ABOUT SGT. MITCH
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Sgt. Mitch started in law enforcement at the age of 15, as a co-founding member of the Culver City Police Explorer Program in 1973.

In the LAPD, Sgt. Mitch was elected Class President for his Academy class of September 9, 1981, and graduated as the “HONOR CADET” from the LAPD Academy, having the highest score in academics and the highest overall score in academics, physical fitness, shooting, and defensive tactics.

Sgt. Mitch went on to promote faster than any other officer at the time, being selected to work for Chief Gates in 1983, as well as in counter-terrorism and with the Department of Defense (DOD) in 1984 to protect the USC-Exposition Village Olympics site, overseeing 3,000 officers.

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Sgt. Mitch was a highly decorated officer, receiving 175 letters of commendation for his work with the “Homeless” as the Officer-in-Charge of the Pacific Area (Venice) Beach Detail, as well as two formal Commendations from the Los Angeles City Council, the ONLY such work with the “Homeless” to not result in a single complaint or lawsuit, saving the lives of six homeless people, two of whom were women. His Master’s Thesis paper about “Homelessness & the Changing Police Response” still serves as the rulebook for interaction with the homeless population to this day, being the LAPD Guide for 29 years.

Sgt. Mitch received medals for his protecting the Olympic athletes in 1984, security for Pope John Paul in his historic 1987 visit to Los Angeles, the single largest security contingent for a single individual in the LAPD’s history, providing supervision and liaison with FEMA following the San Francisco earthquake in 1991, for responding to the “Civil Unrest” and stopping vandalism and looting, endangering his life following the Rodney King beating in 1992, and serving as a Field Supervisor during the devastating earthquake in Los Angeles in 1994.

Following the publicity from his groundbreaking lawsuit against the LAPD's discriminatory practices, Sgt. Mitch created the first formal support group for Southern California gay and lesbian law enforcement, fire, rescue, lifeguards, paramedic professionals, and all “First Responders.” Sgt. Mitch also formed and hosted the first State and National conferences for gay officers in California.

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Sgt. Mitch's training in the martial arts and meditation started in elementary school at age 11, training first in Judo and then in Kung Fu, receiving a Bronze Medal for Judo in the California Police Olympics, as well as a Silver Medal in the International Gay Olympics held in New York for the difficult skill of using two sets of nunchakus.

Sgt. Mitch continues to this day to help keep a martial arts school open in Los Angeles, having trained for 38 years in Hapkido, under Grandmaster Bong Soo Han for 29 years, with Master Han being the first martial arts Master to ever appear in an American film, in the movie “Billy Jack.”

Sgt. Mitch also trained with the legendary LAPD Detective Robert Koga, an expert in Aiki-Jujutsu (Sgt. Mitch renamed “The Koga Method” in the 1990’s for articles he wrote for martial arts magazines about Koga Sensei that were outside the sphere of law enforcement to “Koga Aiki-Jujutsu,” and the Koga Institute later shortened this to “Koga Jutsu”) and the founder of the LAPD’s Defensive Tactics, with Koga being the first police officer on the West Coast to create a “less-than-lethal” tactical curriculum, made up of arrest and control, riot and demonstration response, and handcuffing and baton techniques, to prevent Officers from relying on their police baton to beat people over the head, or their firearm, which causes harm to both the officer and the person who is shot or killed – as well as the loved ones of the officer and the person who was shot – with Koga Sensei’s goal to be that neither the subject nor the officer is injured. Sgt. Mitch was the only LAPD officer to train under Koga Sensei after he retired from the LAPD.

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Since 1977, Sgt. Mitch has been a major activist for women (especially women in law enforcement), Black Americans, Native Americans, Latinos and Spanish-speakers, and Asian/Eastern peoples, having been the only Caucasian in his college to complete the “African-American Studies Program” in a TBI (“Traditionally Black Institution”), as well as the “Ethnic Studies” (Latino), “Native American History,” and “Eastern/Asian Religions & Philosophies” courses in his University studies, in addition to training in Korean, Japanese, Spanish, German and Hebrew languages.

Sgt. Mitch has been a member of gay and lesbian Armenian and Iranian organizations, and he has spent more than two decades volunteering his expertise as a cultural diversity expert by co-writing textbooks for police academies and colleges, and conducting “Cultural Diversity” training throughout the Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Long Beach, and Orange County Unified School Districts, in colleges and universities, and for professional organizations, especially those for therapists, social workers, and juvenile and adult criminal justice and psychological/psychiatric practitioners, private and governmental.

Sgt. Mitch is most proud of being one of the first community leaders to expand the traditional “gay and lesbian” civil rights movement to include bisexual and transgender persons, as well as those living with HIV and AIDS, as well as the partners of these individuals, demanding in the Settlement of his 1995 lawsuit that the entire City of Los Angeles rewrite ALL Administrative Codes, Municipal Ordinances, and Mayoral Decrees to provide the same protections for bi, trans, and HIV positive individuals as he had put into place with his 1993 lawsuit settlement for gay men and lesbians - impacting employment practices for every Department in the City as well as the Los Angeles Police Department - to prevent them from disqualifying, harassing, discriminating, and terminating people who apply for the many jobs offered by the City of Los Angeles or are already working for the City, with protections and complaint procedures protecting not only gay men and lesbians, but specifically giving the same protections to bisexual and transgender persons, as well as those living with HIV and AIDS.

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