LAPD Blues

In the Tuesday night time slot normally reserved for "NYPD Blue," ABC last night eshewed scripted police drama for the real thing, airing "Peter Jennings Reporting: LAPD," an intense look at the seemingly hopeless war in South Los Angeles.

Jennings spent much of his time with LAPD Police Chief William Bratton (above, with Jennings), who lamented the thin resources he's been given to stop the intense bloodshed caused by nonstop gang warfare. (ABC sums up the special here.) Bratton's issues are two-fold: Not only is the LAPD short-staffed ("Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the country, is spread over 450 square miles, and has only 9,200 cops," ABC notes. "By comparison, New York City covers an area of 300 square miles, and has 37,000 cops."), but LA's indifference to the violence is more than disheartening.

And this is most telling: Even Bratton more or less admits that the small size of the force eventually turns cops more or less corrupt: "It's all been about command and control," he said. Understaffed police departments "adopt tactics that eventually alienate them from the communities they're trying to police."

Ultimately, the best the cops can do is keep the violence in check. Said one cop to Jennings: "We're here to maintain control between civilization and utter chaos."

Los Angelenos prefer not to think about these things, and indeed it's easy to avoid traveling south of the 10 -- out of sight, out of mind. So it was heartening to see that, at the very least, the Jennings special won its time period here in L.A., on KABC (7.7 rating, 12 share). The program was up against the Miss Universe Pageant on KNBC (5.8/9) and a "Judging Amy" repeat on KCBS (4.7/7).