But there is no systemic racism.

At the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Training Academy in Virginia last year, an instructor on the firing range called out a name that was shared by two trainees, one Black and one white.

When both responded, the white instructor clarified, “I meant the monkey.”

That behavior, as alleged in an internal complaint, didn’t stop there. The instructor also was accused of going on the loudspeaker in the tower of the outdoor firing range to taunt black trainees by making “monkey noises.”

“We were like, ‘It’s 2019. That shouldn’t even be a thing that we’re dealing with,’” said Derek Moise, who did not hear the noises himself but recalled the discomfort they caused his fellow Black trainees who did. “Everybody knows what those sounds and noises stand for.”

As the DEA continues a decades-long struggle to diversify its ranks, it has received a string of recent complaints describing a culture of racial discrimination at its training academy in which minorities are singled out, derided with insults and consistently held to a higher standard than their white counterparts, according to interviews with former recruits and law enforcement officials and records obtained by The Associated Press.

In one case, a Black recruit was told his skin color made him a surefire candidate for undercover work. In another, a Hispanic woman, chatting in Spanish with a fellow trainee, was admonished to “speak English, you are in the United States.” At least two of the complaints prompted internal DEA investigations, one of which remains ongoing.

The complaints, which are not typically made public, offer a rare window into the frustration minorities have voiced about their treatment at DEA since the filing of a 1977 civil rights lawsuit that remains unresolved despite a series of court orders governing the agency’s hiring and promotion practices. Last year, a federal judge ruled that DEA had run afoul of court orders intended to remove subjectivity from agent promotions.

Like other federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the DEA has struggled to fill its ranks with minorities. Of the agency’s 4,400 special agents, just 8% are Black and 10% are Hispanic.

The DEA said it could not immediately provide a racial breakdown of recent graduates of the Quantico, Virginia, academy, which puts through multiple classes a year of about 50 to 60 trainees each.

“DEA takes allegations of misconduct very seriously and will not tolerate discriminatory behavior of any kind,” the agency said in a statement. “DEA is committed to recruiting, retaining and promoting a workforce that reflects the diversity of our country and the people we serve.”

In the case of the firing range instructor making “monkey noises,” at least two Black trainees raised their concerns to a DEA supervisor, who sent them up the chain of command, prompting Special Agent Jay Mortenson to be removed from his post on the firing range. But to the disappointment of the recruits, he was not disciplined before retiring.

The DEA told AP the instructor was “promptly reassigned”