Florida Police Caught Using Photos of Black Men for Target Practice

You’ll never guess how the North Miami Beach police got found out using mug shots of black citizens to practice their shooting. Army National Guard Sgt. Valerie Deant, a soldier who used the shooting range last month after the cops’ training session, recognized her brother’s face on one of the targets that had been pierced by bullets.

Though you’d be hard-pressed to come up a term other than racial profiling to describe this, the department’s police chief says it’s no such thing. He also added that no one will be punished for using actual citizens’ faces as targets.

And we wonder why the racial turmoil in this country has reached the boiling point.

BBC News:

The six targets left behind by police were found last month by Sgt Deant, a band member of the Florida Army National Guard.The photo of her brother Woody Deant had been taken after his arrest as a teenager for drag racing. It had been shot several times.

Mr Deant said he was “speechless” when he heard the news.

“Now I’m being used as a target? I’m not even living that life according to how they portrayed me as. I’m a father. I’m a husband. I’m a career man. I work nine to five.”

Police Chief Dennis said they were “very very concerned” that one of the targets had been of a man who would be on the streets of North Miami Beach [and] said that the department would no longer use images of suspects they had arrested.

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—Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata