LAPD

LA Police Commission Spends Full Meeting Discussing Report on Biased Policing

Taylor Walker
Written by Taylor Walker

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Police Commission made an unusual decision to set aside a full meeting to discuss the issue of bias in law enforcement and a 143-page report from the LAPD that looks at how the department prevents and eliminates biased policing compared with agencies in Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington DC, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle.

Back in September, the commission passed a motion by Commissioner Cynthia McClain-Hill directing department officials to collect information on how each department defines biased policing or racial profiling, the number of complaints against officers and how many of those complaints were upheld, as well as how many sworn each department has and the demographics of the cities they police.

McClain-Hill introduced the report after an Internal Affairs Quarterly Report revealed that the department had—once again—not upheld any complaints of biased policing, which includes a racial, gender, disability, anti-LGBTQ, and other forms of discrimination. During the first half of 2016, there were 209 reports of bias, none of which were sustained. And since 2013, none of the more than 1500 civilian complaints of bias have been substantiated by the LAPD.

Tuesday’s meeting was held at city hall instead of the usual location within the LAPD’s headquarters in order to fit the standing room only crowd.

According to the report, the LAPD has made “significant strides over the past decades” toward stamping out discriminatory police work “that damaged its relationship with communities and compromised the legitimacy of policing in Los Angeles.”

The report points to a number of reforms that the department has implemented, including updating training, developing the Community Safety Partnership (CSP) program in 2001, and prioritizing constitutional policing, in part by bumping the civilian position of Special Assistant for Constitutional Policing to the level of Assistant Chief.

Also included in the report, was a survey of 2000 residents that found under half of African Americans see LAPD officers as honest and trustworthy, compared with nearly three-quarters of white respondents and 71% of Latinos and 68% of Asians. When asked if LAPD officers treat people of all races fairly, less than half of the respondents said yes.

KPCC’s Frank Stoltze says the LAPD report “suggests any problem with bias is more a public perception than a reality.”

It’s hard to prove that a cop “was motivated or specifically intended to discriminate against a suspect based on the suspect’s race, ethnicity, or another protected characteristic,” the report reads. The department is able to take action when a racial slur or other explicit evidence of bias is involved. And, according to the report, LAPD officials have taken action—including termination—in instances of inappropriate remarks or “observable” discriminatory conduct. Implicit bias, however, is harder to prove, the report says.

Of the 10 agencies the LAPD looked at, only San Diego, San Jose, and Washington DC had sustained any allegations of bias in the last five years.

For further reading, the LA Times’ Kate Mather, Cindy Chang and James Queally have more on the issue.

2 Comments

  • So what the report is actually stating is all the training the police have done to end biased police – is working. Success should be accepted, not criticized. This report proves that biased police are NOT a problem.

  • Training to end biased, cultivated a bigger screen play with the 3 course buffet. Training offices serve as so-called success programs? Look at the design, the purpose, and the hidden corkscrew. Specifically used to settle combined all-in-one exchange, by malicious witnesses false documents, xfile shared accounts, interagency tasks with no inside oversight for workers barred by inadequate review, nondisclosure, and victumized threats. Using FS as the loop blackhole which magic forces vanish identities and relationships, pushing for a floating seat to swipe and drain a necessity of relocating, reuniting, a safer and healthier unrestricted counteractive selectable model, uniquely detailed for special private interaction and expert guidence. Eliminating bystanders that hold back needed funds by portal restrictions, dirty involvement of risk assessment, using commissions recommendations from nonrellivant medical and peer family retailation to secure futher work for a grey case zipcode, interlocking the victims future and tie in digital slavery and superficial, trust accounts.

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