Maintaining White Rule

The Los Angeles Police Department has had a reputation and practice in the black community of being very insensitive and brutal. Usually they do it under the cover of darkness and it’s their word against the suspect and there’s no witnesses other than other police. This was a rare case of where the covers were pulled off and it ended up being done in broad daylight.

It’s some bad apples in the barrel and part of the problem, too, is that so many of them don’t live in the city, don’t live in the community. They live in outlying communities and you get this kind of hostility. And the county Sheriff’s Department. Both of them. I think it’s institutional in terms of wanting to maintain the white man’s order and rule--to control the black community and the Latino community at the street level.