Investigating Racism
Investigating Racism
Several documents included in the Independent Commission records indicate the degree to which racism permeated the LAPD, betraying attitudes toward communities of color that are truly disturbing. A report summarizing the commission’s review of the LAPD’s Mobile Digital Terminal (MDT) system—a computerized communications network enabling patrol units to communicate with headquarters and with officers in other patrol vehicles—included some eighty pages of comments and dialogue littered with racist language and references to violence (1 below). One message sent on March 4, 1991, the day after the beating of Rodney King, was sent by two officers involved in the King incident as they answered a domestic dispute call involving African Americans. One officer typed “Sounds almost exciting as our last call … It was right out of gorillas in the mist…” while the other responded “HAHAHAHA :: Let me guess who be the parties:::”The commission took note of membership application forms distributed by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan to all of the LAPD precincts (2 below). They also heard testimony from officers, including the interview here from Lieutenant Paul Kim (3 below), who could speak to the ways in which discrimination operated within the police force and contributed to incidents such as the Rodney King beating.
