L.A. County leaders unanimously approved a strategy to push against systemic racism and bias in Los Angeles County’s processes, policy and services.
The effort — “Establishing an Antiracist Los Angeles County Policy Agenda” — is a first-of-its-kind proposal to rid the county of what many say is structural racism that manifests itself in law enforcement policies that jail disproportionate numbers of Black people, creates extremes in wealth and poverty and fuels disparities in education, housing and healthcare, said L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas.
“It’s time for the county to address systematic racism, especially that which unfairly disadvantages historically harmed communities – principally among them would be African Americans — although not exclusively,” he said.
Ridley-Thomas introduced the motion to establish the county “agenda,” which came in front of the board on Tuesday. It laid down a kind of guiding statement for policy making in a key moment in the history of the county, amid widespread social unrest and a pandemic.
Even Tuesday’s meeting included several items that sought to dismantle traditional forms of bureaucracy, ranging from the criminal justice system to healthcare.
Such programs and policies, implemented and overseen by various county departments, have far-reaching implications across the most populous county in the state. They include employment, land use, education, voting, housing, health, arts and museums, infrastructure, justice, veteran services, environmental protections, community services, and the economy.
Ridley-Thomas said lack of open space in low-income communities, problems with the foster-care system, and disparities in incarceration are all the result of generations of county government whose policy decisions were skewed by bias.
He noted Tuesday that the county has been moving in the right direction, citing that department heads have committed to decisions that advance racial equity in employment and social services, among other things.
Indeed. His fellow supervisors acknowledged that the motion was long overdue — pointing to the board’s more progressive stance on policy but also noting that it wasn’t enough.
Supervisor Hilda Solis said the “anti-racist” policy agenda was part of a legacy of Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights leader who died on Friday. For Solis, Tuesday’s action was a moment to pay tribute to Lewis’ legacy of “seeking good trouble.”
The motion hones in on the scenario faced by Black people in L.A. County — a struggle that has come to the forefront of public attention amid the COVID-19 outbreak. In L.A. County, Black people make up 11% of the county’s deaths — but make up only 9% of the county’s population. But that burden is shouldered by a community that has less access to healthcare, less access to affordable housing, endures more severe poverty and bears a disproportionate brunt of the criminal justice system, officials say.
The board’s action on Tuesday will:
- Set into a motion an assessment of county policies and practices;
- Identify anything in the system that would prevent African Americans from advancing on the county’s departmental career ladder; abd
- Support the Los Angeles Homeless Authority’s plan to advance 67 recommendations in the Ad Hoc Committee for Black People Experiencing Homeless.
Also, the action calls for an annual tracking of progress that would result each year in a “State of Black Los Angeles County” report.
Public Defender Ricardo García said systemic racism is a reality his office hears about every day from their clients. He supported the board’s action on Tuesday, noting that while it was an “aspirational vision.”
Department heads and elected officials on Tuesday said they have experienced racism — something that drove them to public office in the first place.
“This is our moment. This is our opportunity as a county to take our place at the front of the movement that will define our time,” said L.A. County CEO Sachi Hamai.
The action to pass such a measure comes amid continued social tension in the wake the May 25 death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died in the custody of a white Minneapolis police officer. The officers’s use of force prevented Floyd from breathing, even as other officers stood by.
Floyd’s death prompted a national outcry against police brutality and misconduct. But in discussing his motion on Thursday, Ridley-Thomas put the county’s issues in broader historical context.
In discussing the motion ahead of the meeting, Ridley-Thomas hearkened back to the board’s endorsement of Japanese internment during World War II. Local leaders unanimously approved an act to urge President Franklin D. Roosevelt to proceed with Executive order 9066 in February 1942, forcing 120,000 people of Japanese descent – nearly one-third of who were from Los Angeles County — to be held in camps for up to three years. The board, in 2012, took that act off the books, Ridley-Thomas said.
Ridley-Thomas also noted his own experience living in a county that experienced the Watts Riots, more rioting after the 1992 trial of LAPD offcers charged with beating Rodney King — and now, widespread unrest in the wake of the deaths of Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and most recently the shooting death of Andres Guardado, the 18-year-old security guard deputies shot in the back in Gardena last month.
Guardado’s death has sparked renewed tension — with the Board of Supervisors, the county’s Civilian Oversight Commission and the county’s Office of Inspector General on one side and L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva on the other — over access to evidence in the case and records.
County officials say the lack of use-of-force data on the county level makes it hard to assess just how great the impact of law enforcement misconduct could be on African Americans.
What is known, according to the motion, is that Black people represent:
- 27 percent of the people shot or seriously injured by law enforcement in the County in 2017;
- Nearly 30 percent of the overall population in County jails; and
- 34 percent of the population experiencing homelessness.
Officials say the time is ripe for such measures. And Ridley-Thomas’ latest motion comes as a board relatively politically aligned looks to steer county policy toward alternatives to incarceration, including closing the Men’s Central Jail and demanding more accountability from law enforcement.
“We have endured too much too long,” Ridley-Thomas said. “We can set a standard. A national standard. No one is claiming it’s going to be easy … .”
