'Watch your back,' LAPD chief tells rank-and-file in wake of Baton Rouge and Dallas attacks

‘Watch your back,’ LAPD chief tells rank-and-file in wake of Baton Rouge and Dallas attacks

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck speaks at a recent graduation for the department's newest officers. The ceremony was held the morning after a deadly sniper attack in Dallas that killed five officers.

By Kate Mather

July 18, 2016 4:42 PM PT

Citing his concerns over copycat violence, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck detailed Monday the steps the LAPD has taken to better protect officers after what he described as a “cowardly attack of assassination” on police in Baton Rouge.

Although there have been no specific threats to officers in Los Angeles, Beck told reporters Monday that the LAPD would keep the precautionary measures in place indefinitely.

“We will closely monitor what is going on in the rest of the country,” Beck said, a black mourning band covering his badge. “I am concerned that people that are inspired by the division and polarization that is occurring over this issue may take up arms against the Police Department.”

After the shooting in Baton Rouge on Sunday, Beck said, the LAPD boosted resources to back up the patrol officers who handle calls across the city.

More police helicopters are flying to provide information to the officers on the ground. The department’s entire Metropolitan Division — about 500 officers known for their elite training — has been pulled off crime suppression details to protect officers responding to calls. Those 911 calls are also being vetted “to make sure that we are not responding to false calls in order to lure officers in for ambush,” Beck said.

Beck sent a video to his officers Sunday, saying he wanted to make sure that officers were “as safe as we can be.” “Watch your back,” he said. “Watch each other.”

The chief said Monday that he’s also visited different LAPD stations to talk to the rank-and-file. The department’s psychologists are doing the same, he added.

“I find them to be — as we all are — a little bit bewildered,” Beck said.

Law enforcement officials across the country have been rattled by Sunday’s shooting in Louisiana, which left three officers dead and came a little more than a week after a deadly sniper attack on police in Dallas. The shootings occurred amid flaring tensions over race and policing, heightened by two high-profile police shootings that killed black men in Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights, Minn.

Beck said he was “stunned” when he learned of the latest violence in Baton Rouge.

“The events in Dallas were not only professionally vexing but emotionally taxing,” Beck said. “To see that happen again, to see the absolutely senseless act against men and women who were trying desperately to keep a community safe, is very distressing.”

In his remarks to reporters Monday, Beck again touched on themes that have emerged in his recent comments about the violence across the country. He called for a stronger dialogue, the need to bring different sides together to talk about how to prevent violence as a whole.

“Those police officers in Dallas, those police officers in Baton Rouge had nothing to do with the incidents that have caused so much friction,” he said. “This is a time for empathy. This is a time to understand that everybody has legitimate concerns that need to be addressed — but don’t address those things through violence.”

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