A day and a half after the LAPD unleashed brute force, with little warning, on media and demonstrators at MacArthur Park, The New York Times finally chimes in. With a blog post. And a blurb from Reuters. The Washington Post carries AP wire. With all due respect to blogs and the wires, the silence from the big national papers is a serious negation
of what is arguably the biggest urban and media story in the country right now. Major press organizations are asking for some answers. To say nothing of immigrant rights groups. La Opinion's main headline today is "LAPD fired 240 rounds."
This morning the LAPD is only enhancing, or even generating, tension and outrage by increasing helicopter flyovers and filling the streets with patrolling police vehicles. But don't take the heightened sense of alert as a sign of urgency. Chief Bratton told us yesterday that we have to wait 30 days, a month, to get a "preliminary" report on what happened on May Day. Use-of-force investigations will take longer, he said. Warren Olney's "Which Way L.A.?" yesterday played a clip from the City Hall press conference of a reporter berating Bratton for not taking the raw footage as all the proof you need: Many of his officers went inexplicably bananas on moms, kids, paleteros, and Fox 11.
NEW READERS: Here again is my first-person scene report from MacArthur Park: "LAPD on May Day: Strike now, ask later."