Hundreds of cases in jeopardy after racist texting scandal rocks California police department
Category: News & Politics
Via: john-russell • 3 years ago • 19 commentsBy: Sarah Toce (Raw Story - Celebrating Years of Independent Journalism)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Hundreds of cases are in jeopardy following the reveal of ongoing racist, xenophobic, sexist, and homophobic text messages traded by dozens of police officers in Torrance, California, who had previously served as witnesses. Texts included exchanges about lynching, hanging, enslaving, and "gassing" Jewish people, according to an investigation of The LA Times .
The texts run the gamut from a photo of Black men who had been lynched with the caption, "Hanging with the homies" to another image asking what someone should do if their girlfriend had an affair with a Black man. The officer's reply: break "a tail light on his car so the police will stop him and shoot him." Additional texts showed how to tie a noose and asked the question, "Which one doesn't belong?" with an image of a candy cane, a Christmas tree ornament, a star topper, and an "enslaved person." The response by one officer: "You don't hang the star."
"They exchanged texts about assaulting members of the LGBTQ community, using violence against suspects and lying during an investigation into a police shooting," according to district attorney's office records reviewed by The Times .
Currently, no officers face criminal charges in direct relation to the text messages, but at least 85 criminal cases involving the officers have been dismissed, including 35 County felony cases as of mid-November and an additional 50 city cases. Alarmingly, the officers were listed as potential witnesses in nearly 1,400 cases in the last decade, according to district attorney's records The Times obtained through a public records request.
"What those text messages revealed was an extraordinarily hostile attitude toward people of color, people who are nonbinary, people who have different sexual orientations," said Walter Katz, a former independent police auditor in California who now serves as a vice president of criminal justice for research firm Arnold Ventures. "I don't know that we can take anything they've said at face value."
According to The Times , the 13 officers named in the article were confirmed by individuals with direct knowledge of the situation, however, their identities will not be disclosed for fear of retaliation and they spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"The current administrative investigations are confidential. As such, we do not have access to facts of the underlying investigation, or the alleged inappropriate materials. We expect that as police officers, our members should be treated like any other citizen — considered innocent until proven guilty," the union said in a statement. "Our members have a right to due process and should be protected from illegal and unnecessary intrusion into their private lives."
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Wait, there are no racist cops.
I'm sure John, the few convicts the many...
There are tens of thousands of racist law enforcement officers in America.
That's true.
If they are willing to be that open about their attitudes, what does that say about them and about the organizations they work for? If you have four cops at a scene and one of them does something illegal and the other three just watch; which one is the "good cop?"
We have plenty of deplorable's even here in California, thankfully our high cost of living is helping motivate them to move to the red States where they'll be welcomed with open arms.
Who says that? Really.
We need to hire better people as cops.
In a way, cops are like politicians in that the people who want the job the most probably should have it.
Should or should not,
?
Typo, thank you. I meant to say “should not.”
We should pay good cops what they're worth
It obviously depends on where you look, but the cops I know make a pretty good living.
They are generally way over paid and have one of the best retirement programs in most states. All at tax payer expense.
Torrance isn’t some podunk little town in the middle of nowhere, it’s a major suburb of LA. Population 141k the minority population is over 40 percent, mostly Asian and PI. It will be interesting to see the racial make up of the cops involved.
I think I read a while back that LA county has a LEO "gang" problem among the various Sherriff offices and the feds have been trying to break them up for years.
That is correct and the LA Sheriff department was under federal oversight for a number of years.
This is the latest of the disaster that is called the LA Sheriffs Dept.
Hopefully, they are fired and lose all benefits that they have accured.
No shit, ya think that there might be some retaliation? WTF, it's ok for the LEO's but geez we really need to protect the POS that call themselves LEO's.
BULLSHIT!! Dirty cops need to be exposed they are a risk to the community. They are also a financial liability for the community, since the community has to pay for any lawsuits against them. Then the people have to pay for any fines, judgements, awards ETC... Corrupt cops need to be exposed so the "community" can deal with them. Dirty cops deserve street justice.
JMHO
Perhaps you misunderstood my comment, I do not want the LEO's protected, I want them fired and prosecuted and to end up in jail/prison. Once there they will have to fend for themselves.