Commentary
Here are Just Some of the Reasons LAPD Chief Michel Moore Must Resign
He’s stolen over $1 million in taxpayer dollars through a program former LA mayor Richard Riordan has called “a total fraud.”
The Los Angeles Police Department appointed Michel Moore as its chief in 2018. Of the three candidates for chief, Black Lives Matter organizer Dr. Melina Abdullah called Moore “the candidate most disconnected from the community.” So Moore began his tenure on bad terms with Black Angelenos, and during his two years as chief, it’s only gotten worse.
He scammed the city’s retirement program, champions racist, predictive policing, and recently compared protesters to the cops who murdered George Floyd.
Here are just some of the ways Michael Moore has looted the city of Los Angeles:
Michel Moore retired, collected a $1.27 million pension, then the city hired him back. He receives $240,000 in pensions per year on top of his $350,000 salary.
In January of 2018, Michel Moore retired from the police force and collected a pension of $1.27 million dollars, as well as $170,000 in unused sick and vacation days. Just six months later, LAPD appointed Moore as the police chief of Los Angeles.
As an officer with the LAPD, Moore enrolled in the Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) program, which pays law enforcement their pensions, as well as their salaries for the last five years of their careers. The program allows police to nearly double their pay. It’s so controversial that many cities, such as San Diego and San Francisco, have abandoned the DROP program entirely, citing its cost.
When the LA Times asked former mayor Richard Riordan about the program, he flippantly admitted, “Oh, yeah, that was a mistake.” The City of Los Angeles created the DROP program for police officers under pressure from the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL), a police union that routinely shields officers from accountability. Riordan, who approved the program, called it, “a total fraud.”
Police chiefs are supposed to be exempt from the DROP program; former police chief Charlie Beck did not receive his DROP payout when he took the job. But Moore took advantage of an “informal program” called “the bounce,” which gives police chiefs the authority to bring back retirees for up to a year. He brought back Michel Moore just before June of 2018, when he became the Police Chief of Los Angeles.
Since 2008, LAPD has used “the bounce” to bring back five detectives, sergeants, and captains, not including Moore. The LA Times asked LAPD officials when “the bounce” might be useful; their cited example was a “homicide detective whose case might fall apart if he weren’t personally available to see it through to conclusion.”
Allegedly, Beck hired Moore back on the police force as a temporary chief until he could find a proper replacement. But as of June 2020, Moore has been back in office for over two years, far exceeding the “up to a year” precedent of former bounce beneficiaries’ terms.
Moore champions predictive policing, which is proven to target Black and Hispanic populations.
In 2011, LAPD adopted a predictive policing program cleverly called PredPol. PredPol analyzes data and determines where crimes are most likely to be committed. It then dispatches police officers to those areas to prevent said crime.
But as the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition points out, because LAPD targets Black and Latinx Angelenos at must higher rates than white Angelenos, the crime data on PredPol will predict crime in areas frequented by Black and Latinx residents. The software only serves to reinforce the cycle of discrimination.
As Andrew Ferguson, a law professor who studies predictive policing, puts it, “If you unthinkingly develop a data-driven policing system based on past police practices, you’re kind of going to reify past police practices.”
But Moore stands by predictive policing, despite the fact that it’s racist, ineffective, and expensive — LAPD spent $50,000 on the software in 2019. Moore said, “I believe in it… I believe in location-based strategies.”
Moore announced in 2020 that LAPD would end its use of PredPol, but made certain to mention it was because of financial restraints, and not the years of activism from local Angelenos. In one vague and difficult-to-parse quote, Moore said “The cost projections of hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on [PredPol] right now versus finding that money and directing that money to other more central activities is what I have to do.”
Moore said protesters are just as responsible for George Floyd’s murder as the police who actually murdered George Floyd.
When Eric Garcetti held a press conference the Monday after Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd, Moore condemned Angelenos protesting against police brutality. He said that Floyd’s death is “on [protesters] hands, as much as it is on those officers.” Moore equated protesting — or at worst looting multinational, billion dollar corporations — with kneeling on a man’s neck for over 8 minutes until he died.
After public outrage, he walked back his comments: Moore said, “I misspoke when I said his blood was on their hands… I regret the remarks of that characterization, but I don’t regret, nor will I apologize to those out there creating destruction. [Floyd’s] memory deserves better.”
But it’s clear that his original words are the ones by which he’s governing his police force, who have tear gassed and brutally beat protesters in the streets of Los Angeles. As of June 2020, LAPD is under investigation for 56 allegations of misconduct at protests, 28 of which involve use of force.
He won’t release body cam footage of police brutality at protests to the public.
Although the LAPD doesn’t have enough body cameras for every officer who worked the protests, Moore won’t commit to releasing the footage in cases where protesters accuse an officer of force. Moore says the individuals who suffered at the hands of LAPD would have access to the videos, but that they would not be made available to the public.
It’s not like there are a dearth of videos showing LAPD’s excessive use of force toward protesters, but Moore’s lack of public transparency is telling.
He was responsible for two fatal shootings.
Early in his policing career, Moore shot two men while on duty. One shooting occured in 1985, when a loading dock worker pointed a handgun at nearby drivers, and then at Moore. Moore shot him. The man survived, and the police chief at the time, Daryl Gates, ruled the shooting in-policy for the LAPD.
Moore took the life of a man several years later as a security guard at a shopping mall. The man shot and killed his ex-wife with a rifle in the parking lot. When he aimed his weapon at Moore, Moore fired his gun, fatally shooting the man in the head.
He lied about LAPD’s involvement in installing anti-homeless planters.
In March of 2019, Daniel Ellinger, a former employee with Red Studios, approached the police department about a “sidewalk cleanup.” This coded language involves pushing people who are homeless out of the area and seizing their belongings. Senior Lead Officer Eddie Guerra with the LAPD encouraged Ellinger to install the planters: “Officer Guerra made it clear that [installing planters] was still only a temporary fix though it would be better than power washing while pooling more resources to beautify the actual street.”
In a conversation MichaelKoohlaas.org obtained between Officer Guerra and Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell’s field deputy Dan Halden, Guerra directly asks Halden if he can install planters in the area after police performed a “sanitation,” which is, again, coded language for displacing people experiencing homelessness.
He said, “We will come back and do our best to schedule a sanitation to this area as well, I’ll keep you posted with the date. Any chance on putting plants in those areas after our clean up.”
Despite evidence of the LAPD’s involvement in installing anti-homeless planters, Moore continues to deny that the department supports this measure.
Moore admitted that the DROP program — which again, paid him $1.27 million — “Would benefit from some adjustments,” but none that would affect him.
After the LAPD hired Michel Moore back as the police chief, he went on to vaguely criticize the program that made him a millionaire. He said DROP, “would benefit from some adjustments.”
Police Commission President Steve Soboroff agreed: he said, “I think the program needs a lot of work.” Moore proposed that officers on disability leave should only be able to collect their salaries, not pension payments, while they’re not working.
Conveniently, Moore said nothing of officers who leave for six months, come back as police chief after collecting over $1 million, then make a cool $600,000 per year in salary and pension payments.
It’s obvious Michel Moore does not truly care about the safety and well being of all Angelenos—it’s time for him to resign.
We’re always looking for new LA stories. To share yours, reach out to us at: pitches@knock.la
