DALLAS -- City police officials defended their deadly force policy before a congressional hearing on tense police-minority relations, but a suburban police chief charged Dallas police shooting regulations were too vague.
In testimony Friday before a House subcommittee on criminal justice, Deputy Police Chief Marlin Price said the Dallas department's deadly force policy was among the best in the nation.
He cited statistics showing that the number of blacks and whites shot by police was proportionate to the number of blacks and whites arrested for violent crimes.
'I do not myself see overt evidence of racism in our department,' Price said, drawing quiet, cynical laughs from the mostly black crowd that packed the federal courtroom where the hearings were held.
The congressional review of the Dallas police department's deadly force policy and minority relations was arranted at the urging of black leaders, upset by what they say is an unsually high incidence of police shootings of minorities.
Between 1980 and 1986, 60 people were killed by Dallas police -- 12 white, 12 Hispanic and 36 blacks.
The debate came to a head last year over two controversial shootings. Etta Collins, a 70-year-old black woman, was shot to death by police in October after she called to report a burglary. And a white undercover police officer from suburban Addison was shot to death in December by a Dallas officer who mistook him for a suspect during a drug raid.
Addison Police Chief Rick Sullivan told the subcommittee the Dallas policy on deadly police force is based on whether an officer feels at the time of a shooting that his life is in imminent danger. Under such a policy, it is virtually impossible to obtain an indictment for an unwarranted shooting, Sullivan said.
'How in the world can a grand jury indict based on reasonable belief, when they have no idea what the officer actually felt at the time?' Sullivan said.
Dallas City Council member Al Lipscomb said the 'hostile and antagonistic (police-minority) relationship laced with fear has been circumvented with Band-Aid solutions.'
The police department seems to have an 'unwritten code that if you brutalize a black person, the department will cover for you,' he said.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the subcommittee chairman, left Dallas early Saturday with transcipts from the 14-hour hearing saying much remains to be done.
'One day's hearing does not change generations of practice,' Conyers said. 'This is a beginning step, this is a halting step. We're going to be monitoring this situation.'
He said there may be further hearings on the issue.
'The problems are immense,' Conyers said. 'We have no illusions of solving them. ... The first step we must take is to determine where we as federal representatives go from here.'
Police Chief Billy Prince, whose department was placed squarely on the defensive, said he though the hearings were conducted fairly and offered a forum for improvements.
