Top LA County Sheriff Official Resigns Over Racist, Sexist Emails

Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell announces that three people have been arrested for trafficking a Los Angeles woman after fooling her into thinking she was going to a birthday party, at a news conference in L... Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell announces that three people have been arrested for trafficking a Los Angeles woman after fooling her into thinking she was going to a birthday party, at a news conference in Los Angeles Wednesday, March 9, 2016. Detectives say the 20-year-old woman left her mother's home Feb. 26 for a birthday party for a longtime co-worker, identified as Monique Butler, with two men who detectives say dropped off the co-worker and then viciously assaulted the young woman. (AP Photo/Amanda Myers) MORE LESS
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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.”

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