Editorial: You owe another $5 for excessive force by L.A. County sheriff’s deputies. Pay up – and then sue the department.
Updated May 20, 2016 at 11:34 a.m. | If you believe that this was a mistake, go to your sheriff’s office and talk to your sheriff’s union president or executive assistant. If you believe otherwise, feel free to call me at 310.864.2052 and tell me what you believe. I’m also available at 310.621.5808.
If you happen to be an assistant district attorney who believes that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had probable cause to use excessive force against Eric Garner, I’m available at 310.621.5808.
Why all this outrage? Because a lot of people are really mad about what happened here in New York and in other places around the country, including here in Southern California.
For the record, I do agree that there was a lot of excessive force used on Eric Garner, who died after a New York City police officer put him in a chokehold while he was handcuffed. That didn’t happen in California, where the public has now had ample opportunity to take part in one of the most democratic, peaceful, peaceful and fair political processes the world has ever seen.
The public did have its chance in New York, where they elected the de Blasio administration to represent them. They got their chance here, where they elected a Democrat to represent them. That’s where it ended: in the hands of the sheriff of the county and the county’s police officers, a situation where the public had plenty of opportunity to tell the county’s sheriff and the city’s mayor to go look at themselves in the mirror and realize that they’re just that: they’re the mayor and sheriff of the city and county, they know best what to do.
But, for whatever reason, the public is not allowed to vote, because the mayor and the sheriff get to pick who they want to represent them. They get to pick who they want to be their police chief, their commissioner of prisons, their chief of staff, their police commissioners and district
