Experts claim much racial profiling results from a subconscious bias held by cops against minorities
Over a three year period, the Los Angeles Police Department investigated 1,356 bias complaints against its officers. The result: Not one of them was found to be valid. Cops 1,356 – Citizens 0.
I cannot possibly imagine how none of the 1,356 complaints were sustained and neither can Matt Johnson, president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, LAPD's civilian oversight board.
Johnson told the Los Angeles Times, “I don't think anybody believes that there are actually no incidents of biased policing. Anti-bias training is critical because a lot of this stuff is happening in our subconscious, and we need to be talking about it and dealing with it."
Anti-bias training is well and good, but how can you train the subconscious mind of a police officer.
In an address to the Congressional Black Caucus, President Obama said that "Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement — guilty of walking while black or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness..”
Obama must have been talking about tactics such as stop-and-frisk. While that particular tactic has reduced the number of black-on-black shootings, it has also caused some collateral damage by inconveniencing and offending some law-abiding black citizens that were stopped and frisked. Then there is the politically incorrect racial profiling cops do when they pull over someone, black or white, who looks out of place in a particular location. It’s a good, longtime police practice, but it carries with it the same collateral damage that stop-and-frisk does.
And Bob Walsh previously said: “If I were to see a young white man walking down the street on one side and a young black man walking down the street on the other side, and you were to ask me which one is more likely to be an ex-con, my answer would be the black man. Blacks represent about 12% of California’s population, but about 30% of the prison population. The ability to do math does not make me a racist.”
Does that mean Bob Walsh has a subconscious bias against minorities? Or me? Or all those L.A. cops?
2 comments:
Cultural Diversity and Anti-Bias training cannot change the way the world is.
Cynicism grows each day a police officer works. By the time an officer has twenty years on the job they have seen too many bad things and people to be unaffected.
No amount of training can erase this fact.
When the police Field Train a new recruit with a seasoned veteran officer, they have just immersed the rookie into a biased world of law enforcement. The rookie will soon learn to be biased too. This is because profiling solves crime.
Smart criminals know this and are seldom caught.
A person can steal more with a pen, suit and tie than someone wearing sagging pants and a Black Lives Matter shirt.
If a corporate employee steals $100,000 from their employer by cooking the books and gets caught chances are they will receive probation.
If a shit bird robs a liquor store with a weapon and gets away with $30 they will more than likely do hard time.
You cannot train the subconscious mind of a police officer or the conscious mind for that matter.
If a corporate employee commits a $100,000 robbery by pen, he should also go to prison. A shit bird who commits a robbery by gun should go to prison, no matter whether he got only $10 or $100 from his heist.
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