“Those who join must have at least a 2.0 grade-point average and submit a written recommendation…[and] cannot have a serious criminal record.”
By Kate Mather, Richard Winton and James Queally; Los Angeles Times:
The Los Angeles Police Department has long hailed its cadet program as a successful partnership between police and the city’s young residents. The initiative is designed to help cadets develop life-building skills, bond with officers and volunteer at events such as Dodgers games and the L.A. Marathon.
But on Wednesday night, three of those teenagers crossed paths with city police officers in a way that LAPD officials surely hoped would never happen — when they became suspects.
Racing through the streets of South L.A. in a pair of stolen police cruisers, three teenage cadets led LAPD officers on car chases that ended in separate crashes, Chief Charlie Beck said Thursday afternoon.
The chases sparked an investigation that revealed some of the cadets may have also stolen a bulletproof vest, two stun guns and two police radios, the chief said.
Instead of learning from officers, Beck said, the cadets “may have been impersonating” police while driving the stolen cruisers in Central and South Los Angeles and Inglewood.
The embarrassing incident has prompted a “top-to-bottom” review of the cadet program as well as the systems the LAPD uses to check out and track its equipment.
“We’re going to look at this, we’re going to look at how they did it, and we’re going to make sure it can’t be done again,” Beck said.
The teens, who were not identified because they are minors, were arrested in connection with the theft of the cruisers and other LAPD property, Beck said. All three teens are members of the cadet program and from 15 to 17 years old, Beck said. He added that all three teens were involved in the vehicle thefts but that it was not immediately clear which teens were involved in the theft of the other equipment.
US Customs and Border Protection Gets Bullish with Hiring Thousands of New Agents
By Stephen Owsinski; OpsLens:
As we are currently aware, the success of President Trump’s border wall project is going to require an additional 15,000 federal agents, 5,000 of which are slated for Customs and Border Protection (CBP). It is no secret that the volume of new federal cops will be difficult to amass. There has been chatter of lowering standards to help fill vacancies quickly. This doesn’t bode well for our nation’s national security.
OpsLens has already published a few pieces on lowering hiring standards in law enforcement. One article focused on former President Obama’s backwards police reform initiatives. Another article analyzed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), CBP, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) mulling the idea of lowering hiring requirements.
Another OpsLens article concentrated on the robust push to strengthen federal immigration enforcement. Despite any perceived or acknowledged contentions, it seems CBP recruiters have stepped out of the box and into unorthodox arenas to attract otherwise untapped candidates.
To read rest of article visit OpsLens.
