In 2014 the San Diego Police Department was criticized because its officers had failed to consistently collect data related to race during traffic stops.
At the time San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne and his top deputies were not all that concerned about the matter. In fact, according to The Voice of San Diego, they said residents didn’t believe racial profiling was a problem and the issue “hasn’t come up in years and years in interactions with the community” — a statement that received pushback from the NAA, the local Black Police Officers Association and others.
Two years later San Diego State University researchers shared results from a long awaited study that found officers were more likely to subject minorities to field interviews and were more likely to search Black and Hispanic drivers, despite the fact those drivers were less likely to actually have contraband, than White drivers.
It’s worth noting that city officials tried to hide early drafts of that study, which painted the department and officers in an even less favorable light. Independent journalist Kelly Davis reported that the final draft of the study removed more than two dozen mentions of the word “bias” and cut out the finding that most officers surveyed felt they wouldn’t benefit from additional training in fair and impartial policing.
I bring all that up because it informs how I view the latest U-T investigative series into the issue, and the skepticism I carry as I watch elected officials unveil their ideas for police reform.
The Color of AuthorityOn Sunday the U-T’s Lyndsay Winkley and Lauryn Schroeder concluded their three-part series looking at disparities in policing, a powerful and poignant project.
Among other things, they found that SDPD and sheriff’s deputies disproportionately targeted Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans in vehicle and pedestrian stops. They found both departments searched Blacks and Native Americans at higher rates than Whites, despite those groups, once again, being less likely to be found with contraband than Whites in San Diego. And they found both departments were more likely to exercise force when dealing with Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans than with Whites — ranging from one and half to three times more likely.
In the past week San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria announced 11 policy priorities he plans to pursue related to policing. Among those are exploring alternatives to arresting low-level offenders, strengthening bias training for all officers, reviewing hiring practices and examining limits on the use of rubber bullets, tear gas and the problematic pretext stops.
However, Gloria didn’t offer specifics for how or when these changes would be implemented.
I hope these proposals are ultimately successful and that San Diegans of color are able to feel like they live in a community where police are there to serve them instead of punishing, harassing and attacking them.
But I fear they won’t be.
When I heard the mayor and his office consulted with the San Diego Police Officers Association in drafting these reforms and saw the head of that union tell the U-T’s Alex Riggins he was encouraged Gloria seemed open to “balancing reforms with safety” that gave me pause, especially when you couple it with the fact that Gloria was ed by the union in his bid for mayor.
Certain changes, because of labor agreements, will require the union’s collaboration, and no one would dispute that the safety of officers is important. But far too often the latter is used as an excuse to avoid examining policing critically or embracing significant change.
Ideally law enforcement unions would be partners in delivering reform, but far too often they are not genuine partners in fixing the problems and they are certainly not consistent allies when it comes to listening to communities of color.
So while the input of law enforcement unions is worth listening to, it cannot be the defining factor for pursuing significant change.
Just think about some of the telling incidents here in San Diego over the past few years.
In 2019, a year before George Floyd was killed, California’s bill to raise legal standards for police use of deadly force — AB 392 — was moving through the legislature. Law enforcement unions adamantly opposed it, including the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association of San Diego County.
The head of that union went to a County Board of Supervisors meeting and begged the board to oppose it, despite the sometimes emotional testimony of dozens of ers of the bill, including family of unarmed civilians killed by police.
During last summer’s protests, that same union head penned a misleading op-ed in the U-T where he falsely suggested that eight officers had died nationwide in connection with racial justice protests. They had not.
The San Diego Police Officers Association also fought against tougher ability and oversight measures. For years they opposed establishing a new independent police commission, and although they took a neutral stance on a measure creating the new city commission last year, that’s not the same has embracing oversight.
And just a few weeks ago, law enforcement associations across the state financed a despicable mailer in the 79th Assembly race, showing images of La Mesa City Councilwoman Akilah Weber spliced in with burning buildings. It was an attempt to blame her for the destruction in La Mesa last summer.
The political smear was meritless and ultimately unsuccessful, but it’s striking how aggressively they went after a qualified Black woman who has fought for police reform. It’s also worth ing that Weber’s mother, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, was the author of AB 392 and the fiercest advocate for police reform during her time in the assembly.
So I’m happy elected officials are prioritizing police reform issues, but I just pray they are careful about who they trust.
And if you think I’m paranoid, let me leave you with this quote from some of those aforementioned SDSU researchers — the ones who saw city officials attempt to water down their 2016 study on police disparities, and penned a op-ed in the U-T last summer.
“We earnestly believed that providing data on police officer behavior would help to eliminate racial disparities,” they said. “But we were wrong. Why? Because police departments should not be trusted to reform themselves.”
