(For the first time ever) LAPD Probe Finds Officer Guilty of Racial Profiling
LAPD officer profiled Latinos in traffic stops, internal probe concludes
Officer Patrick Smith is alleged to have stopped Latino motorists because of their ethnicity and falsified his records to say they were white. A disciplinary panel could vote to dismiss him.
By Joel Rubin, Los Angeles Times
March 27, 2012
A white police officer has been targeting Latino drivers for traffic stops because of their ethnicity, a Los Angeles Police Department investigation concluded — marking the first time the department has found that one of its officers had engaged in racial or ethnic profiling.
For decades, the question of profiling — "biased policing," in LAPD vernacular — has bedeviled the department. Accusations that the practice was commonplace throughout the 1970s and '80s alienated the LAPD from the city's minority neighborhoods. And, despite dramatic reforms that have boosted the department's image in recent years, complaints of profiling have persisted, with hundreds of officers being accused of bias each year. Until now, none of those complaints has been substantiated.
The finding is a milestone for the department and was met with praise from John Mack, a member of the department's civilian oversight board and a longtime civil right activist who has been critical of the department's handling of such cases.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lapd-racial-profile-20120326,0,6544493.story