New Report from Pillars of the Community and Catalyst California Exposes the San Diego Police Department’s Racist Gang Profiling
New Report from Pillars of the Community and Catalyst California Exposes the San Diego Police Department’s Racist Gang Profiling
Today, Catalyst California and Pillars of the Community released End Gang Profiling in Southeast San Diego: Data and Stories from Community Members. At the heart of this digital interactive report lies an in-depth analysis of the San Diego Police Department’s (SDPD) patrol activities through stop data and video interviews with community members from Southeast San Diego. The data and stories reveal a harrowing portrait of injustice: SDPD is committed to a practice of criminalizing Black and Latinx residents in Southeast San Diego by profiling them as gang members. This inflicts physical, mental, and emotional trauma on community members, undermines safety, and annually wastes millions of public dollars.
The report's findings show that:
1. SDPD is committed to a practice of racially biased gang profiling – Officers disproportionately subject Black people to field interview cards, a tactic used by police to interrogate, harass, and document people as gang members. In particular, Black people were five times more likely to be subjected to field interview cards than White people. Stories from community members in San Diego reveal how commonly SDPD uses these stops label Black and Latinx people as gang members, especially in Southeast San Diego.
2. SDPD’s practices undermine community safety – Rather than advancing community wellbeing, SDPD’s patrol activities subject people of color to dehumanizing treatment. Stories from Southeast San Diego community members show that they are routinely harassed, interrogated, searched, assaulted and subjected to other SDPD acts that make them feel unsafe. These acts detract from community safety. In fact, in nearly three out of every four searches SDPD conducted during field interview stops, officers failed to find evidence of a crime.
3. SDPD’s methods wastes tremendous public dollars - The City of San Diego annually spends over $43 million on gang profiling in Southeast San Diego. This is more than the City spent on economic development, homelessness prevention, and flood prevention. Rather than wasting public dollars on policies that degrade and traumatize communities of color, those dollars should be reinvested in equity and care-centered safety programs.
To address these issues, it is imperative that:
- The City of San Diego acknowledges harms caused by gang profiling and apologizes to residents of southeast San Diego.
- Funds wasted on gang profiling be reinvested in equity-centered safety programs.
- San Diego enacts the PrOtect (Preventing Over-policing through Equitable Community Treatment) Act, which aims to prevent racially biased stops and searches.
- All gang units are removed from southeast San Diego.
- SDPD is held accountable for racially biased gang profiling.
- Non-safety related issues are decriminalized.
Together, we can build a future where all San Diegans are treated equitably, where safety is not a privilege but a right, and where the shadows of injustice are eradicated with the light of accountability and multi-racial solidarity.