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Major honor from the Los Angeles Police Historical Society from a tireless supporter of the law enforcement profession
Fifteen years ago Cynthia Brown started American Police Beat, today the nation’s largest circulated, most avidly read publication for the law enforcement profession. Cynthia’s mission was to create a magazine where officers from all over the country could talk to each other about their challenges, problems and successes. In acknowledgement for this special achievement, Brown will be the recipient of the prestigious Jack Webb Award on September 9 in Los Angeles.
Presented yearly by the Los Angeles Police Historical Society, previous Jack Webb Award winners include California Senator Dianne Feinstein; former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan; former California Governor Pete Wilson; Bruce Karatz, chairman and CEO of Kaufman & Broad, one of the largest homebuilders in the U.S. and France; Jay Leno; Jack Nicholson; Dennis Franz who played Det. Sipowicz on NYPD Blue; and Steven Bochco the creator of Hill Street Blues, LA Law, and NYPD Blue.
Brown’s inspiration for American Police Beat came back in the early 1970’s when she was working in an early community-policing program developed by the Boston Police Department. Her boss was Bill Bratton, a young lieutenant in his 20’s who today is chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Cynthia worked with Bratton for three years in a station house in one of the city’s rougher neighborhoods, organizing community meetings between cops on the beat and neighborhood residents.
It was during those years that Brown learned first hand about the enormous challenges that law enforcement officers face day in and day out to serve and protect. She learned first hand about the sacrifice, bravery and courage shown every day by cops on the beat and that these were the stories that the media was largely ignoring. American Police Beat, she hoped, would get those stories told and help set the record straight.
Since January of 1994 when the first issue rolled off the press, American Police Beat has brought the law enforcement profession together, creating a forum where cops all around the country could tell their stories, offer their opinions, and share their experiences.
American Police Beat had become “the voice of the nation’s law enforcement community.”
The third issue featured a front-page story written by Larry Powell, the LAPD officer who served federal prison time for the Rodney King incident. Cynthia had watched the videotaped evidence in its entirety and realized that there was another side of the story that was being repeated constantly in the national press.
“It was obvious that those officers were doing what they had been trained to do – nothing more, nothing less,” Brown said.
That article in American Police Beat was the only time Larry Powell ever talked publicly about what really happened that fateful night when the LAPD pulled over Rodney King.
There are hundreds of stories that would have never been told if American Police Beat hadn’t published them and several of those stories came from the LAPD.
For example, early in the O.J. Simpson trial it became obvious that the defense strategy would accuse the LAPD of framing Simpson because he was a black man. American Police Beat ran many articles written by Los Angeles police officers about that unconscionable strategy of playing the race card to get a murder suspect off the hook.
“I never miss an issue of Cynthia Brown’s American Police Beat,” noted Joseph Wambaugh, the former LAPD sergeant and best-selling writer. “Anyone interested in a view of crime and cops that the popular media do not provide should read it.”
It hasn’t just been police in LA who have benefited from being able to tell their side of the story. After the Columbine school shooting on April 20, 1999, American Police Beat ran an exclusive interview with the SWAT team who were demoralized over the way the media had scapegoated them.
After Amadou Diallo was shot and killed in New York City on February 4, 1999, American Police Beat did an in-depth interview with Sean Carroll, one of the NYPD officers indicted for second degree murder in the shooting. That story, which was picked up by several major newspapers, had a big impact on getting the public to understand that the shooting was a terrible tragedy, not an act of aggression by out-of-control cops.
One month after the attacks of September 11, Cynthia devoted an entire issue to the tragedy, publishing biographies and photographs of every law enforcement officer who was killed in the line of duty on that sad day. An indepth, exclusive interview with the NYPD Commissioner also appeared. Cynthia made sure that that issue was mailed to the home of every officer in the New York City Police Department as well as all sworn personnel working for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Cynthia Brown’s work for the law enforcement profession goes beyond the printed page. Eight years ago she began running a three-day program at the Harvard Law School for the presidents of the police unions of the 50 largest cities in the U.S. Modeled after the Major Cities Chiefs association, this seminar has played a significant role in bringing together big city union leaders for an outstanding academic program at the nation’s leading university.
Perhaps the most dramatic example of Cynthia’s commitment to public safety professionals came after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. When it became apparent these storms were going to be a total disaster for hundreds of law enforcement agencies that found themselves either in the wake or the eye of the storms and tens of thousands of officers, she teamed up with Sheriff Mike Brown of the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia helping to raise over $4 million dollars in cash and equipment for the local police and sheriff’s departments who had been devastated by the hurricanes. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites        
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