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02/26/2008: "The Truth According To Bill Bratton"

As a cop, William Bratton has seen all. Before becoming the current chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, Bratton served terms in the same role for both Boston and New York, and brings an East Coast no-nonsense approach to the job. A good example? Bratton was recently asked his opinion of a proposed law that would restrict the paparazzi in their seemingly insane pursuit of celebrities. It was clear that Bratton understands where the real root cause of the problem lies ...

What we need is Britney Spears to stay home instead of traipsing all over town. That would solve the problem. We don't need additional laws.... I've got laws coming out my ears to deal with this issue.

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What you have is several young women in this town and several young men basically making fools of themselves and tying up not only my resources but the resources of the media that would do better covering legitimate stories instead of a bunch of airheads running around out there....

Quite clearly some of these characters so favored by the paparazzi are clearly in need of services. Not police services, but psychiatric services.

Slam! Finally ... someone who will say what we all feel.

The amazing thing to me is the absolute lack of media coverage of his statement. His comments, made on Patt Morrison's KPCC radio program, were first reported last week by Kevin Roderick's excellent LA Observed blog, and subsequently repeated on other sites. But where was the mainstream media - the same folks who will dedicate two reporters and a helicopter to cover Britney's latest frappuccino run? Why would they spend so much time covering paparazzi and not these comments?

Oh, that's right - they're all Hollywood's bitch! Say anything other than niceties about the starmaking machine and watch your ad revenue go down the toilet. No wonder no one takes the LA Times seriously any more.

I liked Bratton right from the moment he kicked off his broken window repair program in the depressed parts of LA, and I like him even more now ...