A South Florida family is outraged at North Miami Beach Police after mug shots of African American men were used at a shooting range for police training.
North Miami Beach Police snipers left their targets behind on a shooting range. Turns out they’d been shooting at mug shots. All African-American men.
But it wasn’t racism, of course.
“North Miami Beach Police Chief J. Scott Dennis admitted that his officers could have used better judgment, but denies any racial profiling. He noted that the sniper team includes minority officers.
Hey, everybody does it!
“Dennis defended the department’s use of actual photographs and says the technique is widely used and the pictures are vital for facial recognition drills. ... NBC 6 Investigators spoke with sources at federal and state law enforcement agencies and five local police departments that have SWAT and sniper teams in an attempt to find out if this is a common practice. All law enforcement agencies said they only use commercially produced targets, not photos of human beings for target practice.”
So everybody doesn’t do it. Are the police going to do anything about this?
“Dennis said the police department uses an array of pictures including that of whites, and Hispanic males. ... Dennis said his department will resume use of human image targets after it expands the number of images in its inventory. His officers, Dennis said, will not use any booking photos from suspects they have arrested and he’ll direct his officers to remove the targets after they use the shooting range.”
Well, that’ll keep ‘em from getting caught next time. But what about the police officers who chose to use mug shots of exclusively African-American men for their target practice? Any problem there?
“‘Our policies were not violated,’ Dennis said. ‘There is no discipline forthcoming from the individuals who were involved with this.’”
