North Miami Beach police department has been caught using mugshot images of minorities as target practice. A South Florida family is outraged after discovering an image of one of their own riddled with bullets at a Medley, FL shooting range.
Last month North Miami Beach department snipers utilized the images for target practice. Shortly after they left the gun range the Florida National guard came in and were horrified to find images of minorities that were used by the police department. Even more shocking? One of the guardsmen, Valerie Deant, discovering a picture of her own brother, Woody. The mugshot was taken 15 years before when he was arrested for a drag racing incident that left two people dead on Biscayne.
North Miami Police Chief J. Scott Dennis has stated that they have not violated any regulations, but officers should have used better judgment.
“Our policies were not violated,” Dennis said. “There is no discipline forthcoming from the individuals who were involved with this.”
The technique of using human images is widely used in facial recognition drills. However, five other police departments in South Florida have already confirmed that they don’t fire at photographs of real human beings and only use targets coming from a commercial vendor.
With relationships between police and minorities being so tense this news is alarming.
The department has halted the practice for the moment but plans to resume using human image targets after increasing the number of images in their the database. What ever happened to using image silhouettes for target practice? It appears that that police department may need some sensitivity training.
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