It appears that Mark Smith, Inspector General of the Los Angeles Police Department, and Mayor Eric Garcetti planned earlier this year to open a satellite Inspector General’s office in South Los Angeles “when COVID allows.” According to emails I obtained recently, Garcetti aide Jeff Gorell, Smith, and Police Commission President Eileen Decker were ready on July 9 to announce this publicly.

On July 7 Gorell emailed Garcetti to inform him of the plan, in which the satellite would have “some capacity for in-person report-taking and meetings [and] staffed 2 days per week.” Apparently Garcetti nixed the announcement, though, because it was never made.

According to Gorell’s later email to Decker they’d decided “to postpone the announcement of the satellite IG office until later when we can couple it with other UOF reforms.” The point being, I guess, that Garcetti intended the satellite office, like the use of force reforms, to placate people protesting daily to express their disgust for LAPD’s apparently unslakeable thirst for blood.

Well, I haven’t heard about this plan again, and I haven’t heard much of the ‘other UOF reforms” either. I guess none of it seemed so important while MEG thought he was on his way to Washington? Or something like that. Anyway, read on for a transcription.

1. This email is chronologically first but the only copy I have is quoted in the reply. So I can’t be sure that Gorell was writing to Eric Garcetti and Mark Smith here, but that’s sure how it appears.