By Emily Elena Dugdale, Photo: Bethany Mollenkof/ProPublica, ProPublica, June 17, 2022
Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies disproportionately contact, cite and arrest Black students in the Antelope Valley, according to a new report by the county Inspector General’s Office. And those students are also disproportionately suspended and expelled at higher rates than other racial groups, the report said.
The analysis was spurred by a yearlong investigation into allegations of racial discrimination in Antelope Valley high schools by LAist and ProPublica. Reviewing data for the 2018-19 school year, our investigation found that Black teenagers accounted for 60% of deputy contacts in Lancaster high schools, although they made up only about 20% of the enrollment in those schools.
Inspector General Max Huntsman’s office reviewed Sheriff’s Department data for the 2019-20 school year and said its findings corroborated the news organizations’ investigation. In addition, it said the problem may be worse than the numbers indicate, due to flaws in the department’s data-collection system.
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