When Los Angeles police officers were accused two years ago of deliberately misidentifying people as gang members, the fallout was swift and sweeping.
Six officers were charged with crimes and police officials opened investigations into two dozen more, seriously tarnishing the reputation of the LAPD’s vaunted Metropolitan Division. Prosecutors also dismissed felony cases that had relied on testimony from the charged officers, while then-California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra barred police across the state from using any of the thousands of records LAPD officers had entered about alleged gang members in the CalGang database.
In the years since, however, the case has largely fallen apart.
Charges against three officers have been tossed out, while prosecutors have decided there isn’t enough evidence to bring cases against the other officers suspected of possible wrongdoing. And the L.A. district attorney’s office is now reconsidering whether to press ahead with the charges that prosecutors filed in the few cases that remain active, according to district attorney’s records reviewed by The Times.
The scandal erupted when officers were accused of falsifying field note cards LAPD officers commonly fill out after speaking with people during traffic stops, arrests or other encounters. On the cards, officers can identify a person as belonging to or associating with a certain street gang, and, prior to the scandal, the information was entered into the state database, which officers in...
A front-page article with the byline of veteran New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof is the latest poisonous example of what I call the NGO “halo effect.” Headlined “The Silence That Mee...