Sunil Dutta

Dr. Sunil Dutta was born and raised in Jaipur, India. He works for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). He is an author, adjunct professor, practitioner of Dhrupad, and a scholar of music and poetry. He is the president of the North American Dhrupad Association.
Dr. Dutta was a scientist before he decided to join the police. He is a scholar of Urdu mystical poetry and an Indian classical music form called Dhrupad. Dutta was born and raised in Jaipur, India. He obtained his BS from Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, India. He came to the US for his graduate studies, obtaining his MS from the University of Florida, Gainesville and his PhD from the University of California, Davis. He received his Masters degree in Security Studies from Naval Postgraduate School/Center for Homeland Defense and Security.
Life
Sunil Dutta was born and raised in a refugee family in India. His clan was a victim of religious holocaust in Punjab that accompanied the partition of British India in 1947. Many of his family members were killed in the violence and were forced to flee from their lands where they had lived for many centuries. Dutta grew up in Jaipur, India.
Career
After spending some time working as a researcher and completing his doctorate in biology, he became disillusioned with science and left academia. After leaving science, he joined the Los Angeles Police Department. Dutta is the founder of a dissolved non-profit corporation, the North American Dhrupad Association, which promoted ancient Indian classical music. He is recognized as a unique police officer and has produced journalistic works. Besides writing for periodicals, he has published a book of poetry translations with Robert Bly. Dutta has published some rare audio recordings of Dhrupad music. death penalty, revenge, religious fundamentalism, and police reform. He has given many poetry recitals with Robert Bly. Dutta teaches music, art of poetry translation and is a criminology instructor. He has taught at-risk students in the inner city of Los Angeles at the high school level. At the graduate level, he has taught biology, ecology, criminal justice, and human trafficking. Currently he teaches terrorism studies at the graduate level. He has organised several music concerts in Los Angeles area and instituted scholarships for music students.
Controversy
In August 2014, in response to unrest over the shooting of Michael Brown, Dutta penned an op-ed for the Washington Post in which he argued that police should be permitted to escalate to the use force against peaceful people for their failure to follow police orders, saying "if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you" and further asserting that civilians should not "challenge me" and to "just do what I say." Conversely, he also stated, that "Community members deserve courtesy, respect and professionalism from their officers." Dutta's op-ed generated significant controversy, with many criticizing him for shifting responsibility away from officers and onto regular citizens, while requesting "unresisting submission to police without argument or even legal protest". The Washingtonian summarized the piece as saying "In other words, shut up and take it, because even the slightest bit of intransigence is grounds for the cops to unleash a world of hurt." while The Huffington Post concluded that "...in the face of countless instances of officers...brutalizing suspects...it is unfair -- and even un-American -- to suggest that 'not the cops, but the people they stop' are primarily responsible for avoiding this harsh and often illegal treatment." The op-ed was widely satirized, including by Gawker.com using the headline "Cop Pens Touching Op-Ed: Do Everything I Say And I Won't Kill You." Some media outlets, such as the Dallas Morning News, defended the op-ed, saying "Dutta’s message is that you, citizen, almost always have some control over your situation when faced with a law enforcement officer... Responsibility isn’t solely the province of the person with the gun and badge."

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