Bigotry in Policing



San Francisco Police
SFPD Patch – Wikipedia

Everyone has heard about how liberal a city San Francisco is.  The people there seem to be very accepting of differences.  They don’t care what your race is.  They don’t care what your gender is.  They don’t care what your sexual preference is and so on.  Or at least that’s what everyone thinks.

It doesn’t appear that the San Francisco Police Department is anywhere near as tolerant or lacking in biases as everyone thinks.  In 2013  and 2014 the SFPD joined with the DEA and other agencies in targeting drug offenses.  The SFPD chose to target an area known as the Tenderloin district.  That district has a mix of races in it with people from all those different races selling drugs. 37 people were arrested in the stings.  All of them were black.

There was even video showing an Asian woman trying to sell drugs to one of the undercover informants but the informant refuses to buy from her.  He chooses to wait until a black woman approaches him and attempts to sell drugs to him.  The federal prosecutor dismissed all the cases since enforcing the law by targeting people based on race is illegal.

The police chief should have been embarrassed and should have looked into the issue but he obviously did not.  In 2015 extremely racist and ugly text messages came to light.  (For more details and information go to the ACLU article).  In 2016 the Justice Department released a report that confirmed targeted enforcement was still a concern.  Still, nothing was done.

If this can go on in San Francisco, one of the most liberal cities in the United States, it can go on anywhere, and does.  This is not how our system should work.  But if we think law enforcement will correct itself, think again.  It’s going to take us demanding change before anything of substance will be done.

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