As a concerned citizen worried about the direction that law enforcement is heading in nowadays, the next time you contact the Los Angeles Police Department with your complaints, you might want to take the response you receive with a grain of salt.

For instance, after a video of my arrest by LAPD was made public on August 7, people began emailing the department with their concerns. However, what these people didn’t know, was that they were all receiving the same cut and paste, generic response.  Here it is:

Not knowing what was going on, Joan Cichon, a Los Angeles resident, thanked Captain Cory Palka for his “prompt and warm response”.

The public deserves better than this.

As a taxpayer, if I took time out of my day to support a complete stranger by contacting the LAPD regarding their officers’ actions, it would be infuriating to find out that I received some regurgitated, empty response that was sent to everybody else.  It would also force me to believe, that I just wasn’t worthy of their time and energy.

I would like to know how Ms. Cichon feels about this cut and paste email she received.  Does she feel duped, or is she okay with it?

Going further, I also want to highlight the fact, that I filed my formal complaint on August 16, 2013.  LAPD’s responses to these citizen complaints were emailed between August 12, and August 15.  In an LAWEEKLY article from August 7, Lt. Andy Neiman said the following:

So if LAPD didn’t believe my arrest was unlawful, and I didn’t file my complaint until August 16, then why does LAPD’s response to the citizen complaints include this:

“The incident you wrote about is currently part of a personnel complaint so unfortunately I can’t comment on the specifics of the case…”

Well, just because Neiman’s public comments and the timeline doesn’t make any sense, there actually is a reason why that statement is in there.  And I’ll be writing about it next week.

To see the rest of the emails, click on the below link.