Review finds no racial bias after Ga. police use photo of Black man for target practice during class

An external review found no culture of discrimination in a Georgia police department after social media posts showed white citizens using images of a Black man for target practice.

Channel 2 Action News showed you in June the posts shared by Villa Rica police after one of its citizen gun classes. Police Chief Michael Mansour told Channel 2′s Tom Jones there was no sinister intent in posting the images.

“The perception of it looks like we have people just shooting at black guys and that’s not at all what it was,” he told Jones.

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Many wondered why there were no images of white people used for target practice. The chief says they were used, just not posted.

“That day, they started with that target,” Mansour said while pointing at an image of a white man.

The city launched an external review into the police department’s training practices. The review said previous gun training classes used a “diverse range of photo-real targets representing different races and genders.”

The review found no evidence that a photo of a Black man was intentionally selected for the June class and there was no intent to promote bias against Black men.

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“However, it is deeply concerning that no one within the VRPD present at the range, recognized the potential implications of using targets depicting only a Black male armed with a revolver. This lack of awareness and judgment is acknowledged by the police chief, who expressed regret and apologized upon learning of the incident,” the report stated.

The review concluded that the department should add new cultural awareness training and regularly evaluate its training practices to prevent things like this in the future.

You can read the full review and its findings here.

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