Anaheim Police officers use excessive force at a rate that far outpaces law enforcement agencies in most similar-sized or larger cities, according to a report released Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
In 2015, Anaheim ranked ninth among the 60 largest U.S. cities in the rate of officer-involved deaths during arrests, based on FBI data. Last year, Anaheim’s rate of police-involved deaths per million residents outpaced those of Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston, New York and San Francisco.
“Anaheim, which likes to call itself the ‘City of Kindness,’ must grapple with the disparate impact of deadly use of force by its police department on low-income communities of color,” said Jennifer Rojas, co-author of the report and the organization’s Southern California community engagement and policy advocate. “It’s critical that true, independent civilian oversight, not beholden to the city, be established to examine the actions of the police department.”
In researching the report, the ACLU examined police and coroner reports, newspaper stories and data collected by the California attorney general’s office and the U.S. Department of Justice.
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