Karen Bass, the Mayor of Los Angeles, is attempting to try and “diversify” the LAPD, and she has stated that she wants to try and make it much easier for the new recruits who have failed to qualify for training to end up making the cut in order to qualify.
a summary of the public safety goals from Bass seems to indicate that bass wants to get rid of “obstacles,” while one provision of the new program states that a deputy mayor will be working hard with a “third party” to “evaluate the personnel process and identify obstacles to entry for recruits who fail to qualify for training,” stated a report from Fox News. Recommendations for tossing out of the previously mentioned obstacles will get special consideration if they are part of “ethnic groups disproportionately left out of new officer training.”
“We think that particular provision or that goal or that idea is dangerous,” explained a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, Tom Saggau, before adding, “If you have police officers that can’t make minimum qualifications or attained minimum standards, for instance, there are recruits that have been in the academy that just can’t score the minimum requirements for a physical fitness test. One hundred is the maximum score, 50 is acceptable. There are folks that are scoring under 10. That’s just dangerous.”
This new provision explained that recommendations to drop the obstacles will be taken into consideration, especially with those related to “ethnic groups disproportionately left out of new officer training.”
Saggau highlighted that recruits that are failing their training just might not “possess the mental fitness or the physical fitness ability to be a police officer.”
“That’s just a recipe for disaster,” he went on. “So we think lowering standards is a dangerous precedent.”
Bass stated this past week as part of a graduation ceremony for the Police Academy, “As your mayor, I want you to know I have committed to ensuring that you have the tools and the resources you need to be effective, and that includes making sure graduations like these have more graduates in those seats. I have committed to hiring more officers.”
When in Congress, Bass wrote the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which was created as a means to give funds to the ACLU, NAACP, and National Urban League in order to study “management and operations standards for law enforcement agencies, including standards relating to administrative due process, residency requirements, compensation and benefits, use of force, racial profiling, early warning and intervention systems, youth justice, school safety…”
That particular act also made the assumption that a disparate impact from sex or race among traffic stops by policemen would be considered evidence of racial profiling.
