Racial Profiling

Regarding the article about the use of force by the S.B. Police Department and complaints against the SBPD, I would like to add another comment. A citizen who complains about an encounter and requests that he be able to view the footage recorded by a body camera and get his complaint taken seriously will likely not ever get any satisfaction. This was the case for my son a couple of years ago when he complained about an incident of racial profiling and harassment.

Despite his repeated efforts to find out what action the department was taking on his case, the two officers that he spoke to never acknowledged that the incident was racially based and it was clear that no action had been taken at all against the officer involved.

The clear impression that he got was that the department only wanted to protect its image as a benign entity and the image of Santa Barbara as a trouble-free city. This is what we should be talking about.