box, and Joe Resnick of the Associated Press made a place for me so I could sit in my old seat in the press box," she said. "A woman that I'd never met came down during the game, introduced herself, and said that she was standing on my shoulders. Tears just ran down my cheeks because, for a long time, I thought that my career had been the collateral damage of this battle that I volunteered to wage."
Today, Saxon is seen by many to be a trailblazer for women in sports writing. She has earned several awards, including two AP Sports’ Editors awards and a lifetime achievement award nomination from the National Association of Women in Sports Media.
"I don't talk much about what happened, I've never sought fame, and I thought it was just forgotten. But to know that people remembered me and the fight that I fought mattered, I can't ask for more than that."
Saxon is now a teacher at Pacific Palisades high School, where she also advises Tideline, the school’s student-run magazine. She met her husband Reed, appropriately enough, after a baseball game. They got married in
Through the adversity, Saxon proved that she was as good a reporter, if not better, than any man doing the same job. Over her 20-year career, she covered World Series, NBA Finals, Super Bowls, Rose Bowls, and NCAA Finals. But most importantly, she cleared the way for other women to get into sports journalism, thanks to her success and skill as a journalist in the face of adversity, discrimination and gender bias.
"People say, 'Would you do it all over again?' I say 'In a heartbeat.' I can't think of a better life."
Guest:
Lisa Saxon, award-winning sportswriter, beats she covered include the then-California Angels, the Dodgers, and the then-L.A. Raiders for the L.A. Daily News. She also covered the NBA and NCAA football and basketball.
NYE: Is Grand Park LA’s Times Square?
In New York City, the ball drops at midnight in Times Square. But three hours later, when 2015 arrives in Southern California, where do we convene? Los Angeles is the city of private pools and private parties, not massive public gatherings in a civic center. Until last year, anyway, when 10,000 people were expected to show up in Downtown LA’s Grand Park, and 25,000 came out. The gates were shut before midnight to keep the park at capacity.
Grand Park played host to the summer’s massive Made in America festival. And now another New Year’s Eve, with triple the expected attendance, and the DJs, food trucks and 3D video projections on City Hall to keep the crowd lively. Has LA arrived with a New Year’s party befitting its megalopolis status?
Perhaps. But why does it close down at 12:30am? Before you go, here are the basics. Metro runs free until 2am, and service continues at normal rates until dawn. A bike valet will be located at Hill and 2nd Street. No alcohol will be sold on site and no outside booze is permitted in.
For the night owls, there are many other parties around town. Where are you headed? Let us know in the poll.
Ranker - Lists About Everything
Guest:
Jean Trinh, associate editor for the website LAist