Most big-city police departments adopted the reforms Chief Parker introduced to the LAPS in the early 1950s, and most big-city police departments today are racially integrated. Yet police-community relations today are in a terrible state, judging by the persistence of abuse of Use-of-Force laws, racial profiling, racial scapegoating, and violence against unarmed and innocent minorities (the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri is being repeated in many other towns and cities). How would you explain this? Is it due to the persistence of racism in society as a whole, with it becoming more “acceptable” again to openly express racial animosity? Is it connected to problems in police training and the militarization of police departments and their social distancing from the citizenry? Is it due to the omnipresence of guns or changes in crime patterns (the waning of organized crime, except for foreign-based drug cartels and the preoccupation of police with the war on drugs and criminal acts by drug users)?
