Let me tell you a ironic story; I live in Seattle. We were having incidents of excessive police force against people of color, one flat out murder of a emaciated, alcoholic Native American whose carvings have been around Seattle for over 30 years. Very well known to the police.
The Seattle police department gets investigated by the Feds
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/27/justice/justice-department-seattle-police/
Look at this paragraph
The Seattle settlement comes just days after the Justice Department announced a much broader deal with the city of New Orleans to try to root out deep-seated corruption in its police department.
The Justice Department Civil Rights Division still has 15 other "pattern or practice" investigations of police departments pending. The largest is Puerto Rico. Most of the others deal with small cities. A suit against Maricopa County, Arizona, alleging discrimination against Latino suspects is currently being challenged in a federal court.
And so what happens from this? Did police relations improve? Or did police depts.get angry at so-called "political correctness" and NOT address internal racism? Police are sporadically doing feel good, good deeds, I applaud that. Pictures of white cops doing nice things for black folk all over Facebook.
What they are not doing is saying "we have a problem with racism, and these are the steps we are taking to fix it, because we understand the seriousness of this issue, and fully acknowledge the part we play in perpetuating it" and until a problem is fully acknowledged and owned, it will never be properly addressed with workable solutions-- settlements with the federal government notwithstanding.
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