Thousands of complaints, few punished: How LAPD handles claims of racial bias

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Set us as preferred Over the past decade, the LAPD has received thousands of complaints accusing officers of targeting people solely because of their race, ethnicity or other form of outward appearance.Only one has been fired for it.The now-former officer, Edgar Garcia Cancino, was part of a San Fernando Valley anti-gang unit whose members were alleged to have improperly pulled over and searched hundreds of motorists.Cancino has appealed his termination, arguing that other officers in his unit carried out more of the problematic stops.

He claimed the department sought to make an example of him because he refused to implicate his superiors in wrongdoing.Accusations of racial profiling have long plagued the department, alienating generations of Black and brown Angelenos.Known within the LAPD as “biased policing,” such complaints have persisted despite repeated attempts to enact reform.

But the question of how commonly profiling occurs in the LAPD remains a topic of pointed debate.Years of studies by researchers and reporting by The Times and other news outlets have found Blacks and Latinos in L.A.

are subjected to stops, frisks, searches and arrests at significantly higher rates than whites, regardless of whether they live in high-crime neighborhoods.Past LAPD chiefs have acknowledged isolated cases of profiling may occur.

At the same time, they have denied that there is a widespread, systemic problem.An internal LAPD investigation of Cancino’s Mission Division gang squad uncovered an “overwhelming pattern of intentional policy violations,” according to a summary of the case file reviewed by The Times.

California An LAPD Internal Affairs report said officers in the San Fernando Valley operated like a “law enforcement gang,” while another specialized unit in South L.A.is under investigation for allegedly turni...