Talk:Los Angeles Police Department/GA2

GA Review

The article in my opinion if very far from GA standarts. Some examples:

1) The lead is inadequate. It is too short and does not summarize the article. It actually contains a general statement about the department, and then proceeds to the movies and shows—the least important information, in my opinion. So the lead should be completely rewritten.

2) The first section is strange. It has an ambitious title "Resources, mobility and technology", but informs the reader only about the number of helicopters. The main article contains more information, of course. The author here tries to use summarry style and fails. So the first section should be rewritten to better summarize the main article. Other sections including 'History', 'Riots of 1992', 'Police chiefs' have the same problem—they are too short and do not summarize the main articles. The 'Rampart scandal and consent decree' section is both too short and too long. It does not adequately summarize the main article, but goes into unnecessary details about the consent decree (and contains too many lists).

3) Some examples from the second section:

"unlike most suburban departments surrounding the city of Los Angeles, in which many departments deploy officers in one-officer units in order to maximize police presence and to allow a smaller number of officers to patrol a larger area." It should be "unlike most suburban departments surrounding the city of Los Angeles, which deploy officers in one-officer units in order to maximize police presence and to allow a smaller number of officers to patrol a larger area" instead. The second mention of "police departments" is not necessary.

Another example: "Pay and benefits, however, are a plus to new LAPD officers, whom are among some of the highest-paid police officers in the country." I think it should be "who", not "whom". The style of the sentence is not ecyclopedic. Please, use more formal language.

These examples from the second section are not exaustive, because the article is full of such language. Clearly, a copy-edit by a person not familiar with text is necessary.

4) "Limitations" is a strange title for the third section. The section is actually about the staffing and problems with it. The section says: "The present Department Chief, William J. Bratton,". Please, do not use "present". Write something like "William J. Bratton, Department Chief as of ...,".

5) The Organization section looks like a long list. Try to reduce the number of subheadings. The fine divisions that are used in this section are not necessary.

6) The table in 'Rank structure and insignia' should use two columns to save space.

7) I am not satisfied with the general structure of the article. I would prefer the following order of sections: History, Organization (including Police chiefs as a subsection), Staffing (based on current Limitations, Force composition and Fallen officers sections), Work environment, Resources (based on current Resources, mobility and technology and Weapons sections), Awards, commendations, citations and medals (the name of the department should not be repeated in the section titles), Controversies and The LAPD in popular media.

8) The refs have defects as well. Some of them are absent (I marked them with {{cn}} tags). Reflist has problems: titles of some refs are bolded, but should not, some refs are malformed (51,78). The autoformat of dates is implemented incorectly in many cases (and should be avoided altogether per a recent change in WP:MOSNUM). The bold font should not generally be used inside the article.

Since I do not think that the article can be improved during one week, I will fail it. Ruslik (talk) 10:02, 25 August 2008 (UTC)