A top official with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department resigned Sunday after emails surfaced in which he made derogatory jokes about Muslims, blacks, Latinos and women, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Sheriff Jim McDonnell told the newspaper that he had accepted the resignation of his chief of staff, Tom Angel, and wanted the furor over Angel’s emails to serve as a “learning opportunity” for the department.
“This incident is one that I find deeply troubling,” McDonnell said in a statement to the Times. “Despite the Sheriff’s Department’s many recent efforts to fortify public trust and enhance internal and external accountability and transparency, this incident reminds us that we and other law enforcement agencies still have work to do.”
The newspaper acquired emails sent by Angel in 2012 and 2013, which was during his tenure as the number two police official in Burbank, California and a year before he joined the Los Angeles County sheriff’s staff. In the email chains, Angel forwarded jokes about PC culture, said that the number of terrorist attacks carried out by Muslim men justifies racial profiling, made fun of women’s weight and mocked homeless people for being hungry.
“I took my Biology exam last Friday. I was asked to name two things commonly found in cells. Apparently, ‘Blacks’ and ‘Mexicans’ were NOT the correct answers,” one joke read.
“Snow in the forecast and the TV weather girl said she was expecting 8 inches tonight. I thought to myself, ‘fat chance’ with a face like that!” read another.
Angel was hired by Burbank to reform an agency plagued by misconduct among its officers, according to the Times. The newspaper acquired the emails under the state’s open records laws.
Los Angeles is not the only city in which offensive messages by police officials have ignited calls for resignation and reform. Fourteen officers in San Francisco were implicated in a 2015 scandal involving racist and anti-LGBT messages, and a Baton Rouge officer was forced to resign in 2014 for sending texts about his desire to “pull a Ferguson” on “African monkeys.”
Wow. His chief of staff? And we were all led to believe that McDonnell was such a good guy and if so, then why did he hire a racist scum bag for his chief of staff.
The mind reels at how many of these kinds of incidents happening more and more. And don’t forget the shootings of innocent minorities over the last few years. Law enforcement in America needs some drastic overhauls.
TV weather girl said she was expecting 8 inches tonight. I thought to myself, ‘fat chance’ with a face like that!”
So… I guess only the pretty women get big dicks? That’s a stupid joke for more than one reason.
Shades of Giuliani and Bernie Kerik…
Here’s a thought. Run programs on police email servers looking for offensive words and phrases in emails sent on official accounts. (They’re not private, both because of employee status and in many cases open records laws.) Review the results and shitcan the cops who repeatedly send or forward this kind of crap. Easy and legal way to weed out the ones prone to discrimination.