Police snipers use black mug shots for target practice

A police sniper team in Miami has caused outrage after it was revealed that officers had used mug shots of African American men as target practice.

The images were discovered by a Florida National Guard sergeant, Valerie Deant at a shooting range used by law enforcement agencies. To her shock, her brother's bullet-riddled mug shot was among those being used, NBC News reports.

"The picture actually has like bullet holes," her brother Woody Deant said. "One in my forehead and one in my eye... I was speechless."

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Addressing the criticism, North Miami Beach Police Chief J Scott Dennis admitted that his team could have used "better judgement" when selecting the images, but denied accusations of racial profiling.

He said law enforcement regularly used photographs of real suspects and that those responsible would not be punished. "Our policies were not violated," Dennis said. "There is no discipline forthcoming from the individuals who were involved with this.

However, senior law enforcement officials told NBC that standard practice was to use commercially produced targets, which do not feature human faces, for shooting practice.

"The use of those targets doesn’t seem correct," Alex Vasquez, a retired FBI agent, said. "The police have different options for targets. I think the police have to be extra careful and sensitive to some issues that might be raised."

This comes at a time when relations between police and the African American community remain tense following the deaths of several black men at the hands of white police officers.

Last year, protests erupted across the US after unarmed black teenager Michael Brown was shot dead by police in Ferguson, Missouri. In a separate incident, Eric Garner, died after being placed in a banned chokehold by a white police officer. In both cases, a grand jury failed to indict the officers responsible.

"This can create a very dangerous situation," attorney Andell Brown said. "And it has been ingrained in your subconscious what does that mean when someone [police] comes across Woody or another person on the street and their decision-making process on using deadly force or not."