LAPD is no longer majority white but a recent scandal shows racism remains an issue

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

See more from the L.A.Times in Google Search.

Set us as preferred A Black police officer asked whether a monkey was named “Tyrone,” to the laughter of a roomful of Latino and Asian colleagues.A Latina cop described how to inflict maximum pain: “You hit Black people in the liver — I heard they got weak livers,” she said, according to an LAPD internal affairs report.The report said their boss, an Asian sergeant, stood by as his employees used terms like “midnight” and “chocolate, chocolate” to describe people’s skin tones.Those were among the comments that came to light last year after an LAPD whistleblower secretly recorded his colleagues in a unit that screens police recruits.The scandal, which has seen new developments in recent weeks, is forcing department officials to reckon with a harsh reality: Years of efforts to make the LAPD more diverse have seemingly done little to stamp out prejudice in the ranks.For much of its history, the LAPD was a white man’s department.Aggressive tactics in communities of color fueled racial uprisings in the 1960s and early 1990s, when the beating of motorist Rodney King led to the discovery of messages similar to those in the recruitment unit tapes, with officers referring to Black men as “Buckwheat” and bragging about “busting heads.” Under pressure from lawsuits and consent decrees, police leaders pushed to recruit more Black, Latino and Asian officers, seeking to build up trust in minority communities.

1 2 1.Los Angeles Police Department graduates a total of 22 recruits at the Los Angeles Police Academy in Elysian Park on Friday, September 18, 2026.

2.(Christina House/Los Angeles Times) Latinos now make up more than half of the 8,500-officer department.

Black officers constitute less than 9% of the force, coinciding with a decline in the city’s Black population.The officer who made the recrui...