The Los Angeles Police Department. Ohhhh, how I love to despise thee. Think of Chris Tucker’s line from the movie Rush Hour and try not to grin: “This is the LAPD. We’re the most hated cops in all the free world! My own mama’s ashamed of me. She tells everybody I’m a drug dealer.” In Los Angeles, you can set your watch by the LAPD—they will always do something offensive to the human psyche. This time, it’s absolving themselves of any wrongdoing whatsoever in close to 1,500 complaints against cops over a two-year period.
One thousand, three hundred and fifty-six, to be exact.
Those numbers come from the Office of the Inspector General, the agency tasked with monitoring the LAPD’s citizen complaint process. The agency presented a report to the Los Angeles Police Commission Tuesday morning, December 15th. The Los Angeles Times quotes Robert Saltzman, member of the commission, as follows:
“ … it strains credibility to suggest that ... there were zero instances of biased policing … It should not be surprising that there is diminished trust in the LAPD given these results.”
Umm … ya think?
Of course, no one is surprised that the LAPD absolved itself. No, seriously. We’re not ... and that’s not sheer snark. People really aren’t giving it that much of a second thought. What people are giving thought to is how to create an effective mechanism for determining the bias because—surprise!—that mechanism does not exist. Problems of racial profiling (which the Los Angeles Times says is cop-speak for policing bias) are hard to prove, because how do you prove what a cop was thinking when they stop someone? You need to show a pattern of behavior for that, and for that, you need data. And judging from the fact that close to 1,500 complaints that people actually took the time out of their day to make against police officers were dismissed—well, it looks like it’s going to be on the civilian population to come up with a mechanism and data to establish that pattern of behavior.
Bravo, LAPD. Well done.