California Police Officers' Bigoted Text Messages Have Just Undone Dozens Of Felony Cases
from the it's-time-to-keep-the-streets-free-of...-racist-cops dept
Racism and policing go hand-in-hand. It's been this way ever since police forces were created for the purpose of tracking down escaped slaves and returning them to their owners. Flash forward 150 years and very little has changed other than the ending of slavery.
Unsurprisingly, the advent of social media platforms and the increase in smartphone use has exposed the racism that still flows through far too many law enforcement agencies. Multiple investigations have been triggered by the exposure of bigoted communications between officers. It hasn't exactly resulted in a nationwide reckoning for racist officers, but it has at least seen a few bad apples tossed from barrels across the country.
If cops aren't worried about what happens to them -- as is evidenced by their carefree deployment of casual racism -- it's doubtful they're too worried about what happens to the general public. They claim to be the thin blue line standing between us and criminal chaos, but their racist words are erasing that line, allowing criminal suspects to return to the streets.
The Torrance Police Department in California is the epicenter of the latest garbage racist cop shitstorm. And rightfully so, given what's been uncovered there. Convictions and pending criminal cases are now in jeopardy because of officers texting each other things like this:
The caption read “hanging with the homies.”
The picture above it showed several Black men who had been lynched.
Another photo asked what someone should do if their girlfriend was having an affair with a Black man. The answer, according to the caption, was to break “a tail light on his car so the police will stop him and shoot him.”
Someone else sent a picture of a candy cane, a Christmas tree ornament, a star for the top of the tree and an “enslaved person.”
“Which one doesn’t belong?” the caption asked.
“You don’t hang the star,” someone wrote back.
Documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times -- which includes open investigations into some of these officers -- shows the Torrance PD has a racism problem, one it is now forced to confront. It's one thing when it's officers being lousy human beings. That can be swept under the rug. It's quite another when dozens of criminal cases might be tossed because these officers have shown they can't be trusted on the streets, much less in court.
While no officers currently face criminal charges in direct relation to the text messages, the racist exchanges have led to the dismissal of at least 85 criminal cases involving the officers implicated in the scandal. County prosecutors had tossed 35 felony cases as of mid-November, and the Torrance city attorney’s office has dismissed an additional 50, officials said.
The bleeding is unlikely to stop there. Records from the District Attorney's office shows the officers implicated in this new scandal are (or were) listed as potential witnesses in nearly 1,400 cases spanning the last decade. The LA County public defender's office has been swamped since this information came to light, receiving nearly 300 letters disclosing possible misconduct by officers during one single week in November.
The officers didn't just target black people with these texts. They also joked about "gassing" Jews, assaulting (sexually or otherwise) LGBTQ persons, assaulting suspects, and lying during investigations.
It's possible this hatred and misconduct would never have been exposed. But two officers apparently felt untouchable enough that they felt comfortable spray-painting a swastika on a vehicle they towed following a report of mail theft. An investigation into the actions of Officers Cody Weldin and Christopher Tomsic uncovered racist messages originating from Tomsic.
District attorney’s records reviewed by The Times showed Tomsic sent a slew of racist images and messages, including a picture of former President Reagan feeding a monkey with a caption stating Reagan “used to babysit [former President] Obama.”
Another picture he sent referred to an “African American baby” as a “Pet Niguana,” according to the records, and he also sent a message mocking the fact that he was the subject of a racial profiling complaint.
“So we totally racially profiled his ass, haha … Shopping at 7/11 while Black, he didn’t know the rules lol,” Tomsic wrote, according to the records.
That led to the exposure of more bigoted messages from cops. There are a total of 18 officers implicated. The names of thirteen of those officers are known and have been published by the LA Times. Several of those officers have been investigated for deploying excessive force or killing citizens. In almost every case, they've been cleared of wrongdoing.
Fortunately, the Torrance PD seems to be taking this seriously. It has given the DA's office 200 gigabytes of data covering officers' text messages. And the DA's office has been ensuring this information is passed on to the public defender's office, so both parties can determine what cases might be affected by these cops and their racist attitudes.
But cops don't just start sending racist texts to each other without feeling comfortable doing it. At some level, the Torrance PD made it clear this sort of behavior was, at minimum, ignored, if not actively tolerated. Now, these self-proclaimed protectors of the innocent have shown they only care about certain people, and are apparently willing to set criminals free rather than reign in their bigoted impulses.
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Filed Under: bigotry, california, police, torrance, torrance police
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'Here's some scapegoats now please don't look closer'
Fortunately, the Torrance PD seems to be taking this seriously. It has given the DA's office 200 gigabytes of data covering officers' text messages. And the DA's office has been ensuring this information is passed on to the public defender's office, so both parties can determine what cases might be affected by these cops and their racist attitudes.
Literally the end of the last paragraph:
Several of those officers have been investigated for deploying excessive force or killing citizens. In almost every case, they've been cleared of wrongdoing.
I guarantee they're only 'taking it seriously' because they decided that it's not a viable option to just brush everything under the rug and pretend nothing happened, and figured it's safer to throw a few of their officers under the bus rather than risk having the entire department looked over.
You do not get such blatant and open bigotry like that unless those involved feel very safe doing so, so I've no doubt that this is a department-wide issue and not just 'a few bad apples' that I'm sure they'd love for the public to think it is.
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Re: 'Here's some scapegoats now please don't look closer'
"You do not get such blatant and open bigotry like that unless those involved feel very safe doing so, so I've no doubt that this is a department-wide issue..."
Concur. Anyone who's ever worked in a corporation with an office culture knows damn well how it seeps into you. There are do's and dont's which stick with you. Those who break with that - hitting on their colleagues, making implications of bigotry, disregarding operational procedures - aren't long for the job and usually quit on their own before they can get fired simply because they don't fit in.
If a cop feels comfortable texting racist shit to their colleagues then that's a guarantee the department as a whole is so fundamentally OK with casual racism it's an intrinsic part of the culture.
Aside from the immediate concerns - like black people shot for shitz'n'giggles by racist cops - this is also the foundation from which systemic racism emerges. Procedures and policies built to cater to the governing class. White middle and upper class in the US and ethnic Han in China, for instance. Because those cops will go on up the career ladder and end up police chiefs, sheriffs, union representatives and politicians. And then give their like-minded peers in their KKK or Proud Boy chapter a hand up.
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Re: 'Here's some scapegoats now please don't look closer'
Oh come on, it's only 18 bad apples.
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Re: Re: 'Here's some scapegoats now please don't look closer'
Well, they can still make some pure applesauce...
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Re: 'Here's some scapegoats now please don't look closer'
This. But I would guess it's not department-wide. It's a cancer in the entirety of the police forces. In the whole world. And it's just possible because law enforcement in general wield their power unchecked, with little to no oversight. That dilemma "who judges the judges" is evolving and getting worse because this king of thing would not be possible if everybody was doing their job including but not limited to the judges as well. Obvious racism/abuse cases don't get dismissed by themselves, there's a judge dismissing them and not being punished for their own bigotry.
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Re: Re: 'Here's some scapegoats now please don't look closer'
Not in all countries. IN England using racial slurs is grounds for needing to find a new career. Also, if anybody is injured or killed and there is any possible police involvement, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is brought in to investigate. This includes when someone trying to escape from the police crashes their car.
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Re: Let's be clear, though
I believe that the discussion is mainly about US cops.
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Re: Re: Let's be clear, though
The US is not "the whole world".
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Re: Re: Re: Let's be clear, though
True, but no one said anything about the whole world to begin with.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Let's be clear, though
The comment I replied to did.
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Re: Re: Re: Let's be reaaalll clear, though
You miss the title of the article or something?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Let's be reaaalll clear, though
you miss the "... entirety of the police forces. In the whole world. And it's just ,,," in Naja's comment or something?
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Re: Re: 'Here's some scapegoats now please don't look closer'
"It's a cancer in the entirety of the police forces. In the whole world."
Not so much.
This is yet again one of those Only In America issues - because that type of policing is only ever found at scale in the US...and in a select few war-riven third-world hellholes and juntas. Within the G20 US "law enforcement" stands out as being bloody remarkable in the regard of how rotten it is.
In most of the EU the police operates by Peelian Principles. Consent-based policing. I am not afraid of Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, German, French or Spanish police, all of which I have at some time spoken to, if only for directions.
But I would make a wide loop around a US police officer if I was carrying anything of value, in fear of being robbed through "civil forfeiture". And otherwise treat them like I would someone visibly armed and in gang colors.
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"But it's just a few bad apples..."
No, this time, it's a whole goddamned orchard!
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Get tough on crime
It's time for the advocates of police reform to start adopting a "get tough on crime" platform. "Look at how many criminals are being let back out onto the streets just because the cops can't behave themselves for 5 lousy minutes. If these officers insist on making it easy for criminals to beat the rap, it's time to kick them out and replace them with officers who understand how to make arrests that stick.".
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Re: Get tough on crime
Ah but you see that would require admitting to police corruption and holding them accountable and the people who were cheering on 'tough on crime' programs and slogans are probably not going to be too thrilled with that idea.
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Re: Re: Get tough on crime
OR, it would require that they learn to cover their tracks and keep that kind of talk solely to the locker room.
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Let's be clear, though
Are those cases "jeopardized" because actual criminal investigations were brought to a screeching halt from the scandal, or were those cases never cases to begin with because the cops in question treat their job as a "minority arrest collect-a-thon"?
When cases are dismissed, there used to be this idea that unsavory individuals have been let go because some idiot cops couldn't be bothered to follow the rules. These days, I'm not sure. We're probably not far from the day where the news of cases being dismissed leads to massive cheers in the streets.
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Re: Let's be clear, though
A very good question.
From what I can tell, a lot of cases—especially municipal cases—rely heavily if not solely based upon the testimony of one or more officers, and they tend to fall apart without that testimony. This applies to search warrants, arrest warrants, seizures, civil and criminal forfeiture, justification of warrantless searches, justification of warrantless arrests, evaluations of uses-of-force, and prosecutions of cases, among many other things.
And generally, despite what TV and many cops will tell you, eyewitness testimony is often incredibly unreliable, whether or not you factor in the possibility of deceit. Testimony from police is no different in this respect, yet it is often given tremendous weight and deference in court. They are also just as likely to lie under oath as anyone else.
This results in a lot of cases where there is little to no evidence linking the suspect to the crime (or that a crime was committed at all) beyond the testimony of one or more cops. Combined with a lack of scrutiny or punishment for giving false testimony, and you have a number of cases where the suspect committed no crime but was arrested, charged, prosecuted, and/or convicted because of the bigotry of the officers involved.
That said, I do think there’s merit to pointing out that unsavory individuals might go free because some idiot cops didn’t follow the rules. For one thing, given the number of arrests those idiots often make, it’s statistically likely that at least some of them were actually guilty of some crime, possibly even the one they were accused of. Additionally, it means that even those who are genuinely convinced that many of these individuals are guilty might advocate for higher standards to become a cop in the first place to prevent stuff like this from happening.
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It's "rein them in"
Reins are what horses wear, reign is what a monarch does.
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Re: It's "rein them in"
Rain is what falls upon the just and the unjust alike.
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Re: It's "rein them in"
Reign is what racists do, when they can.
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Something something the FBI will be having a press conference complaining about encryption & why racist assholes never use it so that they have to do their job and investigate their fellow LEO's who were stupid enough to get caught.
1 'Muslim' terrorist does a thing, all Muslims are bad.
1 'Negro' does a thing, all Black people are criminals.
100 cops violate citizens rights, now its just a few bad apples.
GI Joe taught me knowing was half the battle, I do not understand how all of these PD's can't see the truth.
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Re:
That's kind of the whole reason "blackness" and "whiteness" were invented, isn't it? There's a wide belief these are factual categories, when in reality they have as much scientific support as phrenology. Instead, they were created for social control by people who proceeded to declare themselves "white" and associate them, pseudoscientifically, with the then-nascent (and respectable) field of genetics, to give them an air of legitimacy.
Skin tone, however, has always been an arbitrary trait with no more importance than, say, height or eye color. Americans, in particular, continue to be tricked by popular rhetoric into thinking otherwise—content to focus on how the police treat "black people" (for example), but unwilling to make the leap of rejecting the very categorization as bullshit. Indeed, the very groups of people the system were designed to oppress argue about how they fit into it, how their group name should be written and who should be considered members.
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Not just racist "jokes" they spray swastikas on people's property?
Sheesh. That entire department needs to be shut down and audited federally, because that type of stuff usually means there are also literal skeletons buried somewhere.
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Why spray-paint?
I’m pretty sure that those cops could be sued for vandalizing that guy’s car. Damages done during “processing”—like tearing up seats, scratches, dents, etc.—are often excused, but I can’t think of a single remotely legitimate justification (an accident, as part of a search, necessary for impounding the vehicle, etc.) that could be used to explain away spray-painting an impounded vehicle at all, especially not with a swastika.
Also, why do people do this? Like, seriously, I get that bigots will be bigots, often openly, that people often misjudge how anonymous or private their communications are, and that people do stupid stuff all the time (especially when they think they won’t get caught or won’t get punished for it), but I am trying to figure out why anyone would decide to spray-paint a swastika on someone’s vehicle even if they think they can get away with it. What is even the point of doing that?
Like, I get the social media posts and texts (well, as well as I understand bigotry and the need for idiots and criminals to talk about their dumb and/or bigoted actions or thoughts at all), but this seems particularly dumb and pointless.
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Re: Why spray-paint?
It was the swastika that blew open the whole scandal. Not just dumb, but a sort of professional-death wish.
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Re: Why spray-paint?
Also, why do people do this? Like, seriously, I get that bigots will be bigots, often openly, that people often misjudge how anonymous or private their communications are, and that people do stupid stuff all the time (especially when they think they won’t get caught or won’t get punished for it), but I am trying to figure out why anyone would decide to spray-paint a swastika on someone’s vehicle even if they think they can get away with it. What is even the point of doing that?
Bigotry-fueled spite and cruelty backed by a well founded belief that such an action would result in a slap on the wrist at worst would be the first explanations that come to mind. That said belief happened to be wrong this time doesn't change the fact that it was apparently based upon very solid evidence that the department was willing to overlook way worse that just some spray-paint in the past.
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Bodycams (and other recordings) are the wave of the future
Even if the cop later is found to be a racist, or a wife-beater, or some other lowlife, recorded evidence could still preserve conviction for an actual crime.
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how far you wanna go?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator"
"A person may not have his or her rights restricted in any way, or be granted any privileges, on the basis of his or her sex, race, nationality, language, origin, social status, religion, convictions, or opinions. The Fifth and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution guarantee legal equality as well."
For all the claims of equality in this nation, who would you ask about our past? Asian? Ireland? African? Middle east?
Pick any group, after about Lincolns time frame.
We have tons of pictures from news papers.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Racist+cartoons+of+the+1800%27s&rlz=1C1CHBD_enUS823US823 &sxsrf=AOaemvIdXM6RX7e_mw8DqMU_z9eEAyC0NA:1640733652757&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&am p;ved=2ahUKEwiQgayU0Yf1AhVJIDQIHZQdBkQQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=944&bih=1021&dpr=0.9
Where our Corps would use a group of people Until they got something DONE, like the international rail, then Throw them away and Blackball them, and use them as an excuse for everything under the sun.
And its Funny that Some of the South's leaders WERE BLACK.
Then rich, Corps, and Newspapers kinda teamed together. the Poor and black used to get along very well, as they were all in the same boat. But to make people feel better about being poor, someone had the idea to Blame others for their problems.
But its an old idea to keep people from joining up. To Share knowledge and concerns. Which may have started with the Popes, handing out Forgiveness to Rich people for a price, thank you Leo X.
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An Outright Lie from Cushing
That's simply not true and the facts are easily enough discovered that it amounts to an intentional lie.
Yes, policing in Southern slave states has some roots in slave patrols, but policing itself as an institution absolutely does not owe its existence to capturing escaped slaves.
Policing-- i.e., enforcing the law, preventing crime, apprehending criminals-- has a very long history that long predates American slavery. Hell, it long predates even the discovery of North America by Europeans.
Augustus Caesar, born in 27 BC, created the cohortes urbanae near the end of his reign to police ancient Rome.
Policing in England took form with Henry II’s proclamation of the Assize of Arms of 1181. In the 1600s England established constables and justices of the peace to oversee them.
The Metropolitan Police Act created the first official police department in the U.K. in 1829.
In America, the first constables were created in the 1630s in what came to be known as New England. Boston has the oldest “modern” police department. It was created in 1838. New York and Philadelphia soon followed. None of which were created for or had any hand in tracking down runaway slaves.
Your politics are obvious, Cushing. Stop outright lying to shill for them.
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Re: An Outright Lie from Cushing
[Projects facts contrary to evidence]
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