EDITORIAL
Shades of the 'old' LAPD
The department can't ignore racial profiling, even it's by only a few officers.
Los Angeles Times
November 16, 2010
The U.S. Justice Department's stern warning to the Los Angeles Police Department that its system for investigating complaints of racial profiling is inadequate should stir the Police Commission to action. There is too much history in this city for even isolated incidents of profiling to go unpunished, and the Justice Department has identified troubling instances of perfunctory investigations into serious allegations of abuse.
As the commission moves to demand swift and tough review of those complaints, however, it should note that the department has traveled many miles toward addressing these concerns. Today's LAPD is a far cry from that of the early 1990s, when some officers openly boasted of hostility toward minorities. As those with long memories will recall, it was common for LAPD officers responding to domestic disturbances involving black or Latino families to refer to them as "NHI," the chilling shorthand for "No Humans Involved." And Chief Daryl F. Gates was infamous for his observation that African Americans responded differently than "normal people" to being choked with a police baton.
Today, the department has a chief who has properly deplored such behavior and a rank-and-file notably more diverse than at any time in the LAPD's history. Indeed, of the 9,931 officers on the department's payroll as of last month, about one-third are white (and 710 of those are women). Latinos constitute the largest number of officers in the department, just as Latinos compose the largest segment of the city itself.
In its warning letter, the Justice Department cites a conversation that was recorded without the knowledge of those involved. Told of complaints of profiling against two officers, one colleague responded: "So what?" Another insisted that he "couldn't do [his] job without racially profiling." Those are disturbing remarks, made more so by the fact that no LAPD officer has been reprimanded for racial profiling in recent years. Interviewed by The Times' Joel Rubin, Chief Charlie Beck insisted that the vast majority of LAPD officers take charges of racial profiling seriously and that the comments of those two should not taint the entire department. That is certainly true, but even isolated cases undermine public confidence in the police. The taped exchange is a reminder that racial profiling will only disappear when racism itself no longer exists.
In the meantime, the LAPD needs to maintain aggressive vigilance in investigating complaints and disciplining those officers who still don't grasp the gravity of the injustice they perpetuate when they single out minorities for police action.
