A police department in western Georgia is under investigation for using an image of a Black man as a target in a firearms safety training class for civilians, reported NBC News on Friday.
"The police department in Villa Rica, about 33 miles west of Atlanta, held the event on Saturday and posted on its Facebook page photos of participants aiming their guns at targets that featured a life-sized photo of a Black man. The man on the targets is pointing a gun and wearing a beanie," reported Claretta Bellamy. "The photos have since been taken down from the Facebook page but screenshots have been widely shared and criticized on social media."
Villa Rica’s chief of police, Michael Mansour, said that police also have targets of white and Asian men that they use for practice. She also said that the officer who posted photos of the training did so by mistake.
"'It’s just an innocent mistake, but it was a mistake," Mansour told NBC News. "And I’m very transparent in saying that we messed up. But at no time will I accept people telling me I’m a racist, or our department is a racist because we made a mistake."
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Gil McDougal, mayor of Villa Rica, has confirmed he has opened an investigation into the incident, saying it "does not reflect the values of this community."
This is not the first time that police departments have come under fire for potentially problematic training equipment. In 2022, police in Farmington Hills, Michigan were forced to apologize over paper targets of Black men at their shooting range, though they also maintained they had paper targets of other races as well.
More generally, police have struggled to deal with racial problems in their culture; several investigations across the country have found police departments where officers routinely use racist language and fantasies with each other, and earlier this month, the police department of Marion, Indiana terminated an officer two days after being sworn in, following the emergence of social media posts in which he celebrated the murder of George Floyd and posted a cartoon of "Martin Looter King."
