Post by Kasey Kagawa

The police in Los Angeles don’t really have the best reputation for fairness, courtesy and restraint, what with all the beatings and corruption scandals. The relationship between police and various communities would be best described as “bad,” something that idiotic “competitions” like Operation Any Booking won’t do much to improve.

Operation Any Booking was carried out by the LA Sheriff’s Department, and it was basically a competition between various officers to see who could arrest the most people in a single day. According to Lt. James Tatreau, who helped organize the events, “It’s just a friendly competition to have a little fun out here…It’s a morale booster.” Yes, the potential for abuse in that idea is so large that it was tazed three times for simply walking near a police officer, and you’re not the only ones to figure that out. Police watch groups, after their minds allowed them to process the fact that a police agency in Los Angeles would do something so monumentally stupid, issued statements with words like “highly problematic” and “inappropriate” in them. According to the LA Times, the number of overall arrests did not increase, but there was a large spike in the number of vehicle impounds on the day of the event. The Sheriff’s Department has issued a statement that such an operation would not happen again, which is somewhat like shutting the barn door after the horse has already bolted, pulled over a suspect, kneeled on his back with his arm in a lock and then punched him in the face a few times.

There’s a lesson to be learned here for both sides. Police, don’t have contests involving arrests, impounds, or tickets, it only affirms our suspicions that you’re a bunch of power-mad asshats who think that you can act with impunity because you’re the police. People, keep an eye on your police forces. Sure, if you’re not an idiot (or a criminal, the two terms are somewhat interchangeable), you don’t have much to worry about here, but on the other hand, I like my civil rights, and encouraging already somewhat trigger-happy cops by giving them some contest to win for most arrests, impounds, tickets, or whatever is just a little bit too close to living in a totalitarian police state for my tastes.

Report: LA deputies held arrest contests [Yahoo News via Jalopnik]