Should local law enforcement agencies employees have the same racial makeup as the city they work in? An editorial on this subject appeared in the Press Telegram in reference to the Long Beach Police Department. We received this Letter to the Editor re: Long Beach police force needs to reflect the community it protects: Editorial stating a department needs to be ethical not necessarily more reflective of the ethnic makeup of the community.
“I want a diverse police department, I want a rainbow that reflects this community but I won’t lower the standard,” Luna said.
What Chief Luna failed to discuss is the treatment of the African-Americans that have already been hired by the department. Many of the African-Americans have been systematically wiped under the umbrella of “at will” employee while on training. Despite having college degrees in subjects such as journalism, the department was still able to eliminate African-American officers while on training for subjective reasons like bad report writing skills.
Many of the African-American recruits were sent to an African-American training officer who was known by the name “Black Out” because African-American recruits were often fired after going through training under him. Sending African-American recruits to African-American training officers was intentionally done to cover up the obvious racist intention to fire African American recruits.
The culture of the LBPD is so racist that many of the senior African-American officers have suppressed their feelings for decades out of the fear of retaliation. The LBPD is so unethical that when an African-American officer filed a racial discrimination complaint, the department immediately filed an internal affairs complaint against him, while allowing one of the supervisors in his discrimination complaint to be the internal affairs investigator in the department’s complaint against him.
The moment any African-American officer openly expresses ill feelings about mistreatment, they are automatically labeled as the problem in the situation and eventually will fall victim to character assassination. The department currently has several lawsuits from former or current African-American employees with discrimination complaints.
The department is misleading everyone with photos of them shaking hands with people of the minister alliance and other prominent African-American community leaders, sending a false impression of their acceptance of African-Americans.
The Long Beach PD has mastered the art of manipulation. With a recent history of minority police chiefs (former African-American Chief Batts and current Latino Chief Luna), the false impression of diversity is given. Truthfully, however, neither Batts or Luna are well-respected by officers of their race. Less African-Americans were promoted under former Chief Batts’ watch than former Chief Jim McDonnell’s. The cronyism, nepotism, and racism has run this department for decades.
Signed,
Black & Blue
Letters to the Editor are from the view of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of 2 Urban Girls.
4 Comments
Black & Blue, if you are, or were, an officer, I would expect a modicum of factual analysis in your offering. I‘m a police captain who happens to be Black and if you turned in a police report full of the conjecture and invective in this work product I’d have you in my office asking, “ where’s your investigation?” Where are your facts to support your conclusions?” Essentially what you’ve offered is your tainted and rather juvenile emotional rant. One example is your comment about Chief Batts. At the core you basically said; “because he’s Black he should have hired more Blacks,” and you made that about ethics. I’m telling you that statement is racist on its face calling your ethics into question. As for the police department reflecting the community, that only works if you’re holding up the right mirror. If all your mirror reflects is race, you will never be satisfied. If your mirror reflects diversity and inclusiveness regardless of race, you’ve achieved the goal.
You also offered your opinion about “Black Out,” so let’s briefly deal with that. It might surprise you to know that Black Out didn’t get the name Yellow Out, Brown Out, or White Out for any of the Asian, Hispanic, or White trainees he failed. Why is that? Because Black folks, like you, see excuses in any event where you didn’t live up to what was required of you. The others, based solely on your race argument, would have more legitimacy in making a claim of racism. It’s odd to me; when Whites do something against Blacks you call it White racism. When Blacks do something against you, you still call it White racism. How does that comport with any logic. Well let me show you man…It doesn’t.
In this day and age, Blacks like you (assumption) and me, have every opportunity to be successful as evidenced by the plethora of Black millionaires, athletes, stars, executives, etc. There’s a Black president in case you slept on that one. The bottom line is we as Black folks need to stop making excuses and accepting any conversation about the lowering of standards to “let us in.” Even the thought of lowering testing, reading, and writing standards is offensive to me and should be offensive to you. Doing that gives power to the notion we are lesser than our rainbow of counterparts. Take emotion and excuses out of the equation and turn-to on getting Black kids to read and write instead of rap and fight. As it relates to our youth, you and people like you should spend more time developing the right attitudes to build the right aptitude, to reach the right altitude. Prepare them to hit the ground with a competitive fire to stand and be recognized, instead of providing them with scapegoat excuses to be marginalized. My own mantra is to remove all doubt that I’m competitive and can stand with anyone, of any race, any creed, and any social status, by educating myself through lifelong learning to ensure my own success, and significance. Take control of your own future and don’t relegate it to others who only have power over you if you allow it.
I’m going to stop short of calling you stupid because the body of work I have to evaluate you is limited to your letter and that would make me just like you, casting aspersions without any factual support for the position. I will, however say this: Smart people don’t have their thought process or critical thinking skills overridden by emotion. Once you’ve given in to the emotional attachment to excuses and tired Afro-centric rhetoric, you’ve become lazy, looking to blame instead of striving to overcome. For the record, Black & Blue sounds like a bruise, the connotation of which suggests you feel beat up. Perhaps you should consider Red, White & Blue. Become part of the solution and not part of the problem.
Black by birth, American by Choice, Police Officer by Call.
B&B, if you are, or were, an officer I would expect a modicum of factual analysis in your offering. I‘m a police captain who happens to be black and if you turned in a police report full of the conjecture and invective in this work product I’d have you in my office asking, “ where’s your investigation?” Where are your facts to support your conclusions?”
Essentially what you’ve offered is your tainted and rather juvenile emotional rant. One example is your comment about Chief Batts. At the core you basically said; “because he’s black he should have hired more blacks,” and you made that about ethics. I’m telling you that statement is racist on its face calling your ethics into question. As for the police department reflecting the community that only works if you’re holding up the right mirror. If all your mirror reflects is race then you will never be satisfied. If your mirror reflects diversity and inclusiveness regardless of race then you’ve achieved the goal.
You also offered your opinion about “Black Out,” so let’s briefly deal with that. It might surprise you to know that Black Out didn’t get the name Yellow Out, Brown Out, or White Out for any of the Asian, Hispanic, or White trainees he failed. Why is that? Because black folks, like you, see excuses in any event where you didn’t live up to what was required of you. The others, based solely on your race argument, would have more legitimacy in making a claim of racism. It’s odd to me; when whites do something against blacks you call it white racism. When blacks do something against you, you still call it white racism. How does that comport with any logic. Well let me show you man…It doesn’t.
In this day and age blacks, like you (assumption) and me, have every opportunity to be successful as evidenced by the plethora of black millionaires, athletes, stars, executives, etc. There’s a black president in case you slept on that one. The bottom line is we as black folks need to stop making excuses and accepting any conversation about the lowering of standards to “let us in.” Even the thought of lowering testing, reading, and writing standards is offensive to me and should be offensive to you. Doing that gives power to the notion we are lesser than our rainbow of counterparts. Take emotion, and excuses out of the equation and turn to on getting black kids to read and write instead of rap and fight. As it relates to our youth you and people like you should spend more time developing the right attitudes to build the right aptitude, to reach the right altitude. Prepare them to hit the ground with a competitive fire to stand and be recognized, instead of providing them with scapegoat excuses to be marginalized. My own mantra is to remove all doubt that I’m competitive and can stand with anyone, of any race, any creed, and any social status, by educating myself through lifelong learning to ensure my own success, and significance. Take control of your own future and don’t relegate it to others who only have power over you if you allow it.
I’m going to stop short of calling you stupid because the body of work I have to evaluate you is limited to your letter and that would make me just like you, casting aspersions without any factual support for the position. I will, however say this: Smart people don’t have their thought process or critical thinking skills overridden by emotion. Once you’ve given in to the emotional attachment to excuses and tired Afro-centric rhetoric you’ve become lazy, looking to blame instead of striving to overcome. For the record, Black & Blue sounds like a bruise, the connotation of which suggests you feel beat up. Perhaps you should consider Red, White & Blue. Become part of the solution and not part of the problem.
Signed,
Black by birth, American by Choice, Police Officer by Call.
Well B&B I happen to be a black police officer. I only say that to provide context. As a police officer I take issue with your conclusion because it offers no factual basis from which to draw your conclusions. If you are, or were, a police officer and you conducted an investigation and wrote a police report with the type of conjecture and invective as your letter, you would be on the “Brady” list. In this profession you can’t just make up things because you feel it is, or should be so. As a professional I wa insulted that you used the forum to denagrate the department and by extension the whole of Southern California law enforcement. By jumping to a racial conclusion, or at least broadcasting your raial conclusion without any facts to support it.
Now; as a black man…quit hiding behind the excuse of racism! it’s a cop out that’s grown tired. You essentially besmurched the reputations of two police chiefs because of your racial issues. Clearly you expected Chief Batts to hire more blacks simply because he’s black. That makes your comments racist on their face. C’mon man!! Playing the racist card is what lazy people with no real solutions to any problems do. Here is how you reach your goal of getting more blacks in law enforcement. Quit making them think they are owed something. Quit using racism as the cause celeb everytime something doesn’t go their way. Make sure they stay in school and develop the critical thinking skills to ensure their success. Most of all…Quit giving racism power over the way you think.
As for the black officers who were fired from training by “Black-out” maybe they just couldn’t perform basic writing skills. Maybe they didn’t work as hard because they thought they were owed something, there could be a whole lot of maybes in that scenario, but there is one certainty. I”Black Out” also failed Asian, White, and Hispanic trainees
I am not a police officer but I read the original opinion posted in the Press Telegram as well as the first rebuttal and tried to make sense of the replies here. I find it interesting that instead of addressing the core issue of Racial Make up in Law Enforcement and ethical practices, the two commenters only offered emotional rants and excuses for the department and it’s downfalls (openly admitted by Chief Luna). The assumption that the rebuttal was written by a Black man set the tone for subjective, non factual replies that were filled with presumptions and blatant judgments. Ironically, this gave validity to the claims made in the original rebuttal to the Press opinion.
I won’t waste time pointing out the numerous grammatical and word usage errors because I know as a police captain, you are well aware of “conjecture and invective” issues. However, what I would like to ask is that as a “Black police officer/captain”, you offer real solutions to the issues of Law Enforcement’s ethical practices within our communities and within their own departments because re-reading the comments above, I saw none.
I attended the town hall meeting where Chief Luna introduced top officers and expressed the desire to have the department reflect more of the community’s diverse population. He spoke specifically about racial diversity. I’m not sure what your above statement meant regarding “inclusiveness” not being a racial issue but I suspect you aren’t aware of the meanings of the majority of words and phrases you used when writing your reply.
I’m interested in the facts you have to offer. According to the Press, the force is not diverse, according to Chief Luna, the force is not diverse, and according to you we have a Black president so clearly, there’s no need for the race card. I’m glad your mantra has worked for you but your experience is a unique one. Instead of putting others in your race down, you should probably use your position to mentor and educate young people with the realities of a racially insensitive culture and the ways to succeed in these types of environments.