SYNDICATED COLUMN: 14 Years Ago, a Woman Vindicated Me Now
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A woman walking down the street in West Hollywood saw a police officer roughing up and handcuffing a man, whom he accused of jaywalking. Appalled, she challenged the officer. “Take off his handcuffs!” she demanded.
Noticing the commotion, more passersby approached. Soon a small crowd of people had gathered around. Some people shouted at the officer to stop. Others mocked his aggressiveness, sarcastically suggesting that his unfulfilled sexual desires explained his behavior. Surrounded by pissed-off citizens, the cop replied with a smirk: “I’m SO scared.” Others stood and watched, witnessing.
This happened 14 years ago. The man was me.
None of us knew that the cop, Officer Will Durr, was secretly capturing the audio of my arrest on a tape recorder — some of it, anyway.
Last week, a LAPD dub of Durr’s tape savaged my career in journalism, which can never be the same. But then that woman’s angry voice — “Take off his handcuffs!” — vindicated me. It was a kind of time travel. This woman, yelling on Melrose Boulevard on October 3, 2001, changed my life on July 30, 2015.
I wish I could go back in time so I could kiss her.
Or do her laundry. Whatever she wants.
About two weeks ago, someone at the LAPD and/or LAPPL (the LAPD police union) gave the dub of Durr’s tape to some unknown person at The Los Angeles Times. Despite obvious gaps in their credibility and logic, the Times used the tape as its justification, not to merely fire me, but to internationally shame me with a “Note to Readers,” signed by editorial page editor Nick Goldberg, that accused me of having lied about the cop’s actions during my 2001 jaywalking bust. In journalism, that’s a career death sentence, and Goldberg knew it.
What Goldberg didn’t know was that the real liars were the LAPD. And what Goldberg didn’t learn was one of the first rules of journalism: check it out.
If I brought a tape to any editor worth a damn, she’d say: have it analyzed and checked for signs of tampering. Not Goldberg, or Times reporter Paul Pringle, who was assigned to investigate me. They “authenticated” the tape by — get this — asking the cops whether their own tape was legit.
The answer to that question turned out to be: Not so much.
Thank god for technology. Despite Officer Durr’s apparent attempts to cover up those unpleasant remarks from the angry crowd by whistling into his mic, and covering it up, audio technicians were able to clean it up enough to reveal the truth.
“Take off his handcuffs!” That line, and many others, proved that I’d been cuffed, and that there had been an angry crowd — two crucial bones of contention. In the court of public opinion, I’d been vindicated.
The truth: which I’d been telling. The truth: which the cops did not. The truth: which the LA Times doesn’t care about — I’m still fired. The now-discredited “Note to Readers” is still up, with no mention of the secrets revealed by the enhanced audio tape.
But the truth is out. I have a fight ahead of me, sure. But I couldn’t defend myself without it.
There’s no way that woman could have known, or knows now, that her declarative statement — “Take off his handcuffs!” — was or ever would do any good. She, and the other witnesses, probably felt angry and impotent and helpless in the face of obvious injustice by an agent of the state.
If the woman on Melrose, whom I would kiss if I could, remembers this incident, it’s likely as just another time where she got involved but accomplished nothing.
But she’d be wrong.
My case serves as yet another example of the importance of stepping forward to witness, document and interfere with unfairness and state violence whenever you can. If, for example, you see a cop hassling someone, document the stop with your cellphone camera (don’t comment or talk because it blocks other sounds). If you dare, speak truth to power by demanding the officer’s badge information and name, and asking that he stop what he’s doing. Even if you just stand and watch, you greatly reduce the chances of another brutal police killing or maiming.
As a white man, I’m lucky. I suffer only a small fraction of the disgusting greed and brutality of corrupt police officers experienced by black and other people of color every day. I’m grateful.
One small way I can show my appreciation for my privileged status in American society is to speak out, like here, about my own experiences with bad cops. Because if it’s happening to white guys like me, you know it’s even worse for people of color.
In this case, however, I couldn’t have done it without that voice from the past, that beautiful angry ghost from 2001. So: witness. Document. Fight back.
It really does count.
(Ted Rall, syndicated writer and the cartoonist for The Los Angeles Times, is the author of the book “Snowden,” the biography of the NSA whistleblower, to be published August 25th. Want to support independent journalism? You can subscribe to Ted Rall at Beacon.)
COPYRIGHT 2015 TED RALL, DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
Tuesday’s LA Times – LAPD Scandal Media Roundup
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Yesterday, I sent an email to several right-wing blogs asking them to retract their previous repetitions of the LA Times Editor’s Note about me. Right Wing News, which has frequently attacked my politics and my work in the past, writes that, after listening to the new enhanced audiotape of my 2001 jaywalking arrest, it is difficult to determine what happened, and that there is significant doubt that the LA Times should have fired me, as opposed to airing the police’s disagreement with my account:
Right Wing News: Was The LA Times Right To Fire Ted Rall For Supposedly Lying About A 2001 Encounter With The Police?
The New York Observer has published a followup to their initial report:
New York Observer: Former LA Times Cartoonist Mulls Lawsuit
I was vindicated. So why is the LA Times still lying about my journalistic integrity?
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Last week, the LA Times fired me for lying in an article I wrote for them about getting arrested for jaywalking. The Los Angeles Police Department gave the LA Times an audio recording they said proved that what I wrote hadn’t happened. It was 20 seconds of talk plus six minutes of noise. Neither LA Times reporter Paul Pringle, tasked with leading the investigation into me, nor LA Times editorial page editor Nick Goldberg, bothered to authenticate the tape or to analyze it.
With my reputation on the line, I did what the LAT should have done: I hired a professional post-production company in L.A. to take a look at the LAPD audio tape. The cleaned-up version shows shows that everything I said about the incident but that the LAPD denied was, in fact, true: the LAPD officer had been rude, so much so that he attracted a crowd of angry onlookers who shouted at him repeatedly. He did handcuff me, as I wrote.
You can listen to the tape, and read a transcript, here: http://anewdomain.net/2015/08/02/ted-rall-lapd-la-times-second-enhanced-tape-reveals-all
A timeline of developments in what is being called “The Ted Rall-LA Times-LAPD Scandal,” including numerous links, is here: http://anewdomain.net/2015/08/02/ted-rall-lapd-la-times-scandal-timeline
Anyone who would like to analyze the LAPD-provided recording (.wav format) themselves is welcome to write me via the Contact form at Rall.com.
I am exonerated.
There is no doubt now. I am completely vindicated. Yet, strangely, Goldberg’s career-killing “Editor’s Note” remains on the LA Times website. The paper not only refuses to issue a retraction, it won’t apologize or give me back my job. I can only conclude that the LAT is engaged in a malicious attempt to destroy my reputation with its defamatory smear, and ginned up the ridiculous charge that I lied as an excuse.
I hope that fair-minded readers will be able to set aside their politics and other personal biases, and consider both sides of the story.
I told the truth. The LAPD lied. Without checking their story, the LAT believed the LAPD. The Times should do the right thing, and the LAPD should take appropriate action against Officer Will Durr, as well as the police officials who illegally leaked the tape to the LAT to get me fired.
Ted Rall
My Letter to LA Times editorial page editor Nick Goldberg
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This morning, I wrote the following email to LA Times editorial page editor Nick Goldberg.
Dear Nick,
On Tuesday of last week, you published “A Note to Readers” indicating that The Times had serious doubt about the veracity of my May 11, 2015 blog post and, as a result, would no longer be publishing my work. Those doubts, you wrote and told me on the phone, were based upon an audiotape of my 2001 jaywalking arrest given to you by someone at the LAPD.
As I informed you Thursday, new information has since come to light confirming my account. As I have maintained all along, I told the truth. Will Durr, the LAPD officer who ticketed me in 2001, lied when he told Internal Affairs that he did not handcuff me, that there was no angry crowd, etc.
I asked an L.A.-based company, Post Haste Digital, to analyze the LAPD-supplied audiotape. The enhanced version of the audiotape, which you can listen to here:
http://anewdomain.net/2015/08/02/ted-rall-lapd-la-times-second-enhanced-tape-reveals-all/
proves beyond a reasonable doubt that your “doubts” were, as I told you repeatedly, completely unfounded and utterly without merit. You did not allow me to defend myself to the members of the editorial board, or to allow them to ask me questions. You treated me as though I was guilty until proven innocent, as though the burden of proof was upon me to prove that my story was true, rather than for the police to prove that my version was not. Your logic and reasoning were bizarre and incomprehensible, as when you questioned why I did not angrily protest the arrest while I was in cuffs — although I clearly stated that I had been polite and compliant in my blog and in my complaint to Internal Affairs. You believed the LAPD narrative based on a tape that appeared to be mostly noise.
You do not seem to have investigated the provenance of the tape, though it was provided by the LAPD, which has a long history of institutional violence, corruption and law-breaking. Despite the LAPD’s poor reputation for truth-telling, you did not take the basic step of having it independently analyzed for authenticity, or to see if additional data could be found on it. It fell to me, after your editorial smear, to do what you should have done yourself, with your far greater resources than I, a freelance cartoonist earning $200 per cartoon plus $100 per blog.
As a result of your poor judgement, I have been defamed in the pages of a major American newspaper and on hundreds of websites on the Internet. You have deprived me and my family of an important source of income and a prominent position in the world of journalism. You have tarnished my reputation in a way that I will never be able to fully repair.
What you have done to me is shameful. The chilling effect you have had on American journalism, sending the message that a major newspaper will fire a journalist at the request of the police, without solid proof, and to attempt to destroy his reputation, is incalculable.
In light of this new information, Nick, I hereby request that you retain, and not destroy or modify, all communications, records and information currently in your possession and control pertaining to me and my work, and that you direct all employees of The Los Angeles Times to do the same.
In light of the new information on the audiotape, I further request that you issue a full retraction of greater or equal prominence, of your July 27 “Note to Readers.” I request that you tag the original Note to indicate that it is incorrect.
In light of the new information, I request that you issue a formal apology in the pages of the Times, including your description of how you came into possession of the tape, who gave it to you or the Times, explain why you didn’t bother to check the tape, and that you ask an ombudsman or independent journalistic investigator to look into this fiasco.
In light of the new information, I request that you restore my cartoons and blog to the pages of the Los Angeles Times.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Ted Rall
Published at ANewDomain.net: “Ted Rall LAPD Scandal: Second New Tape Reveals Startling Details”
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Originally published by ANewDomain.net:
Update, Aug. 2, 2015: We now have the latest enhanced version (v. 2) of the Los Angeles Police Department tape dub that cops used to convince Los Angeles Times editors that Ted Rall lied in print about police mistreatment on a 2001 jaywalking stop on Melrose Ave. The Times fired Rall early last week as a cartoonist and columnist based on that tape.
But this latest pro-enhanced version, released by Rall and aNewDomain today, Monday, Aug. 3, 1 a.m. Pacific, conclusively backs up Rall’s story that LAPD officer Will Durr in fact handcuffed him in front of a crowd of loudly protesting onlookers. The LAPD and Times never bothered to enhance the 6:20 tape, six minutes of which was incomprehensible static. But we did. Here’s Rall on this new tape, which even clearer and more damning than the version we released late last week. – Ed
By Ted Rall, with Gina Smith reporting.
aNewDomain
— Three weeks after 9/11, I was walking on Melrose Avenue in the West Hollywood section of Los Angeles. I had just appeared for a taping of the TV show “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher,” at nearby CBS Television City’s studio.
I was buoyant. There, I’d met former MTV VJ Kennedy. And Woody Harrelson, who was hanging out in the green room, had just told me he was a fan. I was having a great night. I was on my way to dinner with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, agent, radio producer and some friends. I crossed the north side of Melrose at the corner of Gardner Street. With the light. In the crosswalk.
That’s when the cop, LAPD Officer Will Durr, appeared.
Officer Durr (shown at right) angrily accused me of jaywalking, though he would’ve known full well I did no such thing if he’d actually watched me cross Melrose.
He threw me against a wall. I’m a big guy, so that’s saying a lot. Then he handcuffed me and began writing up my ticket. As he wrote it up and I stood there, stunned and cuffed, an angry crowd of people gathered on the street; many of them loudly protested his mistreatment of me. He whistled, strangely, in response to most of the comments of the people giving him a hard time. And then he was done, he threw my license in the gutter.
On May 11, 2015 I wrote about my experience in a blog for the website of The Los Angeles Times, where I’d been a cartoonist and commentator since 2009. (It was a long relationship. The Times ran my syndicated editorial cartoons since the early 1990s.)
But last week, on July 27, Times reporter Paul Pringle and editorial page editor Nick Goldberg (pictured at left) called me at my New York home office. Based on an audiotape I never knew existed, one that Officer Durr clandestinely recorded on the scene 14 years ago, they told me my May 11, 2015 blog post was a lie.
According to the LAPD and that tape that someone at the LAPD gave them (the Times refuses to answer questions from reporters, so we don’t know who slipped it to them), they believed I had never been handcuffed, there had been no angry crowd and no nasty toss of my license. And they said they believed the tape evidence alone made it clear that, based on the tape and the tape alone, I was a liar.
Pringle played me the tape. The audio was awful (listen here). The 6:20 tape contained only about 20 seconds of semi-audible speech — and lots of bizarre whistling. But the majority of the tape — fully six minutes worth — was incomprehensible noise and static.
The LAPD and the Times made no apparent attempt to enhance, or authenticate, the LAPD-supplied audio using commonly available audio technology and talent. Nevertheless, Goldberg informed me, I was fired, based on that tape. Not only that, I would be publicly humiliated. The next day, he published an Editor’s Note announcing my firing and the LAPD’s allegations in the print and online editions of the newspaper. It took me two days to come up with the first enhanced version. Still mostly inaudible, it revealed at least one bystander’s voice loudly asking Durr to “take off his handcuffs.”
The audio engineers we hired at Post Haste Digital to clean it up gave us this new tape, the newly enhanced version of the tape we’re posting now, early Aug. 3, 2015. It gives a really clear idea of what went down October 3, 2001 at the corner of Melrose and Gardner.
See the full transcript below the fold. And listen to both tapes below. Caution: Both contain adult language, including obscenities, frank sexual innuendo and vulgar language not suitable to family viewing or listening.
Here’s the newly enhanced version of the LAPD police tape dub (release: August 3, 2015)
For comparison, here’s the original LAPD-made dub of LAPD Officer Durr’s personal tape of the incident, as supplied to the Los Angeles Times as “proof” that I was lying.
Transcript of the New Tape
3.364 – Officer Will Durr, to Ted Rall: “You have an ID?”
7.570 – Officer: “the LA County Police Department, the reason I stopped you, you got a red light, and you just walked across just as free as you wanted to, so…”
15.654 – Ted Rall: “I’m really sorry, I totally missed”
16.902 – Officer: “That’s alright, you’re gonna get a ticket for it, I need you to take that out, of your wallet, please.”
30.585 – “Is this your current address? ‘kay…”
34.173 – Click Click (may be handcuffs going on)
(at this point, Ted is waiting, and probably handcuffed, while officer writes ticket)
55.363 – Officer whistles
1:00.580 – Officer hums
1:03.186 – Unintelligible noise – possibly zipper. (Note: Officer may be attempting to cover up microphone by zippering uniform more, as he notices bystanders coming closer.)
1:26.700 – Voice, female
2:05.207 – Voice, unclear if male or female
2:13.000 – Voice, female
3:00.314 – Officer whistles, possibly to cover up her voice
3:07.426 – Voice, unclear if male or female
3:13.662 – Voice, unclear if male or female
3:17.756 – Woman1 (possibly Asian): “Why’d you handcuff him?”
3:21.672 – Voice, male
3:22.549 – Woman1: “Why’d you…”
3:26.706 – Ted talking to Woman1: “, and I’m from New York,” Woman1: “yeah!” Ted: “So I can say that.”
3:33.351 – Woman1, to Ted: “You just tell him…”
3:35.000 – Officer whistles while Woman1 yells
3:37.864 – Woman2, to officer, disgusted: “Don’t think about his family”
3:39.621 – Ted, protesting: “I have a right to a ”
3:43.500 – Woman1, agreeing: “Yeah”
3:46.442 – Woman2, incredulous: “So he’s really detaining him?”
3:47.000 – Woman3: “He was just jaywalking… you need to take off.. no, take off his handcuffs!”
3:54.073 – Officer: “No no no no. First, I’m giving him a ticket.” Note: The officer is admitting that Ted is handcuffed.
3:57.179 – Woman3: “Then take off…”
4:01.305 –Woman2, disparaging officer: “He’s overdressed”
4:04.845– Woman2, mocking officer, disgusted: “Let’s go murder some widows!”
4:06.730 – Woman3: “Stop it!” (shouting)
4:07.063 – Officer: “I’m doing the right thing.”
4:11.736 – Woman2 mocking, “You’re gonna make a big tip!”
4:14.054 – Woman2, mocking officer, “I’m just a big girly-boy, give or take”
4:15.908 – Possibly woman3: “He’s behind him, this makes it…”
4:18.738 – Woman3 or 4, British, “Don’t forget to ride his asshole!”
4:21.054 – Officer, mocking back: “Well, I appreciate it.”
4:22.209 – Woman1 , mocking officer: “Here, fuck me and get over it!”
4:23.450 – Woman2, to officer: “I mean, don’t you got other problems going on in LA right now?”
4:27.114 – Officer responding to woman2, “Not especially.”
4:28.192 – Woman2, disgusted: “Well, go over there.”
4:31.198 – Officer, mocking back “Oh, I feel really scared.”
4:36.500 – Officer, humming into mic.
4:34.500 – Officer, humming into mic.
4:51.452 – Officer: “Alrighty, sir, you’ve been cited for 21456(B) of the vehicle code”
4:58.224 – Officer, sarcastic: “Here, I’ll take that until we’re done, there ya go” – (Here he seems to be referring to taking off handcuffs, so Ted can sign ticket
5:00.930 – Officer: “You did a violation, so…”
5:04.436 – Officer: “I need you to go ahead and sign at the X, you’re not admitting guilt …”
5:08.094 – Officer: “It has the before the you”
5:11.948 – Ted, withdrawn: “ ‘kay… can you tell me how much it is?”
5:15.317 – Officer: “’Scuse me?”
5:16.000 – Ted: “Can you tell me how much it is, or?”
5:17.352 – Officer, sarcastic tone: “No, we don’t know how much it is. There, I’ll show you a number on the back of the ticket. You can call and find all that information out as well as where you can go if you want to fight the ticket, or any other options.”
5:36.719 – Officer, sarcastic tone: “Here’s your license back…”
5:42.644 – Click, then scuffle noise – This may be license hitting the ground and the sound of Ted getting down to pick it up
5:46.048 – Officer: “Copy of your citation, like I said, there’s a lot of information on the back, you might wanna read it..”
5:50.766 – Ted, “Do what? Okay..”
5:53.400 – Officer, sarcastic: “Thank you sir… what?”
5:58.158 – Ted:
6:00.428 – Officer: “You know what? This is my first month here, so I don’t know any of the local eateries, unfortunately… I don’t hang out down there. Alright, have a good day.”
6:16.276 – Officer: “Contact complete.”
Select Clip – Optimized
Below, find a comparison between the LAPD dub the police gave the Times as proof that I lied about the crowd and the handcuffing and the newly enhanced (v. 2) tape we received from audio engineers on Sunday, Aug. 2.
3:17.756 – Woman1 (possibly Asian): “Why’d you handcuff him?”
LAPD-supplied audio clip:
Enhanced audio clip:
At this writing, spokespeople for neither the LAPD or the Los Angeles Times have returned our reporters’ repeated calls for content. And Goldberg’s Editor’s Note, which explains Rall’s firing as a result of the original tape’s contents, is still online.
For aNewDomain, I’m Ted Rall.
Special thanks to: Audio Enhancement by Post Haste Digital, Los Angeles
Additional reporting: aNewDomain editor-in-chief Gina Smith, aNewDomain senior ed/investigative reporter, Nancy Imperiale and aNewDomain legal analyst Tom Ewing of aNewDomain and SkewedNews.
SYNDICATED COLUMN: L.A. Confidential: How The LAPD Conspired To Get Me Fired From The Los Angeles Times — And How I Proved They Lied
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On Monday night, I was in tears.
The editorial page editor of The Los Angeles Times, which has run my cartoons for six years, had called me to tell me that the paper would run an “Editor’s Note” announcing that they were firing me because I had lied about my treatment by a Los Angeles police officer when he arrested me for jaywalking in 2001.
I was about to be disgraced. Compared to Brian Williams and Jayson Blair. As a journalist, nothing is worse than being accused of willfully lying about a story. It’s the end of your career.
You’re dead.
Tuesday, when the piece appeared in print as well as online, word spread like wildfire that the police had a secret audiotape of my arrest. I had written in the Times that I had been treated rudely: shoved, handcuffed, and finally, the cop tossed my driver’s license on the ground. The audiotape, claimed my editor, proved that none of that had happened. It was, in fact, a polite encounter with a friendly officer.
The Internet exploded. Predictably, right-wing blogs led the charge, dutifully transcribing editor Nick Goldberg’s accusations against me, which he accepted at face value from the LAPD: Breitbart, Newsbusters, the usual gang of idiots. Soon Twitter was full of taunts. My email filled with mirthful, snarky insults.
Amid the chaos of my career falling apart. I asked people familiar with audio technology to check the LAPD-supplied tape, which contains about 20 seconds of talk and 6 minutes of unintelligible noise, for signs of tampering — and to see if there was any way to clean it up.
On Friday morning, I woke up like a kid on Christmas morn. But what I found in my in box was better than a bike and a skateboard: an enhanced audiofile that proves, unequivocally, that I was telling the 100% truth when I wrote that essay in May.
On the tape, you can clearly hear a female bystander shouting at the LAPD officer who’d stopped me for jaywalking to “take off his handcuffs.” She yells this twice.
Officer Will Durr responds first with a “No, no, no … ” and then by whistling loudly into the mic.
The enhanced tape clearly proves that the cops are lying, not me — and it even suggests cops might have knowingly tampered with the tape.
You can listen to the tape at ANewDomain.net. My incident is at the 03:30 mark.
You can hear a female witness — a witness the LAPD convinced my editors at the Times did not exist and I was making up — on the tape. She protests: “He was just jaywalking … you need to take off … you need to take off his handcuffs.” She says that at 3:30 and repeats it at 3:50.
To this, LAPD Officer Will Durr replies: “No, no, no, no, no.”
When the bystander persists in protesting the cop’s handcuffing my wrists, LAPD Officer Durr whistles. At the time of the incident, I was puzzled by his whistling, which seemed like unusual behavior. Now I believe I understand, that it is the officer’s technique to tamp down sounds (like protesting bystanders) that he doesn’t want on the recording.
The recorder was on his uniform secretly. I had no idea the encounter was being recorded or that a copy existed until this week.
Any way you look at it, the Los Angeles Police Department is lying. Cops lied when they said that I didn’t get handcuffed. They lied when they said I was mistaken about the presence of protesting witnesses. And they lied when they told my editors at The Los Angeles Times that I’m a liar who should be fired.
And the Los Angeles Times believed the LAPD, not me, their columnist. So they sacked me.
We know the officer deliberately used whistling to alter the recording. It is also clear that he deliberately muffled it.
It is the job of the media to question authority, not to blindly defend it and eat its own.
Even in its defense of the LAPD, the Times couldn’t be bothered to do due diligence. Editors made no effort to investigate longtime traffic Officer Will Durr’s bizarre claims that he has never, ever handcuffed anyone. I exposed that lie yesterday. The Times didn’t even bother searching its own website before siding with the LAPD.
If they can’t type “Will Durr” into a search field, I suppose it’s too much to expect the LA Times could be bothered to track down a sound engineer in L-friggin’-A?
Classic Streisand effect: In their attempt to discredit me and destroy my reputation as a journalist, the LAPD wound up discrediting themselves and further eroding its own reputation. And they’re taking the Times with them.
But the LAPD’s reputation has, of course, already been destroyed by decades of police brutality, systematic corruption and fatal police shootings of one unarmed black man after another.
Will the Times do the right thing: apologize, issue a retraction, and return my cartoons and blogs to the pages of the newspaper? I hope so.
What a week.
(Ted Rall, syndicated writer and the cartoonist for The Los Angeles Times, is the author of the book “Snowden,” the biography of the NSA whistleblower, to be published August 18th. Want to support independent journalism? You can subscribe to Ted Rall at Beacon.)
COPYRIGHT 2015 TED RALL, DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
LAPD Tampered with Audiotape LA Times Used to Fire Me – Which Has Now Vindicated Me
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Originally published by ANewDomain:
Ted Rall-LAPD-LATimes Battle: New Tape Proves Cops Lied [exclusive]
EXCLUSIVE — Audio engineers hired by Ted Rall and aNewDomain today released a cleaner version of an audio tape Los Angeles police used to convince Los Angeles Times editors to fire political essayist and cartoonist Ted Rall early this week. It is damning.
On the tape, you can clearly hear a female bystander shouting at the LAPD officer who’d stopped Rall for jaywalking to “take off his handcuffs.” She yells this twice. Officer Will Durr responds first with a “No, no, no … ” and then by whistling loudly into the mic. Listen for yourself, below.
The LAPD and the Times have been claiming that the original version of the tape, released on Monday, proved the officer did not handcuff Rall or otherwise rough him up as Rall had written in a May 2015 Times column. They claimed the tape proved Rall was lying. That was the basis for the Times abruptly dumping him this week. But this newly enhanced tape clearly proves that the cops are lying — and it even suggests cops might have knowingly tampered with the tape. Why? We’re pursuing this developing story. For now, here’s what Ted Rall has to say about the tape and what you’ll hear on it. – Ed
aNewDomain — We now have an enhanced version of the LAPD tape that cops used to convince the Los Angeles Times to fire me as its political cartoonist and blogger this week.
On the cleaned-up version of the tape, which you can hear below, just advance the recording to minute 3:30. You’ll hear a female witness, one the LAPD told my former editors at the Times I was lying about, and one they said didn’t exist, on the tape. She protests: “He was just jaywalking … you need to take off … you need to take off his handcuffs.”
She says that at 3:30 and repeats it at 3:50.
To this, LAPD Officer Will Durr replies: “No, no, no, no, no.”
When she persists in protesting the cop’s handcuffing me, LAPD officer Durr whistles. At the time of the incident, I was puzzled by his whistling, which is unusual behavior for a cop. Now I believe it’s his technique to tamp down sounds (like her) that he doesn’t want on the recording. (The recorder was on his uniform, secretly.) Any way you look at it, though, this proves he and the LAPD are lying: Cops lied when they said that I didn’t get handcuffed, lied when they said I lied about the presence of protesting witnesses, and lied when they went to my Times editors and called me a liar.
Listen for yourself:
So we know the officer deliberately used whistling to alter the recording. It is also clear that he deliberately muffled it.
It’s the media’s job to question authority, not to blindly defend it and execute on its behalf.
Even in its defense of the LAPD, the LAT couldn’t be bothered to do due diligence. Editors made no effort to investigate long-time traffic cop Will Durr’s bizarre claims that he has never ever handcuffed anyone. We disproved that cop’s lie yesterday. They didn’t even bother searching their own website.
If they can’t type “Will Durr” into a search field, how can they be bothered to track down a sound engineer in L friggin A?
Classic Streisand Effect: In their attempt to discredit me and destroy my reputation as a journalist, they wound up discrediting themselves and further eroding their own reputation, which has already been destroyed by decades of police brutality, systematic corruption and fatal police shootings of one unarmed black man after another.
Two shorter clips, enhanced differently, follow. Listen to them, below.
So the cops lied. And there are other questions …
The main question is: Why? Why would they lie?
The audio tape was not a public record. No one requested my permission, required under California law, to release it. Did The Los Angeles Times file the required papers to get it?
Did The Los Angeles Times approach the LAPD to request the tape, or did the cops (or a third party, like the LAPPL police union, or the pension fund for cops) approach them?
Did the LAPPL (the police union) which has been gloating on its blog that the Ted Rall incident should be a “lesson” other media outlets should learn from — go out of their way to get me out?
Why would the LAPD spend taxpayer money to dig out an ancient audio tape and go to the trouble of doctoring it, if they did, and transcribing it, which they did, and walking it over to the Times to get me fired?
Under LA law and LAPD rules, an officer must include contemporaneous date, location and other identifying data within each uninterrupted recorded incident — otherwise it’s a violation of citizens’ privacy rights. That info isn’t on the tape, which means it was either illegal, or it was spliced out/tampered with. Which was it?
Also, was it illegal for the Times or the LAPD to get the tape, which isn’t public information, without my approval? Our legal analyst Tom Ewing will be following up with analysis around that question later in the day.
Does the fact that a big chunk of The Los Angeles Times is now owned by Oaktree Capital, an investment firm that itself is powered by billions in investment from the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension Fund, have anything to do with this?
This pension fund, points out investigative reporter Gina Smith, has previously demanded firings of editorial writers and commentators at a San Diego daily, one that the LA Times’ parent company, Tribune Publishing, just bought. Watch for that report, too.
Notes on Audio Enhancement Methodology
The long enhanced version posted here was processed by a technician who wishes to remain anonymous because he lives in Los Angeles, is African-American, and has frequently been harassed by the LAPD. Here is his statement about how he was able to isolate the sound of the eyewitness to me being handcuffed — the one who the Times said didn’t exist, about an act the LAPD said never happened: “I used a noise reduction plugin to diminish hiss, handling, and street noise. An equalizer cuts low frequency rumble and boosts the upper mid range to enhance intelligibility. A limiter brings up the overall volume.”
A different person, who lives near Los Angeles and also prefers to remain anonymous because she fears retaliation by the LAPD, used this longer version to create the two shorter clips. She said: “I’m using audio repair software to remove surface/street noise with de-noise filters, and an equalizer targeting the vocal ranges of the bystanders.”
I have hired a professional audio technician based in Los Angeles to further clean up the tape provided by the LAPD. I will post the results when I get them.
Additional reporting: Gina Smith, Nancy Imperiale and Tom Ewing of aNewDomain and SkewedNews.
My Reply to the LAPD…er, LA Times.
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The Los Angeles Times, which has published my editorial cartoons about Los Angeles and California since 2009, has fired me. The reason: the LAPD supplied them with “evidence” they say proves I lied when I wrote in May that the LAPD falsely charged me with jaywalking and treated me roughly and rudely in 2001. Listen to the audiotaped “evidence” — mostly unintelligible garbage — and read my detailed reply to this disgusting example of journalistic cowardice in the face of a violent and corrupt police department willing to lie to protect itself here, at ANewDomain.net.
Added at 8:08 EDT: Here’s a collection of videos that proves that handcuffing alleged jaywalkers isn’t unusual in LA, and may in fact by standard procedure.
Remotely Fire Guns from Your Very Own Private Drone
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Originally published by ANewDomain.net:
Despite regulations that make weaponized drones illegal for private citizens, videos are popping up on YouTube showing that individuals can fire guns strapped to private drones by remote control. Lovely, isn’t it?
