POLITICS: Another week, another police commission riot

In George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, public employees must participate in a daily ritual called the Two Minutes Hate.

Participants gather in a room and scream at images of their supposed political opponents on a screen. They whip themselves into an ideological frenzy.

In Los Angeles, something similar happens once a week at the Police Commission.

It happened again this week, when a crowd of haters showed up again to scream at police and to harass journalists.

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The radicals are a disgrace to themselves and to the cause they supposedly represent.

Black Lives Matter and other police reform organizations arose to give voice to legitimate grievances in minority communities. 

The protest movement these organizations build demanded accountability from law enforcement.

But those who show up at the Police Commission are simply performance artists, determined to disrupt everything around them. They don’t care who they attack or whom they hurt.

It’s mob rule — or worse, because at least a mob sometimes has the excuse of being a spontaneous gathering. 

These nightmarish outbursts are planned. They follow a script, week after week. And the city authorities do nothing.

The activists aren’t exercising First Amendment rights. You don’t have a First Amendment right to prevent other people from speaking by shouting them down. 

In fact, these rioters — and the word “riot” applies, because that’s what they are doing — are silencing the voices of other Angelenos, especially communities of color, who struggle to be heard as it is.

We hear lots of talk about defending democracy — often by civic leaders, describing the reasons they resist some of the federal government’s policies.

But no one believes you are serious about defending democracy when you allow mob rule in your own city. 

It’s well past time to fix the Police Commission. Shut the mob down.