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Comment by sitkack | Hacker News Reader

> He moved to Las Vegas and, at the age of 25, became an officer in the metro police. Kinch came to serve in elite detective units over 23 years in the force, hunting fugitives and helping take down gangs like the Playboy Bloods. Eventually he was assigned to what he called the “Black squad,” according to court records, tasked with investigating violent crimes where the suspect was African American. (A Las Vegas police spokesperson told me they stopped “dividing squads by a suspect’s race” a year before Kinch retired.)

That is crazy, you'd think that would be illegal under the Civil Rights Act. White criminals had a separate police force from black ones.

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I'm white as heck but I wouldn't think that for a single moment. I know enough black Americans and enough about policing that I'm unsurprised. Also, I would categorize the spokesperson's response as 'PR' and an expected claim, which is not the same thing as an accurate claim.

As near as I can tell Black Lives Matter did not arise out of some sort of spite or radicalism, but out of the conditions Kinch's stated experience suggests. This pretty well contradicts the Civil Rights Act, something Kinch's stated experience also suggests.

It’s a bona fide occupational qualification, it’s completely legal under the Civil Rights Act and works the same way if for example Hollywood wants to hire a black actor or a Las Vegas club wants to hire female dancers. If said discrimination is necessary for a legitimate business function (And meets a couple of tests) it’s completely legal.

> It’s a bona fide occupational qualification, it’s completely legal under the Civil Rights Act and works the same way if for example Hollywood wants to hire a black actor or a Las Vegas club wants to hire female dancers.

I think you've misunderstood. It's clear from the article that the "Black squad" was so named because it specialised in investigating suspects who were Black, not because the officers in it were themselves Black.

I imagine the officers best at investigating black crime would either be black or have good contacts within that community.

In this case the article says that the former member of the squad, Kinch, described himself in a Facebook post as being White.

Or be racist

> It’s a bona fide occupational qualification

A BFOQ can only apply to private hiring discrimination, not "having a separate police force when you are suspected of a crime based on race" discrimination. It's not employment rights at issue, so occupational qualifications are not relevant.

OTOH, the issue here is probably more 14th Amendment equal protection than statutory rights.

On the gripping hand, American police departments having racist practices that are internally well-known, and not being held accountable for them is..not at all surprising.

Black Squad refers to who they are investigating, not the officers themselves.

i can see why in highly segregated communities it might be more effective to have detectives who know xyz about a certain community, especially since criminal gangs tend to self-associate by race/ethnicity

would a police group dedicated to investigating the mafia be a violation of the civil rights act?

No, that would be ridiculous. An “Italian squad” might be, though.

any mafia squad back in the day was effectively an italian squad

The details matter when talking about legalities. A group of cops investigating a gang that happens to have a lot of italian members is different than having a group of cops that investigates italians.

And yet, it was never called that, right? It would have been a Mafia task force, a task force against a particular family, or a task force against organized crime. You wouldn’t call it an Italian task force because you’re probably hoping for help from the Italian-American community to help catch the Mafiosos, and that naming convention is pretty insulting to law abiding Italians-Americans.

i believe the nypd (before the civil rights era) historically had an italian squad named precisely that comprised mostly of italian-american officers investigating italians in NYC

It's unfortunate, certainly, but it's probably very useful for police to have knowledge of and experience with the communities they're policing. In Canada police officers who are expected to work with indigenous communities often get special training to familiarize them with those cultures.

Sure, you (presumably) want the police to be sensitive to cultural issues -- the problem is you can't use skin color as an indicator of inclusion in a cultural group.

I was watching an interview the other day from one of the Tuskegee Airmen and just going by his physical appearance he looked as "European" as I do.

nah, not crazy. it's pretty crazy to think that sort of shit doesn't happen.

From the OP:

> A Las Vegas police spokesperson told me they stopped “dividing squads by a suspect’s race” a year before Kinch retired.

and later:

> In 2016, he turned in his badge, a year after the saga broke in the local press.

If all those facts are consistent, they had a 'Black squad' until 2015.

Edit: An aside in an article and piecing together facts that were not necessarily intended to be consistent can result in bad misunderstandings. We need more information to understand it.

But at the same time, let's be careful about proceeding like scientists and making the null hypothesis 'it wasn't racist' or even 'there isn't racism', requiring 99.9% certainty. That's one way members of the status quo perpetuate bad things, even without meaning to. It's a rationalization ('I'm thinking about this scientifically!') for plain old self-serving bias - I'm innocent of anything until there are scientific levels of proof, and then I'll still keep questioning it and probably just refuse to believe it. It's an impossible mountain to climb; in those discussions, the status quo will never agree.

There are other approaches, such as a preponderance of evidence, to borrow the legal term.

Is Williams black? I can see the argument for having black officers investigate black criminals, particularly if they're enterprises requiring infiltration.

The black squad member was Bobby Kinch, “American, Christian, White, Heterosexual”

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