Photo: APU GOMES / AFP / Getty Images
For: EFE Updated 28 Apr 2022, 23: 51 pm EDT
Officers from police departments and state prisons in California have engaged in discriminatory conduct against Latinos and other minority groups, and these institutions have done little to investigate or combat these racist practices that can lead to police abuse, revealed a state audit published this Wednesday.
The California Auditor’s Office commented on the report on Twitter recommending that: “State-level intervention is necessary to implement key reforms to guard against biased conduct in law enforcement departments throughout California.”
The investigation of Acting State Auditor Michael Tilden’s office was commissioned by a committee of the California Legislature and focused on five law enforcement agencies in the state: The Department of Corrections and Reha (CDCR), the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD), and the San Bernardino, San Jose, and Stockton Police Departments.
The document noted that some officers in each department had engaged in discriminatory conduct, sometimes during on-duty interactions.
For the investigation were selected 750 officers of the five departments, and of the 80 who had public accounts on social networks, 17 had posted discriminatory content.
Posts promoted stereotypes or contained deliberately derogatory or hateful statements against African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Muslims, LGBTQ individuals , women and immigrants.
Although the audit found no evidence that there were officers who were members of hate groups, six of them posted content that suggests they support groups with problematic activities or agendas.
For example, an officer released a statement defending the Proud Boys, a white supremacist group that has also expressed hostility toward women and men. Muslims.
“The discriminatory behaviors identified in the five departments likely occurred in part because the departments have not fully implemented comprehensive strategies to address the discrimination within their organizations” says the audit.
Cites a report from the state Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board (RIPA) according to which officials of the 10 largest police departments in California had in 2019 were more likely to search African American and Latino drivers and pedestrians than whites, although such searches were less likely to reveal contraband than whites.
Furthermore, it contends that “none of the departments (included in the audit) have fully implemented best practices for recruiting a diverse workforce”, and have not “implemented robust community outreach strategies and training for employees”.
Nor have they established “sufficient proactive processes to identify ar possible discriminatory behaviors” nor “consistently carried out adequate investigations on alleged discriminatory behaviors.”
The document indicates that “an intervention at the state level would help to ensure broader use of practices that address discrimination.”
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