After dragging his feet nearly interminably, and saying he needed an extra month to decide, and then two extra days past his self-imposed deadline this week to make up his mind, U.S. District Court Judge Gary A. Feess has shut down the federal consent decree that the Los Angeles Police Department has been laboring under since 2001 in the wake of the Rampart scandal and related abuses.
No, all the problems in the department are not fixed.
But it was time.
The ACLU is not happy. The police union is a little bit too happy.
The truth is somewhere in between.
The LAPD still needs lots of self improvement. But it has come a long way, and it doesn’t require the mean daddy to tell it what to do any more.
Our city’s law enforcement officers—and the department’s command staff both—-deserve to be warmly congratulated for their work.
The LA Times has more.
The Daily News does too.
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Photo of Chief Bill Bratton and Deputy Chief Sergio Diaz by Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
I get so tired of the federal government telling states, counties, and cities how to run their schools and departments.
From the LAT: “One of the outstanding issues is the department’s handling of the hundreds of claims of racial profiling levied against officers by minorities each year.”
Yeah, why should the police only target black males for certain crimes when there are so many Swiss-Americans they can check in the process? It’s so hard for liberals to admit the truth about certain cultures because it might “offend.”
Call it common sense rather than profiling.
Well, I messed up the italics above. The LAT quote was only that one sentence.
—For every 10,000 residents, about 3,400 more black people are stopped than whites, and 360 more Latinos are stopped than whites. Stopped blacks are 127% more likely to be frisked — and stopped Latinos are 43% more likely to be frisked — than stopped whites.
Stopped blacks are 76% more likely to be searched, and stopped Latinos are 16% more likely to be searched than stopped whites.
Stopped blacks are 29% more likely to be arrested, and stopped Latinos are 32% more likely to be arrested than stopped whites.
Now consider this: Although stopped blacks were 127% more likely to be frisked than stopped whites, they were 42.3% less likely to be found with a weapon after they were frisked, 25% less likely to be found with drugs and 33% less likely to be found with other contraband. We found similar patterns for Latinos.
Not only did we find that African Americans and Latinos were subjected to more stops, frisks, searches and arrests than whites, we also found that these additional police actions aren’t because of the fact that people of color live in higher-crime areas or because they more often carry drugs or weapons, or any other legitimate reason that we can discern from the rich set of data we examined.
Ian Ayres is a professor at Yale Law School and the author of “Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart.”—
http://www.law.yale.edu/news/8165.htm
This is based on the study that Prof Ayers did in Los Angeles.
Possibly this is the problem Woody. So you’re going to base your opinion on an opinion of Jesse Jackson, who is not an academic, doesn’t do research and probably not even a person you agree with. Your quote by him is the “hook” for your argument that cops pulling over people of color is ok?
Browne
Those statistics are utterly meaningless unless you can tell us that the extra blacks arrested were arrested for no valid reason. Otherwise the arrest statistic shows that the stops are valid.
Furthermore, the extraordinarily high crimes rates among blacks and poor hispanics means that the police would be delinquent in their duty to protect if they didn’t look more closely at members of those groups.
It’s called reality, folks.
Ever listen to a police radio, where they need to actually report the race (among other visually distinguishable features) of their suspects? Guess what… most of them are black and hispanic. Fact – not racism.
Rather than attacking the police, we should be trying to reduce the crime among those populations. Since blacks are the primary victims of black crime, reducing that crime reduces black victimhood disproportionately.
As an example, it is well known that the US had a high murder rate compared to most European country. However, if you subtract murders by blacks from that (and many of those countries have virtually no blacks, so this is a fair test), and our rates drop BELOW theirs.
The black people and the Latinos were stop for no reason. Do you know how to read?
“Although stopped blacks were 127% more likely to be frisked than stopped whites, they were 42.3% less likely to be found with a weapon after they were frisked, 25% less likely to be found with drugs and 33% less likely to be found with other contraband. We found similar patterns for Latinos.”
Your race doesn’t make you more likely to commit crime, your circumstances do. There is a problem when the only factor used to stop use is race. Why do people like John and Woody always have to make it about race?
Using race as the sole determinant to stop people is stupid. It makes crime worse, because you’re not actually looking at a pattern of behavior you’re looking at surface crap that wastes your time and tax payers’ money.
And I love how you selective think some statistics are valid while others don’t count because it’s not making it clear.
Browne
Nobody said that race was the sole criterion. Proper profiling involves using all factors, but that means that race must be major factor in many instances.
You seems to also have a reading problem, imputing a prejudice for race-only profiling that isn’t thjere.
Browne, your statistics are selective and have little value. If the police stopped and frisked white people at the same rates as they do blacks, the results would not prove as productive. You know that it’s true, and Jesse Jackson knows it, too.
Perceptions and profiling are done everyday by many people, and that’s what keeps us safe. Yes, even blacks do it, as I’ve witnessed that with their trust and preferences with whites in business.
However, you would be on the side saying that profiling young Islamic males as potential airplane terrorists is wrong and that security should equally check others, like grandmothers in their late seventies, as they did on a random airport check with my mother.
Your solutions for your grievance would create wasted time and make us less safe.
Browne, thanks for putting up the Ayers stats.
As you point out, one of the most telling sets of numbers is this one:
“Although stopped blacks were 127% more likely to be frisked than stopped whites, they were 42.3% less likely to be found with a weapon after they were frisked, 25% less likely to be found with drugs and 33% less likely to be found with other contraband. We found similar patterns for Latinos.â€
Although I see John and Woody conveniently ignored that.
Celeste, all that means is that whites who are criminals are easier to tell from their fellow whites than blacks from their law-abiding black fellows.
Given that apparent fact, it is appropriate for police to stop blacks more, because there is no other way to tell which are engaging in illegal acts, but the probability of a black in LA engaging in crime is a lot higher than that of a white.
I suspect part of this is due to the media culture glorifying the symbols of black criminals, leading non-criminal blacks to emulate it.
In other words, the police policy is rational if the goal is crime prevention.
Celeste, I didn’t ignore that statistic. However, it’s not very meaningful in light of other factors. Don’t you think that race distinctions are overused by liberals, who are playing the race card, and could result in more criminals getting away with crimes?
But, social activists and blacks overreact more than police, just as with this story.
Black scholar’s arrest raises profiling questions
Wow. Some people have big chips on their shoulders. Couldn’t he just show the police an ID without all of that fuss so that they can do their jobs to protect the neighborhood?
I guess that all honkey police can’t be trusted. Oh, wait. Is that generalizing?