Several incidents in Los Angeles have raised the issue once more of racism in the police departments of the nation. The beating of Rodney King by several Los Angeles police officers, the two trials that followed, the riots that occurred between the trials, and the O.J. Simpson case have all raised the issue of racism and placed it in the forefront of public consciousness. An analysis of these events and other information from different police departments shows that there is racism in law enforcement in this country, that weeding out racist officers has not been given the priority it should have, and that the instruments used to weed out overly aggressive and racist police have not been effective.
Many Americans simply believe that racism is a thing of the past and that the integrated police departments are not bastions of racism as some critics charge. As the O.J. simpson case showed, however, the perception of blacks as opposed to whites can be very different when viewing an institution of social control such as the police. The racism of the past had as its method and its result segregation, keeping the races separate. This was replaced by the doctrine of separate but equal--blacks were still segregated, but they were supposed to be treated equally in their separation by government, as in the public schools. Integration was the method used by reformers to force the end of segregation. Discrimination continued, though, as individuals and groups would discriminate against people of other races in housing and jobs. Considerable changes were wrought by the Civil Rights Movement. According to public opinion surveys, in 1964 one American in four was opposed to open housing, and by 1966 the idea had even lost ground. After that, though, support for open housing mounted steadily so that by 1976 less than one in ten supported segregated housing and 85 percent thought blacks should be able to live wherever they could afford to liv...