In progressive Los Angeles, elite police unit is under pressure to battle not only crime, but perception of racial bias
LOS ANGELES - The Chrysler sedan was parked illegally against a red curb on West Manchester Avenue shortly after nightfall when a man walked up to the front passenger window, then retreated.
To the two officers from the Los Angeles Police Department's elite Metropolitan Division in an unmarked Crown Victoria, it looked like a possible drug deal.
They asked a black man in a Raiders hoodie and a black woman in a denim jacket to step out of the car. As the pair stood facing a metal fence, the officers patted them down.
After a Los Angeles Times investigation showing that Metro pulled over black drivers at a rate more than five times their share of the city's population, Mayor Eric Garcetti in early February ordered the LAPD to scale back on vehicle stops like this one.
At Metro's Temple Street headquarters, the Times article and mayor's directive caused an uproar. Metro officers felt they were being maligned as racists for policing a part of the city where almost everyone is black or Latino.
On the ground with Metro in South L.A., the realities are more complex than statistics can capture, with decisions about which drivers to stop shaped by years of experience with possible crime indicators, from the man walking up to a parked car to the paper license plates sometimes used to hide a car's origins.
As a mobile strike force responding to flare-ups and tamping down gang wars, Metro remains a key player in the LAPD's crime-reduction strategy.
Despite the mayor's directive, much of the work of Metro's
