When Army Sargeant Valerie Deant showed up at North Miami Beach gun range for target practice,
she couldn't believe her eyes. A Miami police department sniper team was using photos of her brother and other men as target practice. Her brother, pictured in the bottom middle, had bullet holes through his eye and forehead.
Her brother, Woody, who was arrested for drag racing 15 years ago, was now a sniper target. It was unthinkable how this could happen at all—particularly in the tense racial climate between police and many of the communities they are serving. As protests and public outrage grew, a few changes have been announced, but many still feel it's not enough.
On Monday, North Miami Beach Police Chief J. Scott Dennis announced an end to the policy of using real mugshots.
“This sort of mug shot drill has been suspended indefinitely and ceases to exist as part of our training,” Dennis said. “A policy change has been initiated and the new procedure will be that no one will be shooting photographic images in the future.”
For the city council, however, the police chief’s statement was not enough.
“We need to make a statement at this level, as the elected representatives of this city, that that practice is unacceptable,” Mayor George Vallejo said at the meeting. He then introduced an ordinance that would prohibit police from using real ‒ not stock ‒ photos for target practice, WPLG reported.
The ban passed.
While the practice may now be banned, so many questions remain. In what world did police ever think this was okay? Did anyone ever raise an objection? If not, what does that tell us about the depths of insensitivity? How were the pictures really chosen? Were they really used for some type of "facial recognition program" as the police described? If so, how exactly did that program work?
This is ugly and it's despicable we are even having to face this issue.