Sands, who himself was cleared of a racial profiling accusation about 20 years ago, said he plans to demand a meeting with commissioners to discuss the issue.
It is not the first time debate has flared around questions of how thoroughly the LAPD looks into profiling allegations. Last year, the commission approved a new set of rules for how such investigations should be handled to address concerns raised by the U.S. Justice Department and the commission's inspector general after they probed the issue.
The guidelines include a checklist to ensure that officers are asked basic questions, such as whether they knew the race of the motorist before making the traffic stop and whether race was a factor in the decision to pull over the motorist.
LAPD Cmdr. Rick Webb, who presented the report at the commission's weekly meeting, acknowledged shortcomings in previous investigations, including those closed in 2007 before the new guidelines were implemented. He declined to speculate whether any of the previous allegations would have been sustained under the new investigative practices. In November, around the time that the changes were adopted, the department stepped into another controversy when it launched and then quickly aborted a mapping program aimed at identifying the city's Muslim enclaves. Civil libertarians and Muslim groups angrily denounced the effort as racial and religious profiling.
The debate unfolded Tuesday amid the commission's broader concerns over how the department handles the thousands of complaints made each year against officers.
In February, the inspector general released a report that concluded investigators frequently failed to fully investigate citizen complaints against allegedly abusive officers, often omitting or altering crucial information.
The report, and extensive media attention, sparked calls by commissioners for a review of the complaint investigation process.
The issue of racial profiling reaches back into one of the department's darkest periods. Since 2000, the department has been working to implement scores of reforms included in a federal consent decree that stems from the Rampart corruption scandal. As part of the decree, the department is required to gather and analyze racial data involving vehicle and pedestrian stops.
