Former LAPD police chief Gates dies

[cascadiance]

Source: MSNBC

LOS ANGELES - Daryl F. Gates, the Los Angeles police chief during the city's deadly 1992 riots, has died. He was 83.

The police department said in a statement that Gates died Friday at his Newport Beach home with his family at his bedside.

Gates' family said in February the former chief had been hospitalized with bladder cancer.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36597414/ns/us_news-life/

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Perhaps some closure to the horrible Rodney King incident L.A. riots many years back?

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

1. I think Chief Gates was the person who

referred to the band as 'the Pink Floyds' :) Also, LA used to have a cool downtown event called the street scene. So cool that we smoked a you know what standing by the downtown Police headquarters. Ahhhhhhh, youthful indiscretions :toast:

[Lautremont]

2. He's also the guy who wanted to shoot casual drug users on sight.

You were pretty lucky!

[voxpop88]

13. Street Scene L.A. 1980s & bloody aftermath courtesy of Gates' LAPD

I attended a Street Scene festival, I think it was 1987 or 1988, and Midnight Oil played.

It was great, until some pachuco hurled a beer bottle at one of the 20 LAPD stormtroopers on horseback who were all lined up facing the crowd, raring to go.

They started clubbing people people indiscriminately, and all pandemonium broke loose. People were fleeing from the cops in every direction, and, incredibly, cops were going after couples rather than individuals, a woman accompanied by a man, and were "singling" them out for billy-club beatings.

People were screaming, begging for mercy, but the cops had gone berserk: instead of asking people to disperse, they beat them to the ground and kept on hitting them with those huge billy-clubs. I watched in disbelief while this unfolded all around me on the south lawn of cityhall. That's right, cityhall. I hurried up to one couple as the policeman on horseback was beating the woman (they were both shockingly soaked in blood) and shouted, "Please stop beating them- they're unarmed!"

The cop stopped beating the woman and immediately raised his baton and charged after me. I ran like hell (I'm fast) and got away by the skin of my teeth.

And that's how the Street Scene Festival ended, thanks to the 'unbridled' passions of Gate's LAPD caballeros. True story, and plenty more, from someone who grew up in downtown Los Angeles

My father, a law-abiding Los Angeleno, had no respect for Gates & his LAPD soldiers. As I remember, there was no write-up on it in the L.A. Times the next day, or by anyone publicy then.

[pattmarty]

3. So what? Good riddance to a piece of shit, in my humble opinion.

[awnobles]

4. I feel better

for some reason.

[awoke_in_2003]

8. me too...

welcome to DU

[Hepburn]

11. Ditto and welcome to the DU...

...:hi:

I live in L.A. and I cannot say I ever thought much of Gates.

[Wilms]

5. Maybe it will improve his attitude. n/t

[voxpop88]

12. He's a repeat offender: a paragon of recividism

From: the NY Times, 4/16/10:

"In October 1992, four months after his resignation, Mr. Gates acknowledged that he had made errors in command but remained unapologetic. “Clearly that night we should have gone down there and shot a few people,” he said. “In retrospect, that’s exactly what we should have done. We should have blown a few heads off.”

From: The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford):

"...Obtruding false rules pranked in reason's garb." fr. Milton, "Il Pensoroso" 1.759

[Democat]

6. NWA loved Gates!

And he love them back about as much. :evilgrin:

RIP

[PlanetBev]

7. Newport Beach...figures

Community of rich, goose-stepping Repiglicans.

[Grand Taurean]

9. Finally, it will stop using up our air.

[saigon68]

10. Grave Dancing

“Lord Byron and I freak danced over Tennyson's grave. It's what he would have wanted.”

~ Oscar Wilde on Grave Dancing


Grave Dancing is the latest dance craze to sweep the nation. It's a combination of everyone's favorite pastimes: dancing, making an ass out of yourself, and funeral services.

[kwassa]

14. Gates was a shithead. He bears responsibility for failing to stop the riots.

I was there, I saw it. The police disappeared for several days right after the riot started, yanked out by Gates.

The city burned.

He was a bigot, and incompetent at his job.

[bemildred]

15. The Rampart Scandal was Gates' legacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_scandal