7184: Profiling And Police.

From USA TODAY…

In a switch, police invite scrutiny of racial profiling

By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY

DENVER — By the time police Sgt. Robert Motyka responds to the disturbance call at a local hospital emergency room, the man at the reception counter is clearly agitated.

His speech is unintelligible. He becomes frantic as the officer slowly approaches, urging him to calm down. In a blur of flailing arms, the man reaches for something in his back pocket.

Motyka has no time to consider the possible consequences of one of the most potentially combustible scenarios in America: a confrontation between a black man and a white officer.

When the man pulls a knife and lunges forward, Motyka drops him with four quick pops from his 9mm Beretta. But there will be no public second-guessing of the 13-year veteran’s actions. No racially charged demonstrations by civil rights activists. No calls for a review of police dealings with minorities.

In this case, Motyka was reacting to a large-screen, video simulation designed to test officers’ judgment when using lethal force and scrutinize their dealings with minorities. In the end, the officer acted appropriately, according to his examiners.

The live-ammunition exercise, confined to the department’s shooting range, is part of a growing body of research and training in nearly a dozen law enforcement agencies across the country aimed at eliminating persistent racial profiling by police. Researchers are examining virtually all facets of police behavior, from officers’ interactions with new immigrants to car stops and the use of lethal force. More unusual, criminal justice analysts say, is that police officials are inviting the increased scrutiny, representing a generational change in law enforcement in a country that is now 34% minority.

If the July White House “beer summit” was supposed to offer a simple teaching moment after the high-profile arrest of a black Harvard scholar by a white Cambridge, Mass., officer, the research in Denver and elsewhere could provide some of the most instructive case studies on the intersection of race and law enforcement, some police analysts say.

“Law enforcement’s willingness to confront issues of race represents a huge shift in modern policing,” says Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement think tank. “I think you would be hard-pressed to find another institution in America more challenged by race than police. Coming out of the civil rights era, most departments were viewed (by minority communities) as occupying armies.”

Read the full story here.