Pubdate: Tue, 28 Sep 1999 Source: Orange County Register (CA) Copyright: 1999 The Orange County Register Contact: http://www.ocregister.com/ POLICE CORRUPTION Shocking allegations of police brutality and misconduct at one precinct in Los Angeles may reflect significant law-enforcement trends in Southern California and the entire country -- and may not merely be one isolated instance of abuse. That's the sobering conclusion of the human-rights group, Amnesty International, which sent representatives to Los Angeles earlier this month to release its new police report, "United States of America: Race, Rights and Police Brutality." Police brutality is an issue that has been raised recently in our region after some high-profile police shootings cases in Buena Park, Riverside, Huntington Beach and Santa Ana. The report's timing is appropriate, given the severity of the charges leveled against LAPD's Ramparts Division. In one instance, a former police officer has testified that he and another cop shot an unarmed suspect at point-blank range, then planted a weapon on him. If true -- the local district attorney and federal officials are taking the charges very seriously -- then these police officers engaged in criminal behavior of outrageous proportions. Most troubling is the possibility, as Amnesty International suggests, that similar behavior occurs regularly not only in Los Angeles but in police departments in other communities. The Amnesty report is useful when it lists cases of police shootings and identifies some troubling common practices -- racial profiling, "over-aggressive tactics," the use of "powerful semi-automatic weapons" which "increase the risk of unjustified shootings," a tendency by police officers to make false statements and of police departments to wage inadequate investigations, an apparent increase in the number of police shootings in many cities. But one problem with the group's analysis is that it focuses too heavily on racism as the central cause of police abuses and by doing so ignores other significant factors that are shaping police behavior. We're not saying that police racism doesn't exist, or that racial profiling and other race-based policies aren't noxious, but that the causes go much deeper. There are "some instances where there is racist stuff, but it's a mistake to look at every case that way," Joseph McNamara told us; he is a Hoover Institution research fellow, and former police chief of San Jose and Kansas City. The "police state" behavior that apparently took place in Los Angeles, he said, is largely the result of the the increased militarization of police forces throughout the country. This philosophy, driven by the drug war, is imposed on local departments by the federal government. Increasingly, he said, police forces rely on the feds for their funding and training, which violates the American tradition of the local police officer who is a part of the community, not a member of an occupying army. By missing this distinction in its report and analysis, Amnesty International is led to inappropriate solutions that almost certainly would exacerbate the problem it is trying to avert. Amnesty International suggests further federalizing police matters. For instance, the group lauds President Clinton's approval of "an extra $20 million in federal funding for police ethics and integrity training at the 30 regional community policing institutes funded by the Justice Department." And it calls for a greater role by federal authorities over local police decisions, and calls for the application of international standards on local cops. This is the essence of the problem, not its solution. Still, we applaud Amnesty for spotlighting trends in police brutality and shootings, and spurring further debate. But rather than further centralize the nation's police functions and bury the last remnant of the "beat cop" philosophy, America's policy makers need to find ways to de-federalize police departments and to stop legislating national crusades (against drugs, guns, gangs, terrorism, etc.) that militarize local police departments. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D