LAPD Inspector General Denies Evidence of Racial Profiling in the Latest SAR Audit Police Commission Dismisses Community Concerns - Takes No Action
On Tuesday January 27th, 2015 the LAPD Office of Inspector General released the 2014 audit of the LAPD Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) program. The audit revealed overwhelming racial profiling of Black communities in Los Angeles and showed majority of SARs reported by community informants. Here are some of the numbers:
In the race/ethnicity/gender data of the total SARs sent to Fusion Center, 30% were identified as Black,
In the gender count Black women were 50% of total women listed,
81% of the total SARs were initiated by community informants.
The audit shows disproportionately high numbers of SARs filed on Los Angeles’ Black communities who make less than 10% of the city’s population, meaning that blacks are racially profiled by the SAR program at a rate 3 times higher than other communities while black women accounted for 50% of SARs filed on women, a 5 to 1 ratio. Yet the Inspector General flat out rejected and denied “any evidence of racial profiling (please scroll down toward the end of this document for IG’s comments).”
The coalition held a press conference on Tuesday prior to the Police Commission meeting exposing the inherent racism and demanding an end of the SAR program. Later, over 17 Coalition members spoke at the commission meeting, each calling for an end to the SAR program. The Police Commission rubber stamped this audit without taking any further action.
Even the previous LAPD Inspector General audit released in March 2013 of LAPD SAR program revealed that out of a four month sample of race/descent data, over 82% of SARs were filed on individuals identified as non-white. The largest number of SARs were filed on Blacks.
The SAR program defines suspicious activity as “observed behavior reasonably indicative of pre-operational planning of terrorism or other criminal activity.” These highly vague concepts of “behavioral surveillance” and “reasonable indication” create a speculative standard of suspicion, enabling police officers to base their stops and the first point of contact on hunches and stereotypes which raises additional concerns regarding increased profiling and high potential for violence and hyper-reactiveness as witnessed in several recent murders of innocent individuals by law enforcement. This is state sanctioned racial profiling and a license to kill!
The LAPD SAR iWATCH program, with the tagline “See Something, Say Something” actively recruits community informants fostering a culture of suspicion and fear, reinforcing social biases, and racial, ethnic and religious profiling. In fact 81% of SARs in the 2014 audit were initiated by community informants. This is state sanctioned bigotry and prejudice!
This cannot continue. We demand:
AN IMMEDIATE END TO THE LAPD SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY REPORTING PROGRAM.
RESCIND AND EXPUNGE SPECIAL ORDERS 11, 1 AND 17.
TERMINATE THE iWATCH PROGRAM.
HOLD PUBLIC HEARINGS AND INVESTIGATE OUR HUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS RESULTING FROM THESE PROGRAMS.
SHUT DOWN AND DEFUND FUSION CENTERS
Join us in our fight to end this state sanctioned bigotry and racial profiling!
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