Posted on 07/29/2005 6:30:05 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO (AP) - Civil rights leaders Friday called for monthly psychological evaluations for police officers statewide and standardized collection of racial profiling data in a report aimed at curbing police brutality.
The report, released by the California National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, comes out of a March hearing with community leaders and civil rights groups following the death of 13-year-old Devin Brown.
Brown was shot by police after allegedly crashing a stolen car into a police car in South Los Angeles.
California NAACP president Alice Huffman said abuse of power among California police was widespread and persistent.
"The African-American community and other communities of color are fed up with the continuous killings and beatings of youth and law-abiding citizens by rogue law enforcement practices," she said at a news conference.
The report reviews 10 years of alleged police misconduct resulting in the death of minorities in California, and concludes that the deaths are the result of a number of causes, including a persistent climate of hate, stereotypes and a "see black, think criminal" mentality among officers.
"Police people are somehow conditioned to treat people of color differently," Huffman said. "It's in the culture."
The report calls on lawmakers to revive racial-profiling legislation that would mandate statewide, standardized data collection on all traffic stops. Gov. Gray Davis vetoed a similar bill in 1999, contending that racial profiling was not a statewide problem.
Since then, several police departments have begun logging information about traffic stops. A federal order requires the Los Angeles Police Department to record and publicly post the perceived ethnicity of all pedestrians and motorists stopped by officers. Under the terms of a 2003 legal settlement, California Highway Patrol officers must collect data on all stops.
Sacramento Police Department spokeswoman Michelle Lazark said officers there have been collecting information for more than two years, and warned that the data doesn't tell the whole story.
"If you work in an area where the demographics are largely of a certain race, your stops are going to be mostly of that race, (the data) will be skewed in that area," she said.
Huffman said the problem was that the information wasn't standardized and wasn't being analyzed at the state level.
The report blames poor screening of new recruits for the "bad apples" responsible for abuse. It recommends mandatory, monthly psychological evaluation of all police officers.
"No one evaluates the manner in which police work affects people over time, and regular, periodic psychological evaluations are not performed," the report found.
Officers typically undergo an extensive psychological review when first hired, and are then screened after shootings, traumatic events or at their request.
Police representatives said Friday they would not comment on the recommendations until they could review the full report.
Huffman said her group intends to distribute them to every police department and state lawmaker.
I expect this from the National Association for the Advancement of Corrupt People.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
If this is what set them off, the NAACP must be worried about the Muslim competition for "chief" victim.
I think the LA cops should do "Cincinnati" policing. When the Cincinnati cops got attacked unfairly by the community leaders, they simply did minimum policing. They arrived after the murder, drew the chalk line, took the report and bagged the body. Within weeks, the murder rate in the inner city shot up so high that the same black leaders complaining were begging the cops to come back. Any LA cop freepers out there, act now or the politics will get worst for you and your partners on the street.
I appeciate your "african American nomenclature, it's becoming ingrained into society.
The fact that you did not capitalize a in african Americans is not lost in my response.
Quite frankly, seeing the cracks of black asses, watching the arrogance of young thugs, witnessing the arrogance of tribal behavior, and being exposed to chrome rims, incessant rap, pine tree deodorants hanging from rear view mirrors and watching the "black" leadership make excuses for criminal acts disgusts me.
Consider this hate if you wish mod, it's not. It's simply, the truth.
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