Infuriating. But not surprising.
It’s infuriating that law enforcement officers are harassing innocent people to make themselves look better. Gang member lists were the method of abuse in this real life example (hat tip to here for the lead), but gun control laws could easily be the next method that they used to abuse people.
Of course, if you know your history, especially of gun control laws, this isn’t any surprise. Gun control laws are going to be abused. That’s the very nature of those kinds of laws.
Zuri Davis gives us the details of this abuse of innocent people by the government:
An internal investigation uncovered several officers within the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) falsely identified innocent Californians in traffic stops as gang members in an effort to make their police work appear more successful.
A statement released Tuesday by the LAPD says that the investigation began in 2019 when a mother living in San Fernando Valley contacted the department after receiving word from the LAPD that her son was a gang member. A supervisor at a local station investigated body camera footage and other documentation gathered by an officer and found inconsistencies with the information provided. The department has not disclosed any other details about how the investigation began.
The woman’s son’s name was cleared and three officers were investigated as a result. An Internal Affairs investigation found that over a dozen officers assigned to Metropolitan Division crime suppression duties had falsified information on field-interview cards to identify non-gang members as belonging to gangs.
The offending officers were either “assigned to inactive duty or removed from the field,” according to the statement.
Davis continues,
REASON‘S SCOTT SHACKFORD HAS ALSO COVERED THE GANG DATABASE. IN ADDITION TO ITS NUMEROUS PRIVACY ABUSES AND ERRORS, AN AUDIT REVEALED THAT SOME GANGS WERE ADDED TO THE DATABASE WITHOUT THE PROPER DOCUMENTATION SHOWING THAT THEY MET THE STATE’S DEFINITION OF A GANG.
So, basically, what you have a is a situation where law enforcement officers have a “quota” to meet, and to meet it, they put some people on the list of gang members that should have never been on the list.
Scary, isn’t it? The consequences get worse. Tom Knighton writes,
Now, imagine someone of legal age found a threat against their life and went to purchase a firearm so they could protect themselves, only to find out that a couple of police officers had added them to a list of gang members and couldn’t buy a gun.
That’s the problem with denying gun purchases to anyone on any kind of list that hasn’t undergone the due process of law.
These officers were able to add this individual to the database with impunity because there was absolutely no judicial oversight. There was apparently no oversight at all. And yet, some actually think it’s a good idea to bar the sale of firearms to people on such a list?
No.
So, you have innocent people in Los Angeles being harassed by law enforcement. If you think this isn’t happening to gun owners, too, then you’re just being willfully ignorant.
I realize we have to be proactive with the gargantuan state and its desire to control us, the author didn’t present one example of the gun laws being used to actually harass innocent people.
If I recall, there have been actual instances where police on incorrect no-knock raids have killed people because they had guns to defend themselves, yet were not charged with murder or manslaughter due to their and/or whoever signed the warrants errors.
This appears to be a very one-sided article.
A lot of “innocents” want to appear to be guilty.
Rule of thumb: If it looks like a gangbanger, acts like a gangbanger, and gives the officer attitude, it’s probably a gangbanger. Expect to be arrested, and charged, as a gangbanger.
Wow!! Talk about fear mongering, not one real-life example given. Ya… Targeting folks as gang members, that aren’t gang members seems like a horrible mistake, but I’d like to see a picture of the young man… I’ll bet if he was being harassed by the cops, chances are he either looked like a gang member; acted like a gang member, or both!! Don’t bother with negative comments about this post…I think I’m going to cancel my subscription. It’s scary enough without someone turning ant hills into mountains.
i am a retired police officer and these officers in calif. are a disgrace to all police officers ! they should be charge , convicted and sent to prison if what is being said about them is true .
Good for you! Getting rid of the bad apples is vital before they ruin the entire barrel!
As far as I know, being merely identified as being a gang member is not disqualifying on the background check for the purchase of a firearm. California’s laws are generally equivalent to federal law on the subject, so no conviction of a disqualifying offense, no denial of a purchase.
This is NOT to suggest that what Metro Division was doing was a valid exercise of their police powers. It isn’t.
Yeah, I gotta agree with Mark N. on this one, and with Don’t Care, and with Jim W. Speaking as a retired officer, myself, I have to ask everyone if they’ve ever heard of ‘erring on the side of caution?’ To officers completing Field Interview Reports, I would admonish you to carefully document and articulate the reasoning behind your conclusions. Blatantly falsifying information is wrong, yes, but c’mon Dennis, convicted and sent to prison?! That’s a bit harsh, I think. Disciplined, and possibly terminated, would be sufficient, would it not? It still takes their proclivity for wrong-doing out of the equation, eh?
What in H – E – Double toothpicks happened to my post?!??! I put a lot of memories into it and I don’t like “closet liberals destroying it! Put it back up. ##!!@@&&%%##!!!
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