Antioch police officers texted racist slurs, threats to harm Black mayor, D.A. report says
More than a dozen police officers in Antioch, Calif., have been implicated in the latest scandal over racist text messages to rock a police department in the state, according to an investigation by the Contra Costa County district attorney’s office and the FBI.
A report released Thursday details 14 officers’ communications that include 12 messages likening Black people to gorillas — long a racist trope — as well as dozens of instances of the N-word.
Antioch’s population is around 24% Black, according to 2020 census data. Mayor Lamar Thorpe, who is Black, was the target of racist threats in the texts, which were first reported by The Mercury News and then Contra Costa News.
On April 24, 2020, the report alleges, Police Sgt. Josh Evans texted Officer Morteza Amiri, “I’ll bury that [N-word] in my fields.” Amiri laughed at the text. Evans responded, “And yes....it was a hard R on purpose.” Amiri replied a minute later, “haha there’s no accidents with you on that.”
Eight months after The Times revealed racist texts by Torrance police officers, city officials have done little to hold them accountable.
Five days later, the report states, Amiri texted a Brentwood, Calif., Police Department officer: “Since we don’t have video I sometimes just say people gave me a full confession when they didn’t. gets filed easier.”
In May 2020, two days after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, Amiri texted another officer about “riots in LA” over “the gorilla that died.”
As protests over police conduct erupted in Antioch on June 8, 2020, Officer John Ramirez wrote in a text to 22 other officers: “I’ll buy someone a prime rib dinner at House of prim rib to 40 that mfr [Thorpe] during the protest today.” The report says that the text is referencing the use of a 40-millimeter launcher to fire so-called less-lethal ammunition at the mayor.
At a raucous Antioch City Council meeting on Wednesday, dozens of residents expressed concerns about the text messages.
“It’s disgusting,” one woman said, adding her hope that the Police Department can rid itself of the “cancer” of racism. Many shared their own stories of alleged police misconduct.
A fired officer sent a tranche of racially charged texts to city officials days before the City Council was set to appoint the police chief.
In a heated exchange, the mayor rose from his seat to excoriate a commenter for using “dog whistle” language in a critique of the council.
“I am sick and tired of being attacked by these people in this community, apologizing for the racism that is going on,” Thorpe yelled before storming out. He later returned and apologized for losing his temper before sharing his experiences with officers targeting him and the Black community.
Antioch is not the only California city to be rocked by similar behavior by police.
Other recent scandals involving officers’ texts occurred in Torrance, where police talked about hurting and killing Black suspects, and Berkeley, where the president of the police officers union made racist remarks and called for arrest quotas.
Two officers linked to the racist text scandal in Torrance were indicted this week in the 2018 shooting death of a Black man as he sat in a car with an air rifle between his legs, according to defense attorneys for one of the officers.
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