Prosecutor Gives Evidence of Alleged Police Racism

A prosecutor in the trial of two former Long Beach police officers accused of abuse introduced evidence Tuesday alleging racism in the Hawthorne Police Department. The move was meant to counter defense accusations that activist Don Jackson was paranoid about racism.

On Monday, an attorney for a former officer accused of pushing Jackson through a window presented psychologists’ reports concluding that Jackson, because of an obsession to eradicate racism, suffered from a “severe personality disorder with paranoid features.”

But on Tuesday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Herb Lapin introduced evidence that includes a copy of a 1986 report fabricated by Hawthorne police officers in which racist epithets were used.