SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Additional San Francisco police officers have been accused of exchanging racist and homophobic text messages, following a scandal that implicated 14 officers in a department now under federal review, authorities said.
The new allegations in the liberal and diverse city come amid a national debate over police relations with minority communities. The city’s police chief, mayor and others asked the U.S. Justice Department this year to review the agency’s use of force and ethnic disparities in arrests amid rising racial tensions.
Four officers exchanged messages that included racist remarks and derogatory comments toward the gay community, Police Chief Greg Suhr said Thursday. He says the officers face termination or already have left the force.
The officers sent the texts on their personal cellphones between 2014 and late 2015, District Attorney George Gascon said. It was not clear if they were on duty at the time.
The allegations emerged during a recent sexual assault investigation against an officer. Investigators searched cellphone records of the officers, who had sent text messages containing “reprehensible racial and homophobic remarks,” the Police Department said in a statement.
The investigation also revealed that three other officers had each received a single questionable text message from the officer accused of sexual assault, but did not respond. There was not enough evidence to bring charges against them, investigators concluded.
The officer at the center of the investigation has been charged with six misdemeanor counts of misusing police databases, and Suhr says he will launch termination proceedings after the criminal case wraps up.
The police chief said anyone exchanging racist or homophobic text messages “clearly falls below the minimum standard for being a San Francisco police officer.”
The 14 other officers who exchanged derogatory messages in 2012 were allowed to keep their jobs and avoid discipline because Suhr waited too long to address the allegations, a judge ruled last year.
Suhr is appealing the order, which barred him from firing eight officers, two of whom have since retired, and disciplining six others.
He said he delayed discipline because he didn’t want to interfere with a federal corruption investigation into several officers. The mayor has stood behind the chief, who says he has no plans to resign.
Mayor Ed Lee declined a request from Gascon last year to fund a task force to investigate 3,000 arrests that could have been influenced and resulted in wrongful convictions as the result of bias by the 14 officers.
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Lets not forget that for a time…perhaps in some cases very long time…these guys were Cops. They knew bigotry was a disqualifier but were so comfortable in that Police Department the had no hesitation flaunting it. And until they were booted these men were arresting and perhaps using physical force on people they hated. They hated people but were given tremendous power over them. How many victims…???
So this stuff is basically coming up in the course of unrelated investigations, and a third to a half of those being investigated are openly creating a hostile environment for fellow officers and those they’re sworn to protect? Whee.
They should be fired for stupidity alone. I mean, in this day and age, why would you put something clearly bigoted in a text or e-mail? You might as well -cc the local newspaper, tv, and radio stations.
Mayor Ed Lee declined a request from D.A. George Gascon to investigate those cops’ arrest records. Why? Didn’t get the authorization from Rose Pak?
The real problem is the police culture. Those few officers who are dumb enough to leave a digital trail are really just the tip of the iceberg, no? Obviously, they thought it was fine to send derogatory comments to their fellow officers, which implicitly means that there is a comfort level for those kinds of thoughts in the police department. Now extrapolate that mindset onto their arrest records, and look at the data. In S.F. it plays out exactly as you would think it would, judging by the numerous articles on how biased the S.F. police force has been towards minorities.