The Beverly Hills Police Department has released arrest data from a task force assembled in the late summer of 2020 to patrol the Business District, according to documents obtained by the Courier. The task force, known as the Rodeo Drive Team, has come under scrutiny following the filing of a proposed class action lawsuit against the department on Aug. 30 for alleged racial profiling. While the numbers presented by the city reflect less of a racial disparity in arrest rates of Black people than claimed in the lawsuit, they still show that nearly 90% of arrests were of Black individuals.
The documents, obtained through a Public Records Act request, reveal two sets of numbers–arrests by the Rodeo Drive Team, and overall arrests for unemployment insurance fraud. The Rodeo Drive Team operated from Aug. 29 to Oct. 24, 2020, according to the city. In that time, the task force arrested 90 individuals, 80 of whom were Black.
