The police chief says it’s just “standard practice”.
The North Miami Beach Police Department was caught using the mugshots of black people for target practice at a shooting range, but the North Miami Beach Police Department would like you to know that this has nothing to do with race. If you perhaps suspect that this has everything to do with race, the North Miami Police Department police chief says that this is standard practice, even though most law enforcement agencies use commercially produced images. The North Miami Police Department insists that these photos, all of black men, are vital for facial recognition drills. How else would a police officer reocognize the face of a criminal if he didn’t know what one looked like?
The photos were discovered when Sgt. Valerie Deant, who serves in the Florida Army National Guard, visited the shooting range one day only to find her brother’s 15-year- old mugshot, among five other images of black men, ridden with bullets. The North Miami Police Department had been using these mugshots, all of black men, as targets. They were using photos of real black people to practice shooting a gun.
“Now I’m being used as a target?” Woody Deant, Sgt. Deant’s brother, told NBC Miami. “I’m not even living that life according to how they portrayed me as. I’m a father. I’m a husband. I’m a career man. I work 9-to-5.”
The North Miami Beach Police Department would like you to know that nothing was done wrong here.
“Our policies were not violated,” said Police Chief J. Scott Dennis. “There is no discipline forthcoming from the individuals who were involved with this.”
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