The
revelation that officers of the
Torrance
Police Department
in
California exchanged racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic text
messages is further proof that police racism is widespread in law
enforcement agencies across the country. This is not an example of a
few bad apples spoiling the whole bunch. The whole apple orchard
called American law enforcement is rotten to the core.
So
far, prosecutors in Los Angeles County and Torrance have dismissed a
total of 90 cases involving the offending officers, with more than
1,800 cases under review, and state officials conducting an
investigation.
The
Los Angeles Times
revealed
the details of the scandal, in which over a dozen officers shared
racist texts involving the lynching of Black men, cops calling Black
people “savages,” the N-word, and more. Over a dozen
officers have been placed on
administrative
leave
so
far.
And
yet, Torrance has been here before. The years of racist texts follow
a longstanding pattern of racism by the department. In 1995, the
U.S.
Department of Justice
sued
the Torrance Police Department for discriminatory hiring practices,
including only three Black officers, six Asian officers, and 15
Latino officers in a 233-member force. And the police reportedly
engaged in blatantly racist policies, including using racial epithets
to describe Black people and stopping all Black motorists.
The
problems coming out of Torrance are not limited to that city or the
state of California, but rather point to a systemic issue of policing
across the United States. The racism and white supremacist violence
reflected in text messages and online posts reflect the everyday
misconduct, abuse, and brutality that police officers commit against
Black folks - in the streets and on a daily basis.
Earlier
this year, a private Facebook group of current and retired officers
called
Pittsburgh
Area Police Breakroom
featured
posts referring to Black Lives Matter protesters as “thugs”
and “terrorists,” transphobic comments, pro-Trump memes,
and attacks on “democrats” and COVID safety measures.
“If
you are a law enforcement officer and you kneel or lie on the ground
so easily over the false narrative of police brutality, you will one
day be executed on your knees or your stomach without a fight by the
same criminals that you are currently pandering to,” posted one
police officer, referring to the racial justice movement as
“Black
Lies Matter.“
Last
year, the San Jose Police Department placed four officers on
administrative duty for posting racist and islamophobic comments on
the “10-70DSJ”
Facebook group.
One officer made death threats against Muslim women, posting “I
say re-purpose the hijabs into nooses.” A current officer said
“Black lives don’t really matter,” while a retired
officer called Black Lives Matter activists “racist idiots,”
“un-American,” and “enemies” that the police
“swore an oath against.”
In
2019, Reveal
from The Center for Investigative Reporting
identified
nearly
400
police officers
who
are “members of Confederate, anti-Islam, misogynistic or
anti-government militia groups on Facebook.” Of these, 150 were
members of violent anti-government groups such as the Three
Percenters and Oath Keepers. White supremacists waved Blue Lives
Matter flags at the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville,
Va., while Portland, Ore., police officers texted with far-right
extremist groups.
And
ProPublica
exposed
a secret Facebook group where Border Patrol agents have engaged in
“disturbing social media activity” such as joking about
the deaths of migrants, posting sexually explicit illustrations of
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and discussing throwing burritos at
Latino members of Congress touring a Texas detention facility.
Another
review
of
the social media activity of 2,900 officers from eight police
departments and 600 retired officers found that 1 in 5 of current
officers and 2 in 5 of retired officers used violent, dehumanizing or
biased language on Facebook, mocked due process, and otherwise made
comments that would undermine public trust in law enforcement among
Black and Brown communities. That report led to 72 Philadelphia
officers placed on administrative duty, of whom
13
were fired.
Some
police officers have used digital media to brag about their racially
violent exploits. St. Louis police officer
Dustin
Boone
was
convicted of a federal crime for the 2017 beating of Det. Luther
Hall, a Black undercover police officer he thought was a Black Lives
Matter protester. Sentenced to a year in prison for a beating Hall
said was like that of
Rodney
King,
Boone was undone by his text messages. “It’s gonna get
IGNORANT tonight!!,” Boone texted two days before the attack.
“But it’s gonna be a lot of fun beating the hell out of
these shitheads once the sun goes down and nobody can tell us
apart!!!!”
Meanwhile,
Black police officers have used digital platforms to express their
frustration over police racism. In February, a Black Louisiana deputy
took to social media to decry police brutality and institutional
racism before taking his own life.
“I’ve
had enough of all of this nonsense, serving a system that does not
give a damn about me or people like me,” Lafayette Parish
Deputy
Clyde
Kerr III,
43, said in a video he posted on social media. “You have no
idea how hard it is to put a uniform on in this day and age with
everything that’s going on.” Affected by the death of
George Floyd, the Army veteran and father of two children later
killed himself with a bullet to the head. “This is my protest
against police brutality and everything else that comes along with it
in this broken, wicked, worldly system that does not give a damn
about people,” Kerr added.
Further,
let us not forget the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, an
insurrection
organized
on social media.
Some of the rioters involved in the attack were military
and
law
enforcement officers
who
took
selfies,
posted
videos,
comments
on Facebook,
sent messages as it happened, and used social media to
help
other insurrectionists.
And
this problem of racist police on social media is not limited to the
United States. For example, in Australia - where Black Aboriginal
people face police brutality and deaths in custody - more than 1,000
Queensland police officers participated in a
“Defend
the Blue”
Facebook
group featuring racist, sexist and homophobic content. The group was
shut down, and
eleven
officers
were
disciplined.
Last
year, Facebook investigated the “TN Rabiot Police Officiel,”
a 7,000-member group of French law enforcement officers posting
racially offensive comments, as
Belgian
federal police
investigated
online racist comments made by its officers. And Facebook groups
featuring hundreds of racist comments against Indigenous people by
members of the
Royal
Canadian Mounted Police
have
thrived. “The buffalo are not coming back. We may even
exterminate them a second time,” read one post.
When
defenders of police brutality say we don’t understand the
police have a tough job, they are wrong. Black people know that since
the days of the slave patrols, hundreds of years of oppressively
policing Black folks is hard work. Tens of thousands of enslaved
Black people escaped America’s plantation police state to
Canada
and
Mexico.
During Jim Crow, law enforcement and Ku Klux Klan were often one and
the same. This is why it is almost laughable to claim white
supremacists have infiltrated police departments
when
they always were the police.
Today,
police racism continues online, via text and social media. These are
not a few rotten apples, but a nationwide orchard of rotten blue
fruit, from sea to shining sea.
This
commentary was originally published by The
Grio