Joel Rubin, Los Angeles Times, January 14, 2009
The Los Angeles Police Department on Tuesday rejected the findings of a study that found its officers frequently discriminate against African Americans and Latinos when making traffic and pedestrian stops.
Top LAPD officials, speaking before the civilian commission that oversees the department, acknowledged that minorities are more frequently subjected to searches and other action during stops than are whites, but dismissed the claim of widespread racial profiling among officers and defended the department’s efforts to address the issue. They also attacked the study, saying that analysis of data from traffic and pedestrian stops cannot accurately determine whether officers are biased.
Police Chief William J. Bratton said the study, released in October by Yale University legal scholar Ian Ayres and promoted by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, was “of no value.”
“We live in an imperfect world. There are many issues and questions for which unfortunately there are no perfect answers. This issue of bias and profiling is one of those issues,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of concerns about their conclusions. This department does not engage in racial profiling.”
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The main objection by Bratton and others to Ayres’ report is that data on police stops do not adequately take into account other factors and circumstances that influence the officers’ actions. Police officials also said the statistics do not reflect the anti-bias training officers now receive or other changes, such as the recent launch of a program to install video cameras in patrol cars.
Working with data from five years ago, Ayres found that once stopped, African Americans were 29% more likely than whites to be arrested. Latinos were 32% more likely to be arrested in an identical category. He also found that blacks and Latinos were far more likely to be frisked or subjected to non-consensual searches than whites. At the same time, he concluded that officers were less likely to find weapons or drugs on blacks or Latinos than on whites when they frisked them or subjected them to consensual searches.
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Original article
Email
Joel Rubin
at joel.rubin@latimes.com .
(Posted on January 14, 2009)
Comments
The Latino arrest rate would be higher if not for L.A.’s Special Order 40.
What would shut the ACLU up is if LA’s pullover stats were compared with a survey of people to see if they’ve been victimized and who they have been victimized by. The FBI Uniform Crime Report does this for this very reason, and year after year they discover there is no large-scale profiling.
Again, racial profiling is a device used by the ACLU, MALDEF, and other “protected groups” in order to escape the law and gain more power for their agenda.
If racial profiling was as useless as implied, the coppers wouldn’t be wasting their time doing it. The fact is, profiling is an EXCELLENT way of doing policework, especially if the neighborhood is one of those so-called “mixed” ones.
Ayres found that once stopped, African Americans were 29% more likely than whites to be arrested.
But if you are looking for racial profiling, you’ll be able to find it regardless of the circumstances. If after being stopped, Blacks were 29% less likely than Whites to be arrested, then you’d hear certain people shouting, “Look! It’s profiling because of all those innocent Blacks they are stopping!”
You mean Mr. Bill Bratton actually had a voice?
I wish these police politicians would finally just come out and say “Yes, we engage in racial profiling—because minorities prportionally commit much more crime, and because race is always one key element of a suspect’s description…if you don’t like it, too bad, complain to your minority leaders and tell them to chastise their followers instead of the police, who are merely doing their job.”
IF a hundred arrests are made involving 80 of these Profiled People and 20 are from other recognizable groups, WHY would a policeman be as watchful of three 70 year white old grandmas as he is of three young blacks dressed in Gang Colors? What the (H) is wrong with some of these peoples minds?
I have never figured out what the ACLU actually wants. Are they saying they want to increase the number of random pointless stops and searches of white people to balance out the score card, or do they just want the cops to look the other way on petty offenses, and only arrest blacks and latinos for the most horrific crimes?
A black ACLU lawyer actually gave this same lecture at my college a few years ago and also never really explained. A likeminded classmate shared my confusion and asked him what the police were supposed to do if minorities actually DO commit more crime. He got all in a huff and started making wild claims that white people commit the MOST crime of any ethic group claiming that we all engage in massive amounts of white collar crime which he claimed is never prosecuted do to the racist justice system. He then pointed to Enron which was the big news story at the time, which drew whoops and hollers of applause by the fawning college students in the audience.
In many areas, actually MOST areas of Los Angeles it is difficult to find either a motorist or pedestrian who is anything other than hispanic.
With the census count is 40 percent hispanic and the actual count of the city at least 70 percent hispanic, how can officers avoid hispanics either as victims, perps or witnesses to crime or in this case, most of the motorists in hispanic neighborhoods.
“Ayres found that once stopped, African Americans were 29% more likely than whites to be arrested. Latinos were 32% more likely to be arrested in an identical category.”
There are only 3 reasons to arrest a motorist after a traffic stop.
(1) Drunk or drug impaired driving.
(2) Outstanding warrants.
(3) Drugs, open liquor bottle unregistered guns and weaponry in the car.
There are all good reasons for these arrests. The Highway Patrol has the highest warrant clearance rate of any law enforcement agency in the state. This true of most states.
The reason for the high rate of warrant clearance is because many HP officers spend 8 hours a day driving the roads and freeways making traffic stops.
Thus they stop a wide range of people. Many of the people stopped have outstanding warrants and the law requires they shall be arrested.
Furthermore, felons, thugs and criminals tend to not follow the rules no matter what they are doing. Thus they park where they please not worrying about parking tickets. They drive well over the speed limit, do the rolling stop thing against red lights and just blast through stop signs.
Thugs and felons get a lot more traffic tickets and stops because of this. I worked with some black guys on the 3-11 shift. Because the freeways were clear when we got off work a lot of them got tickets several times a year for driving home at 85 or 90 miles per hour.
They were always indignant about it and talked about the ticket for days. “Nobody else was on the freeway, why shouldn’t I drive as fast as I want.” The fact that the highway patrol is out there looking for speeders made no difference to them. They never learned the lesson that there are speed traps, that with so few people on the road at that time of night they would be spotted.
As for teh hispanics, most blacks are well aware of the drunk driving laws. They went through driver’s ed. So they are less likely to drive drunk than hispanics.
Hispanic immigrants get drunk and drive all the time.
That’s why these poor unfortunate victims of evil racist whitey get more tickets than evil whitey.
The way the demographics are going, in another decade the only people getting tickets will be hispanics because the entire population will be hispanic.
I’m surpirsed Chief Bratton stood up against this PC anti white professor and his bogus study. Usually Bratton acts like some sort of medieval serf told by the village priest that he must repent or lose his place in heaven when his troops are attacked by pro criminal, anti police liberals.
Are there any other kind of liberals? No
A lot of nonsense and these criminal help organizations know it.
See The Myth of Racial Profiling by Heather Mac Donald
http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_2_the_myth.html
How dreadful. We’re all guilty of racial profiling. It’s late. It’s dark. You’re walking down a city street and see two black youths coming toward you.
Or you see two white youths coming toward you.
Or you see two Hispanic youths coming toward you.
Which group raises the anxiety factor the most?
“How dreadful. We’re all guilty of racial profiling. It’s late. It’s dark. You’re walking down a city street and see two black youths coming toward you.
Ask Jesse Jackson.
