'Racist' Los Angeles police dogs bite only minorities

Police officers in Los Angeles have long faced accusations of institutional racism, but now it appears their dogs may be unjustly discriminatory, too. A new report focusing on the Canine Special Detail of the LA Sherriff’s Department (LASD) has uncovered a vast increase in the number of minority individuals bitten by police dogs since 2004, Voice of Russia reported. And in the first six months of this year, every single victim of a bite by a LASD dog was African-American or Latino. The data was published in a new report by the Police Assessment Resource Center (Parc), a Los Angeles-based non-profit organization, devoted to "advancing effective and accountable policing". According to Parc records, the number of Latino individuals bitten by LASD canines went up 30 per cent between 2004 and 2012, from 30 to 39 bites. The number of African-Americans bitten increased by 33 per cent over the same period. Meanwhile, police dog bites caused injuries at a much higher rate than alternative deterrents such as batons, tear gas and even guns. "Crime rates are lower in these areas, but the stark disparity leads us to wonder why canine deployments seem to occur disproportionately in less affluent areas with larger minority populations." A recent investigation by the US Department of Justice also found that in areas policed by the LASD, "African Americans, and to a lesser extent Latinos, are more likely to be stopped and/or searched than whites, even when controlling for factors other than race, such as crime rates." The authors of the Parc report recommended that the LASD work on improving its canine-deployment policies, and keep track of the enforcement activities of individual dogs and their handlers.