Police Commission Chief Urges Unit to Fight Sexism, Race Bias

Los Angeles Police Commission President Deirdre Hill on Friday moved to shift new emphasis onto reports of sexism and sexual harassment detailed on the so-called Mark Fuhrman tapes, which have moved beyond the O.J. Simpson double murder trial and into a raging municipal furor.

“The whole context of the tapes was Men Against Women,” Hill told the Los Angeles Commission on the Status of Women, referring to a clandestine organization of male LAPD officers.

Although former Detective Fuhrman’s use of racial epithets and his accounts of police brutality have dominated public attention, the tapes were recorded by aspiring screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny as research for a script about sexism in the LAPD.

After hearing from Hill, the commission voted unanimously to support her request for immediate funding of a special unit to monitor sexism, sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination against LAPD employees.

Hill later told reporters: “When people are expressing hatred within our house . . . they may act out in the same way in the streets.”

Establishment of a such a unit was recommended by Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg last year after her Personnel Committee held hearings on sexism and harassment within the Police Department.

Goldberg on Friday praised Hill for taking steps to use the Fuhrman tapes to refocus and re-energize efforts to end sexism in the LAPD. “We must remember the real focus of the interviews Fuhrman gave was to talk to a screenplay about sexism [in the LAPD],” Goldberg said. “The [expressions of] racism was just a kind of an afterthought, if you will.”