Chief Bratton Honored with Local Community Award

Los Angeles: On Sunday, March 18, 2007, Police Chief William Bratton became the first-ever recipient of the South Los Angeles Community Barber Shop Award.  It was presented at the Bryant Temple AME Church in South Los Angeles.  The Reverend Dr. Clyde W. Ogden, Jr., is the pastor at the church.

"I am honored to be recognized by Mr. Tolliver and his group," said Chief Bratton.  "Tolliver's Barber Shop is an institution in South Los Angeles that has its finger on the pulse of the city."

Several hundred people were in attendance as the Pastor and church members thanked the Chief for showing great concern for South Los Angeles residents.  The Chief and Mrs. Bratton stayed for the entire service and thanked members of the church as they left.

The award was created to recognize public officials who have made significant contributions to improving the quality of life for residents in South Los Angeles, making it a better place to live, work and play.

Tolliver's Barber Shop has become a local, informal think tank where politicians, journalists, and community activists drop in to discuss important issues of the day.  The shop is located at 1735 West Florence Avenue.  Chief Bratton was selected as the inaugural honoree by a committee made up of regular barbershop members.

Comments

[b&w; op]

Congratulations to Chief Bratton for receiving the Barber Shop Award. Maybe the tide is turning after all in police-community relations in South Los Angeles.

On the other hand, there will be those who are still bitter, vindictive, and unsupportive about everything the police does in Los Angeles. I am speaking about now-councilman and ex-chief of police Bernard Parks. His commentary about the Financial Disclosure and the League's opposition to it in today's Daily News is proof that he still can't believe he was removed from the chief's position. Like Bradley before him, who spent 20 years as mayor "paying back" the LAPD with inadequate budgets for equipment and technology, Parks is now the new "negative" on the city council.

Parks just can't let it go. In his commentary, he continues to act like the compressed work schedule, which he opposed, is the root of all evil in preventing public safety. His commentary also mocks the make-up of the League, and compares the League to armed robbers when they do its members' bidding.

Parks obviously doesn't understand that the League represents its members and does what the members wish done. The Consent Decree should have been fought by city leaders as too costly, too ineffective, and taking too many officers from patrol duties. Unfortunately, the city leadership doesn't have the courage needed to do it.

If Parks thinks that the Fiancial Disclosure Statment is going to identify corruption within the Gang and Narcotics Officers, then he should be a leader in ensuring that the council is corruption-free by completing a financial disclosure on his own financial situation. After all, he is the chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee in the city council. We must be sure he is not being paid off by special interest groups.

I am one of the 17% of the LAPD members who live in this city (Parks' own figures) and as a city taxpayer and voter, I am more concerner with corruption at city hall than I am about police officers taking bribes.

Come on Councilman Parks. Be the first to disclose your finances to public scrutiny.

[Jeff]

Parks should have concentrated on straightening out his own family, under his own roof, before worrying about cleaning house in the Department in regards to corruption, innappropriate behavior, etc!

[SouthEnd P-3]

Come on...we all know Parks is dirty and he's a huge hipocrit. He would never submit to full financial disclosure. If they wanna go to bat with this disclosure thing, how about investigating the idiot who made the final decision to put in Dell computers in the shops. I'm sure there some type of kickback given to that person. Or how about letting the public know Captains get bonuses for the amount of citations written by their division. They wanna play...then let's rock.

[TroyW]

I would like to know when Chief Bratton is going to stand up and defend his officers. I guess the Chief hasn't had rocks and bottles with urine in them thrown at him before. If one is going to attend a rally and protesters get out of control, one doesn't hang around, you get yourself out of there. Removing 60 officers from the streets is the wrong thing to do. "Hey Chief Bratton, how about you stop Cowtailing to everyone" Let's try this one on for size (Illegals, Go Home!!!) The only good thing about this rally was that the 110Frwy was wide open (nice drive)