LAPD gets new guidelines for handling 'Suspicious Activity Reports'

The L.A. Police Commission has approved rules for handling 'Suspicious Activity Reports' that offer some safeguards against racial profiling and reporting of activity protected by the 1st Amendment.

In Los Angeles, as elsewhere in this country, fear of enemies in our midst — be they Communists, trade unionists or foreign terrorists — too often has led to violations of the privacy of law-abiding Americans. Given that history, civil libertarians and members of the Muslim community were right to press the Los Angeles Police Department to ensure that a program designed to detect possible terrorist activity doesn't cast suspicion on individuals whose only "offense" is to exercise their right to free speech or belong to a particular ethnic or religious group.

The result is an amended set of guidelines approved by the city Police Commission for the handling of "Suspicious Activity Reports." Though the new guidelines don't go as far as the American Civil Liberties Union would like, they make it less likely that police will record the identities of persons whose conduct is neither criminal nor reasonably suggestive of possible terrorist connections. That's an important step forward.

Read on...

This is an editorial in the LA Times.  Tom

 

No comments: