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It’s Official Again: LAPD Is Not Racist

nytimes.com / Monica Almeida

WTF: The history of the LAPD has been marked by racial conflict and accusations of profiling, though Chief William J. Bratton claims things have changed.

After an internal investigation of over 300 complaints of racial profiling, the Los Angeles Police Department announced Tuesday that not even one accusation of profiling it received last year had merit. Even more ridiculous is the fact that 2007 marks the sixth consecutive year that the LAPD has failed to find any example of race-based misconduct within its ranks. LAPD Chief William J. Bratton defends the department’s purity, saying: “This is not a racist department. It is not a homophobic department. It is not a brutal department.”

The Los Angeles Times:

Los Angeles Police Department officials announced Tuesday that they investigated more than 300 complaints of racial profiling against officers last year and found that none had merit—a conclusion that left members of the department’s oversight commission incredulous.

It is at least the sixth consecutive year that all allegations of racial profiling against LAPD officers have been dismissed, according to department documents reviewed by The Times.

In 2007, the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Group closed 320 investigations into allegations that officers stopped, questioned or otherwise confronted someone solely because of the person’s race. Nearly 80% of the time—252 of the cases—the claims were dismissed outright as “unfounded,” according to an annual complaint report presented Tuesday to the civilian Police Commission. In the remaining cases, there was either insufficient evidence to reach a conclusion or no misconduct was uncovered.

“A big, fat zero,” said a visibly flummoxed Commissioner John Mack, who is African American and the former president of the Los Angeles Urban League. “In my mind, there is no such thing as a perfect institution . . . I find it baffling that we have these zeros.”

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By Jim Yell, May 1, 2008 at 9:26 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

The term racial profiling is used in ways that are just not honest. If an investigation is dealing with a Black Criminal than you don’t waste time investigating a Korean Transsexual. Focusing on those Black citizens who might have history of the type of crime isn’t a negitive thing it is good police work.

Do I think that Blacks are sometime, even too many times receiving negative attention from the police, yes I agree with that statement, but when investigating Black, Brown, Yellow or White crime you don’t waste time looking at the one group that no complaint involves. So too many times we hear the charge Racial Profiling, well maybe sometimes Racial Profiling is the correct thing to do, regardless of which group represents the criminal.

Do we want to be safe on the street or have the police hamstrung in their work. Rodney King, too many forget that while the excess physical force used against him was bad police work, he had a long history of endangering himself, the rest of the citizens and the police, by his habitual refusal to stop when told to, because he was driving while intoxicated. Everyone conveniently forgets that he had a passenger and the police did nothing to the passenger. They were angery at finding this serial drunk once more acting towards them and the rest of the community with complete disregard.

Are the police too often Jerks, Yes but who else would want the job?

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By TDoff, May 1, 2008 at 5:34 am #

cyrena, dear, I realize that porcine pigs are smart. But, other than Bush, I can think of nothing dumber than homo sapien pigs.

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By cyrena, April 30, 2008 at 6:38 pm #

FASCIST PIGS!!! Now how long has the LAPD been known as exactly that? I used to think it was just a ‘radical term’ used by a bunch of hippie dead beats…telling my age here.

And, 35 years later…it’s still true. Actually it’s MORE true now than it was then. The LAPD is 1000% more racist now than it was back in the day.

And, it gets worse every year.

By the way TDoff, pigs are actually kind of smart. (real pigs that is) So bush being dumber than a pig still gives him too much credit.

Think of the very dumbest of anything that you can, and then you can say he’s dumber than that.

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By TDoff, April 30, 2008 at 5:33 pm #

In a related study, top DOJ officials in Washington conclude that LAPD William J. Bratton is ‘much smarter that George W. Bush’, even though this conflicts with general wisdom, which has long determined that ‘Bush is dumber than a pig’.

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By TDoff, April 30, 2008 at 5:26 pm #

On the other hand, top LAPD officials, conducting an internal investigation into over 500 compliments by top LAPD officials that ‘We are running the best damned police force in the World’, and ‘Our s**t don’t stink’, concluded that 100% of the allegations were justified.

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