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.

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