Dear Editor – LtE Needs to Link Info on CCPD

Dear Editor,

   This is quite an accusation: culvercitycrossroads.com/2024/10/03/dear-editor-dont-confuse-united-with-the-original-ccdc/ “The Culver City Police Department has the distinction of having the most racist use of force record in the state, according to an analysis released in 2023 by the California State Department of Justice. In the analysis, Culver City police were twice as likely to use force against Black people than against white people.”

Perhaps the letter writer can provide a link to the source.

Thank you.
Christine Ferreira

Editor’s note: You can see the original data here: https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/media/ripa-appendix-2023.pdf The key stat is on the last page of the attached document, a statistical regression analysis which found that CCPD were 1.897 times as likely to use force on Black individuals than white individuals. 

If you compare this disparity across all departments in Appendix C.3 in the original data (page 96), you see that CCPD had the highest discrepancy of any department in the state with an asterisk (i.e., any department where the finding was considered statistically significant). In an unbiased world you would expect the use of force coefficients to be 1.0 across all races. But for CCPD the data shows they’re 1.897 times as likely to use force on Black individuals than white individuals.
The Actors' Gang