The LAPD: Not Your Model Police Department

Los Angeles has long served as a proving ground where the counterinsurgency tactics later adopted by police throughout the United States were first domestically deployed. Ever since the nation’s very first no-knock SWAT raid on the Black Panther Party headquarters at 41st & Central and the CIA-facilitated, “crack cocaine explosion”that was first unleashed on South Central to more recent, repressive innovations like so-called “Community Policing” and today’s “Predpol,” the City of Angels has repeatedly been lauded as a “model” for “modern” policing. But what is the Los Angeles model, really? And why is it being exalted again now?

The LAPD: Not Your Model Police Department