Political correctness and the LAPD

Jack Dunphy writes about the negative effects that political correctness are having on the LAPD:

As for Devin Brown, yes, his death is a tragedy, but police critics have gone to ludicrous extremes in placing him on a martyr's pedestal. As though borrowing from Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, some press reports have described Brown as an "honor student." We are left to ponder the sort of academic enterprise he was engaged in while speeding in a stolen car at four in the morning. Wednesday's Los Angeles Times described a protest meeting at a South L.A. church, where "about 200 people stood, shouted and applauded as speakers said the LAPD viewed blacks differently from others." "Children tend to be mischievous," said a woman in the audience, "but they shouldn't have to die. . . Children do stuff like that all the time."

Children? Mischievous? Devin Brown, God rest his soul, was not out toilet-papering the gym teacher's house. He committed at least three felonies, crimes which might have resulted in the death of a police officer, his own passenger, or some innocent bystander, yet you'll scarcely hear a word in the press calling his precipitous actions into question. Mischievous, indeed.

This will be a long, sorry spectacle. But one sure result will be that the LAPD, which only now is starting to make inroads into the violent-crime problem in South-Central L.A., will be less proactive and less effective. The sentiment among many cops is this: If I chase him I might catch him, and if I catch him I might have to hit him or shoot him. And who needs that?

Of course then liberals will start complaining that the LAPD is not doing enough to protect the black community from violent crime.