The Hardship of Not Acknowledging Past Mistakes
After the verdict was read on April 29, 1992, within the span of 15 minutes the city of Los Angeles was engulfed in flames and riots. The LAPD wasn’t ready and should have been prepared for the inevitable based upon trial outcome. Fast forward 28 years later the criminal justice system has isolated itself from The CDC, business, education, medical, and intelligence communities. The lessons that weren’t learned in 1992 have again presented themselves in 2020 in the form of improper response to the pandemic.
Today as we continue to follow stay at home orders the courts are experiencing tremendous backlog on local state national and federal levels. These delays injustice will strain civil and criminal courts' fiscal and human resources which could result in civil court handling criminal cases to help mitigate criminal backlog. Judges may be on loan from different municipalities, which will impact fiscal and human resources.
This is not a knock on the courts but should serve as a wake-up call, plans must be put in place so that we do not repeat the mistakes of the present. The criminal justice system must establish non-conventual relationships with every aspect of state and federal gov’t that can and will have an impact on the criminal justice system. These stakeholders are local, national (state & federal), and international these stakeholders should include but aren’t limited to CDC world health WHO. Further, these stakeholders must include the business education, faith, law enforcement (state local & federal), media, protection, defense communities, as well as plaintiffs’ bar. This list of stakeholders is not exhaustive and should include stakeholders that were inadvertently omitted.
Training is critical and required, scenarios that could be considered remote should be embraced and have protocols to deal with them. Protocols should be updated as technology and science advances. Tabletop exercises should be established a minimum of twice a year so that all stakeholders will know how to respond in the event protocols need to be activated.
