There are now more blacks on big-city police forces than ever before, and many of them are young, recent recruits. Hopper had only served on the LAPD three years before last weekend's incident. Black officers are often assigned to work in low-income, black neighborhoods. It's a sad but undeniable fact that black and Latino males commit more major and violent crimes than whites, that many police are convinced black communities are dangerous and risky places where violent thugs abound and that every encounter is potentially life-threatening. Criminal justice experts agree that no matter how much training officers get, how they react in a situation on the streets depends on their own apprehensions and prejudices, and police work tends to aggravate whatever prejudices officers harbor.
Many black officers have the same prejudices as whites.
They do not live in, or did not grow up in, impoverished black neighborhoods, and they see them as hostile and alien places. Many are just as jittery as white cops at the prospect of an armed encounter with other blacks. This was glaringly evident in the aftermath of the killing of Margaret Laverne Mitchell, a black, middle-aged, emotionally disturbed, homeless woman who was slain in an altercation over a shopping cart in May 1999 by an LAPD officer. Yet more than a year later, there is still no indication that Parks has done anything to punish the officer who shot Mitchell. Given the opportunity, Parks would have instantly discounted Lee's fear that he'd be the victim of police racial profiling.