“Attorney Ray Fisher, who is the head of the Los Angeles Police Commission, said, “Certainly there have been occasions when the police have been racist and brutal. That is unacceptable behavior, and the police department has policies in force to make sure those officers are detected and punished.”
At the same time, he noted, those incidents tend to get all the media attention, while hundreds of police arrests and interventions that prevent crime are ignored. “The media tends to focus on the juicy story,” he said.
He also said that few cops are abusive. “They get a bad rap because of the misbehavior of a few bad apples. It would be a big mistake if people came away with the impression that the LAPD has a lot of thugs and racists—it doesn’t.”
The Police Commission is an independent group of five professionals who are ap-pointed by the Mayor to oversee the Police Department. “
